Everything’s been a bit late this week because of Independence Day. I know I live and work on Monster Island, but all the Americans on the Island celebrate it. As an Air Force/War in Space veteran, I may have partied a little too hardy, which kept me from getting this finished. So, to make up for it, not only am I sharing notes for episode 43 on Godzilla (1954), I’m also sharing Nate’s leftover notes from the collab episode on Godzilla: Singular Point in a separate blog.
As for episode 43, I didn’t make many notes, but hot damn, Marchand had too much research on this film. It’s Godzilla (1954), I get it, but it’s been annoying to decide what to use for my blog. So, I’ve decided to use what was leftover in his “final notes” for the episode. He’s saving the rest for that book he’s supposedly writing with Danny DiManna.
So, here’s what I have to say:
- Emperor Hirohito said, “unsufferable,” not, “Insufferable,” Nate. It’s not grammatically correct, but it’s the translation.
- Marchand, you goofball, you said, “Hirata,” when you meant, “Takarada.” You must’ve gotten them mixed up because they almost played opposite roles.
- Yes, Godzilla was green in Godzilla vs. Megaguirus. The MireGoji suit from Godzilla 2000 was reused.
- I beat you to the meme, Marchand! (Sunglass monocle, as requested):
- FYI, Nate can’t hold his liquor, as seen at the game night. It’s sad.
Here are Nate’s overly-copious notes on this classic film:
Godzilla (1954) Notes
New Notes:
- Kalat book
- Came about thanks to King Kong (1933). It had a profound effect on Eiji Tsuburaya and inspired him to get into special effects.
- Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka hired sci-fi author Shigeru Kayama to write the story. Kayama drew heavily from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, submitting an outline titled, Daikaiju No Kaitei Niman Maru (“Big Monster from 20,000 Miles Beneath the Sea”). The storyboards even mimicked the Rhedasaurus. This was why Ray Harryhausen grew to hate these movies. The title was later changed to “G” for “Giant.” Godzilla Japanese name, Gojira, supposedly came from a fat stagehand at Toho, but this has long been disputed as “legend-making.” Regardless, it’s a portmanteau of “gorilla” and the Japanese word for “whale,” kujira.
- Ishiro Honda, a pacifist and longtime friend of Akira Kurosawa, directed the film. He tapped into his wartime experiences to make it, having surveyed the aftermath of firebombings and visiting Hiroshima in 1946. He said in a 1991 interview, “The number one question concerning [Gojira] was the fear connected to what was then known as the atomic bomb, in the original film. At the time, I think there was an ability to grasp ‘a thing of absolute terror,’ as Shigeru Kayama himself called it. When I directed that film, in terms of society at the time, it was a surprising movie with all its special effects but, actually, when I returned from the war and passed through Hiroshima, there was a heavy atmosphere—a fear that Earth was already coming to an end. That became my basis.”
- It was Honda and writer Takeo Murata who took Kayama’s outline, revised it, and made it into a script. It was Honda who decided to have the monster emit radiation from his mouth as fire in order to make it visible. The creature was originally an octopus and was later changed to a melding of a T-rex and stegosaurus.
- For Honda, scientists were the heroes, and their rationalism trumped nationalism.
- Godzilla was played by Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka. However, Nakajima was better able to handle the suit, and most of Tezuka’s footage was cut. Nakajima prepared by watching Tsuburaya’s copy of King Kong and studying the behavior of animals at the Ueno Zoo. His footage was shot at a high frame rate and slowed down to create the illusion of mass. A cup of sweat was drained each time the 220-pound suit was removed. He suffered blisters and muscle cramps and lost 20 pounds.
- It cost 100 yen with advertising (62 million yen to make), making it the most expensive Japanese film to date (three times the average). It grossed 152 million yen and sold 9.6 million tickets. It was number 12 on the highest grossing films in Japan that year, which included Seven Samurai and foreign films. It was named one of Japan’s 20 greatest films by Kinema Junpo (“Cinema Journal”).
- Dark and operatic. The love triangle “implicates the fate of the world.” There’s a weird love triangle in KK33 (Ann, Jack, Kong), which is resolved with the death of Kong the noble savage. In this, Serizawa’s death resolves it.
- The conflict isn’t society vs. nature but society vs. society. Godzilla, who symbolizes the bomb, is defeated by more technology. The end is a draw. Ambivalent.
- The score was composed by Akira Ifukube, a self-taught composer who drew heavily from Ainu and European influences. He wrote many marches for the Japanese military during the war. He saw Godzilla as an opportunity to address his own experiences with radiation, since his brother Isao was killed by it and it made Ifukube himself very sick.
- Prof. Toshio Takahashi: “Godzilla was and is a powerful antiwar statement. Besides that, he is a mirror into the Japanese soul.”
- Film historian Tomoyasu Kobayashi noted that at a time when Japan and the U.S. entered the Mutual Security Act, American never helps Japan in this. “The Japanese an only count on themselves to defend Japan.”
- Writer Norio Akasaka interprets Godzilla as the embodiment of soldiers who died in the South Pacific during the war as sees the film as an indictment of Japan’s moral decline. Ifukube agreed.
- Current-affairs commentator Yasuo Nagayama saw Godzilla as a symbol of Takamori Saigo, a 19th century revolutionary. Jim Bailey writes, “Like Godzilla, Saigo was famed for his physique, conquered in a path that ran from south to north, was ultimately defeated and underwent a transformation in his reputation from villain to hero.” Nagayama: Saigo and Godzilla were not enemies of the people, but enemies of mistaken government policies.”
- Honda biography
- There was little respect for sci-fi films at the time, so Honda tapped into his experience as a documentary filmmaker and presented absolutely straight with no humor or levity.
- Ifukube told Honda, “The music must not lose to the monster’s roar.” This was solved with strategic use of silence.
- It doesn’t focus on a particular political viewpoint, but it’s highly political.
- Honda changed the monster from a hungry animal to a more impersonal force of nature.
- Yamane represents prestigious and influential scientists like Einstein while Serizawa symbolizes the trade-off of dangerous scientific advancement that led to the atomic bomb (Oppenheimer).
- Honda: “I wanted to express my views about scientists. They might invent something wonderful, but they also must be responsible for how it is used. A good example is Alfred Nobel, for whom the Nobel Peace Prize is named. He invented dynamite for mining purposes, but in the end it was also used to kill people. That’s why he created the award. It was his wish that [science] benefit and bring peace to humanity. Similarly, I wanted to warn people about what happens if we put our faith in science without considering the consequences.”
- The ending is the antithesis of typical for the genre. No action or thrills.
- The film was made at a time of increasing anti-American sentiment. The AMPO allowed them to maintain bases in Japan and offer military assistance when needed. They are absent here, despite the implications that it was American nuclear tests that created Godzilla. That being said, the film isn’t anti-American.
- The Eirin board, when approving the screenplay, told the filmmakers to portray Japan’s military “with the utmost care and respect.”
- Critic Saburo Kawamoto points out that Godzilla doesn’t destroy the Imperial Palace.
- This says it was the 8th highest grossing in 1954.
- Godzilla was Honda’s darkest work, a “window to his fears.”
- Honda frequently questioned traditional Japanese customs in his films. In Love Makeup (1954), he examined the concept of giri, a Japanese tradition to “repay social debts in equal or greater amounts, even if it hurt.”
- None of Honda’s heroines submit to traditional arranged marriages. He was quite the romantic, thinking marriage should be based on love and friendship and not on needs and wishes of the couple’s families or communities for economics, class status, or continuity of bloodlines. This was influenced by his own marriage, where he bucked tradition and didn’t receive the usual support.
- LeMay – The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monsters
- A studio employee told Takarada, “You aren’t the star, you fool! Gojira is!”
- LeMay – Writing Giant Monsters
- The film came about when another film, In the Shadow of Glory, which was to be filmed in Indonesia (which had been occupied by Japan during the war, and they wanted compensation), was canceled. Tanaka was flying back to Japan, looked out the window, and imagined a giant monster below the waves.
- Kayama wrote a short story in 1952 called “Jira Monster” about a dinosaur immune to bullets terrorizing primitive people.
- Honda rewrote the script and it was polished by Murata.
- Kayama’s original treatment was published as a novel, and an 11-part radio drama was produced to promote the film. Both were titled Kaiju Gojira.
- Ryfle and Godizsewski Classic Media DVD Commentary
- Tsuburaya worked on a film in the ’40s that recreated the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Occupation government thought it was real.
- Odo Island and its natives are like the Skull Island natives.
- Argued that Honda and Murata used Shinkichi to symbolize the children orphaned by the atomic bomb.
- Theme: Honda’s films put more faith in the scientists and ordinary people than the government and the military.
- The film’s attitude toward radiation isn’t fearful or sensational, but it’s used to call attention to the issue of the nuclear arms race and the radiation.
- This film is anti-nuclear and antiwar, not anti-America.
- Kayama, despite his knowledge of paleontology, said the Jurassic period was 2 million years ago. It was 110 million years ago. He may have wanted to connect Godzilla to the origin of man.
- The scene of the argument in the Diet was cut in the U.S. version. It may have been cut because of implicit indictments of the U.S. The Korean War was over and the seeds of the Vietnam War were being planted, so Japan was caught in the middle.
- Honda probably didn’t want to criticize the U.S. because of Japan’s alliance with them in the Cold War.
- The Yamane family has a TV, which was a luxury item at the time, so they’re wealthy.
- The electrical towers are erected quickly and in just the right spot. Kayama’s treatment had them take several weeks to build them, causing unrest.
- The music pauses just before Godzilla hits the electrical lines to create tension.
- Godzilla’s tail hits a Toho theater where the film premiered, and the crowd freaked out.
- Honda described the mood of this film as “an invisible fear” that hung over Japan and the whole world.
- They argue that Serizawa revealing the Oxygen Destroyer is Honda pleading with scientists to not reveal anything like a doomsday weapon.
- Ogata originally had a prominent facial scar, but it was removed because Honda wanted the tragedy to come from the performance.
- Instead of luring the monster out in an urban or unfamiliar environment in an exciting action sequence, the humans sneak up on Godzilla in his own habitat.
- It seems for a moment that Serizawa’s sacrifice is in vain as Godzilla emerges.
- Galbraith
- “There are few men as honest and reliable…I’m often told that I captured the atmosphere of post-war Japan in Stray Dog, and, if so, I owe a great deal of success to Honda.” –Kurosawa
- Cost $900,000 in 1954 money. The average Japanese film cost $75,000. (Seven Samurai cost $500,000).
- This is to Japan what King Kong is to America.
- Brothers
- “…Godzilla is a highly original work without precedent and not an easy film to define: part documentary, part social drama, part commentary, part allegory, part cautionary statement and part monster movie. In essence, the film is a porthole to the past showing the fear and insecurity of a nation still trying to cope with having been recently decimated by a war brought upon its helpless and innocent civulians.”
- Some have suggested Ogata’s bloody headband looks like the hachimaki headband worn by kamikaze pilots.
- At Honda’s direction, Godzilla’s roar sounds like an air raid siren.
- Likened Shimura’s casting to Sir Alec Guinness in Star Wars: it added legitimacy.
- When Godzilla roars at the clock on the Wako Building, it is 11 o’clock, indicating time is running out for humanity.
- Hearing the “Prayer for Peace” is likened to the Japanese hearing the Emperor’s address after the war.
- The prayer sequence shows Japan coming to grips with its past and pleading for nuclear disarmament.
- Brothers (G-Fan)
- Says modern movies are full of spectacular special effects, but they’re empty. “They are movies without souls, all polish and no spit … Godzilla has a lot of spit.”
- Says this film is difficult for American critics to watch because they have confront the fact that they’re part of the society that dropped the bomb.
- King Kong had meaning read into it when the creators didn’t intend any. Godzilla had the opposite. (He also argues Godzilla embodies American military might).
- Ogata isn’t a typical American hero who would confront Serizawa and take the Oxygen Destroyer. Instead he sympathizes with Serizawa’s plight.
- Barr
- Serizawa burning his notes could be a reference to forbidden knowledge and the infamous Unit 731. They conducted horrendous chemical and biological warfare experiments on POWs. The personnel were granted immunity by the United States if they shared their findings with only them.
- Napier
- “In this regard Godzilla clearly belongs to the genre of what Andrew Tudor labels ‘secure horror.’ In this genre the collectivity is threatened, but only from outside, and is ultimately reestablished, usually through the combined efforts of scientists and the government. It is a fundamentally optimistic genre in which it is possible, as Tudor says, ‘To imagine successful human intervention.’”
- It doesn’t happen until the end, creating suspense.
- Miwa
- “MacArthur’s ultimate objective, in short, was not to rehabilitate. It was to prevent: to ensure that Japan would not again threaten the rest of the world.”
- “Yet ‘rebuilding’ was not among them. Instead, they ordered him ‘[t]o destroy the economic ability of Japan to create or support any armaments dangerous to international peace,’ and ‘[t]o encourage the development within Japan of economic ways and institutions of a type that will contribute to the growth of peaceful and democratic forces in Japan.”
- Glownia
- “In contrast, Godzilla does not legitimize the nuclear arms race, but strongly opposes it. The dominant interpretation of Godzilla states that the monster symbolizes the atomic bomb, and the whole movie serves as an allegorical warning against potential nuclear conflict. However, the vagueness of meaning of certain aspects of the film, and the ambiguous character of Godzilla, who can be perceived both as a demonic oppressor and as an innocent victim of a weapon of mass destruction, tend to support less canonical readings of the movie.”
- “Scenes depicting the inefficiency of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in their struggles with Godzilla are often interpreted as a symbolic representation of the dread of not being able to repel potential foreign invasion, especially from the Communist Bloc (Palmer 2000: 468). On the other hand, some argue that, as Godzilla is depicted as a creature from the Odo islanders’ folklore, it is more reasonable to perceive the movie as a metaphor for Japan’s former imperialistic policy, which led to American retaliation that literally levelled Japanese cities (Rafferty 2004).”
- “In applying psychoanalytic terminology various authors tend to perceive Godzilla as both an embodiment of the fears of Japanese society and a means for defining, reworking and taming its traumas.”
- “Following this lead Susan Napier argues that Godzilla – especially its scenes depicting panic and destruction – may be read ‘as a form of cultural therapy, allowing the defeated Japanese to work through the trauma of wartime bombings” (Napier 2006: 10).”
- “Tatsumi Takayuki argues that the monster “helped the post war Japanese to reconstruct national identity by making themselves into victims of and resistors against an outside threat” (Tatsumi 2000: 228).’”
- “The reason why Honda decided to communicate his experiences and beliefs through allegory is probably because previous ‘rational’ films had failed to enable audiences to rework their traumas and to tame their nuclear fears. A symbolic monster from the domain of the irrationality was more suited to express the unspeakable and to present the unpresentable.”
- Ryfle (Classic Media)
- Godzilla demolishes the Nichigeki Theater.
- Hoberman
- “Much of the movie is coded naturalism, specifically the emphasis on civil defense and collective solidarity in the face of purposeless mass destruction.”
- Kalat Commentary (Criterion)
- 67 nuclear tests were conducted in the Marshall islands, including the first H-bomb. It was later declared the most contaminated place on Earth.
- Masaji, despite surviving the destruction of the boat, he’s killed later by Godzilla. It’s like Japanese ghost stories, where someone is cursed by the avenging spirit.
- Tusburaya won special effects awards for this film.
- Tsuburaya was blacklisted after the war because of his connections to making wartime propaganda films.
- Emiko and Ogata are examples of an old Japanese archetype in stories: the longsuffering female and “weak, passive male.” Romance wrecks the social order, so it usually ends in tragedy.
- Honda prefers to introduce story elements by showing its effects on others. Case in point: the introduction of the Oxygen Destroyer.
- Yamane also bears minimal resemblance to a scientist in The Thing from Another World.
- The dilemmas faced by the characters goes back to the war, where Japanese soldiers like Honda had to decide whether being a good Japanese was to obey the government or question it.
- Godzilla was nicknamed “Goji” because it rhymes with the Japanese term for “5AM” because the crew would be up that long making it.
- The conflict between duty and conscience was true for the audience, too. They sympathized with Godzilla because he was attacking places like the Diet, who had nearly destroyed their country during the war. They cheered when that happened.
- Story has it that the “Prayer for Peace” was sung by 2,000 schoolgirls and was conducted by Ifukube himself.
- Misc.
- Kuboyama was 40 and left behind a wife and three daughters.
- The Lucky Dragon incident inspired a grassroots anti-nuclear movement that got signatures from an astonishing 1/3 of the Japanese population.
This blog post is going to be taller than any of the kaiju on the Island!
The “Year of Gamera” continues next week with Gamera vs. Zigra, which will feature Kaiju Weekly co-host/MIFV MAX member Travis Alexander and now (because our previous guest vanished off the internet), kaiju author Neil Riebe. Nate isn’t a fan of this movie, but again I remind you a beautiful woman parades around in a bikini for a while! How can you complain? Then we have another first on the show: a Patreon-sponsored episode. Not only that, but that generous MIFV MAX member is joining us on the air: Eli Harris. The topic will be three episodes of Godzilla: The Series, specifically “New Family” parts one and two and his favorite episode, “Deadloch.”
Until then, remember: #WeShallOvercome
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