Lisa M. Brady; Bill Tsutsui
Interviewee: Lisa M. Brady; Bill Tsutsui
Interviewer: David Pettyjohn
Description: Since Godzilla’s debut nearly 70 years ago in Gojira, the King of the Monsters has become a global icon and a symbol of Japan. But what can a fire-breathing movie monster reveal about Japanese culture and history? This talk explores how the 33 Godzilla films reflect Japan’s resilience in the face of disaster, the worldwide appeal of Japanese creature features, and how societies confront fears of invisible threats, from radiation to pandemics. Bios: Bill Tsutsui specializes in the economic, environmental, and cultural history of modern Japan. Educated at Harvard, Oxford, and Princeton, he has authored or edited eight books, including Manufacturing Ideology and Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization. His 2004 book Godzilla on My Mind was called a 'cult classic' by The New York Times. Tsutsui has received Fulbright, ACLS, and Marshall Fellowships, and won the John Whitney Hall Prize and the William Rockhill Nelson Prize for Non-Fiction. He has served on the boards of the Association for Asian Studies, the US-Japan Council, and the Federation of State Humanities Councils. From 2014 to 2019, he was President of Hendrix College and is now Professor Emeritus of History. His research focuses on Japanese environmental and popular culture history. Lisa M. Brady is a History professor at Boise State University, specializing in global, Asian, and environmental history. Her research explores how military activities shape the environment. Her book War upon the Land was published in 2012. She is working on volumes for Oxford University Press and a book on the Korean War’s environmental history. Brady was editor-in-chief of Environmental History from 2013-2019 and became History Department chair in 2021.
Date: 2021-05-18
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David Pettyjohn: And, I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's connected conversation. My name is David Pettyjohn. Excuse me a little choked up. David Pettyjohn. I am the director here at the Idaho Humanities Council. If you're not familiar with the work of the IHC, I encourage you to go to our website. Idaho humanities.org. We will be, taking questions later in, tonight's program.
So I encourage you, if you have a question, you can use the chat feature. Or you can also use the Q&A feature at the bottom. But I'm just going to start over. The button is located at the bottom of your screen. It is my wonderful pleasure to to welcome tonight our two esteemed, panelists, Doctor Lisa Brady and Doctor Bill Tsutsui.
Bill and I, I met Bill. We serve on the Federation of State Humanities Council board, and I was actually, sent an article, by the president of the federation, that I learned a lot about Bill and his interest in tonight's topic. So I reached out to see if he would be willing to speak. And he has generously agreed to do so.
But to learn more about Bill, I'm going to turn it over to Doctor Lisa Brady. Doctor Brady is a professor of history at Boise State University, and the incoming chair of the department. And, Doctor Brady has also served as the chair of the Idaho Humanities Council. So welcome. And, Lisa, I will turn it over to you.
Lisa M. Brady: Excellent. Thank you so much, David. This is such an honor and pleasure to be able to introduce my good friend, my mentor, and my colleague, Doctor William Bill Tsutsui. Bill has an impressive resume with degrees from Harvard, Oxford, where he was a marshall scholar and Princeton, where he earned his PhD. One might think that with such a pedigree, Bill would be entitled to a bit of pride, but he is instead humble, approachable, and downright likable, as you will discover in his talk tonight.
This may be why he has been so successful and in such high demand. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Association for Asian Studies, the US Japan Council. And as David mentioned, the Federation of State Humanities Councils. He was recently appointed to the Japan United States Friendship Commission. I can't think of a better person to serve on that board.
As you'll see again, he's friendly. He's wonderful. Bill has served in many leadership roles, including history department chair and executive director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Kansas, which is where Bill and I first got to know each other. He has been dean of the Dedman College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Southern Methodist University and recently president of Hendrix College, a top tier liberal arts college located in Conway, Arkansas, which apparently is totally underwater at present.
This coming year, however, Bill is going to change locations. He will take his energy, his acumen, and his good humor to, another liberal arts excellent liberal arts institution, Ottawa University, which has campuses both in Kansas and Arizona, where he will serve as president and CEO. In all his spare time. Bill has managed to author eight books, author or edit eight books, including Manufacturing Ideology, Scientific Management in 20th Century Japan, and Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization, which is a big favorite of mine.
It's slim, it's exciting, it's wonderful. I highly recommend it. And his 2004 book, which will be in part, the basis for his talk tonight, Godzilla on My Mind, 50 years of the King of Monsters. I've read it numerous times. I've assigned it to classes. Everyone loves it. Again, I highly recommend this book. The New York Times called his book a cult classic.
So, Bill, I will turn it over to you. I am thrilled to hear your talk and excited to talk with you about it afterwards. Take it away.
Bill Tsutsui: Well, thank you so much, Lisa. You know, you're a one person marketing team. For my, publications. I really appreciate that. Well, it is such a pleasure to be with you all today and to be at least virtually back in beautiful Idaho. I am looking forward one of these days to, being there in person. Once again, I cannot thank David Pettyjohn enough for asking me to speak as part of the Connected Conversation series, as I am a huge fan of the public humanities and of all the wonderful state humanities councils across the country, which are doing such a marvelous job during this infernal pandemic of keeping us all engaged and
thinking and building community. And it is just the greatest joy imaginable for me to be sharing a zoom screen with the one and only Lisa Brady, who I knew way back when at the University of Kansas, and who we all realized was something special and was going to do great things in her life and career. And of course, it is always nice to be proven right.
About those hunches. I wish I could claim to be one of Lisa's teachers. But the fact of the matter is that I have learned far more from her than the other way around. Thank you, Lisa, for that lovely introduction and for being part of the conversation. I'm really looking forward to that. Now on to the main event.
Let's talk Godzilla. Well, I first encountered Godzilla when I was 7 or 8 years old, and let me see if I can manage my screen here. Yes. Okay. Is my sharing still working? I hope so.
Yes, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a Saturday afternoon in Bryan, Texas, where I grew up. I was lying on my stomach on the blue shag carpeting and my parents bedroom. Hold on. I'm going to share this again. I was lying on the blue shag carpeting in my parents bedroom in front of our big old zenith TV set in its fake woodgrain case.
It was tuned to channel 39 from Houston, and the creature double feature was on. I remember Godzilla appearing on the screen, and I remember falling in love. I wanted to be Godzilla. I wanted to be huge. I wanted to be, able to knock down skyscrapers and back fighter planes out of the sky. I wanted to make chemical plants explode.
Godzilla was and is a great kiddy fantasy. But Godzilla was more than that to me. As a chubby Japanese American boy in a small Texas town with a total of two Japanese American families. Godzilla was more than just a third grader Saturday afternoon. Power trip Godzilla became an important source of my personal identity. My friends and classmates at school, needless to say, didn't know a lot about Japan other than Pearl Harbor.
And I guarantee you they'd never heard of the Japanese-American internment, but they all thought Godzilla movies were pretty cool. And so I embraced Godzilla as something about Japan and my heritage that I could relate to and be proud of. I'm just guessing that most of you don't think of Godzilla as an ethnic hero, but he was to me.
And here's a photo of as close as I've gotten to actually becoming Godzilla. Halloween 1972. In a costume made by my mother and grandmother, just about to head off to the haunted house at Davy Crockett Elementary School. So why tell this story? Well, partly because it gives me a chance to indulge in a bit of nostalgia, but more importantly, because it shows nicely, I think how Godzilla is more than just a series of laughably cheesy films featuring an actor in a rubber suit walking through Toy City's.
Sure, Godzilla is a global pop culture icon. Star of 33 live action films made in Japan and Hollywood. The oldest and longest film franchise in world history. And sure, Godzilla is fodder for The Simpsons and has become part of our language through the zilla suffix and is the subject of more internet memes and New Yorker cartoons than anybody can count.
Godzilla is light hearted and silly and fun and childish. But Godzilla can, of course, also be serious and meaningful, offering commentary on current events, revealing insights on Japan and its postwar history, and providing an imaginative outlet for some of our deepest and darkest fears. On a personal level, Godzilla can be a lifelong friend and an unlikely source of ethnic identity.
And up there on the silver screen. Godzilla affords us a valuable perspective on the people and the cultures that created the films, as well as a window into the obsessions, the weaknesses, and the deepest anxieties of all of us who watched and enjoyed the series over the decades. We can learn a lot of turns out from Godzilla about Japan, about what scares us and about ourselves.
So let's spend the next 30 minutes or so reflecting on Godzilla, since the timing is great with the new legendary Godzilla versus Kong. Having just opened a few weeks ago. So what's the deal with this overgrown radioactive lizard that seems to love nothing better than destroying Tokyo? How did this global icon emerge from the imaginary of postwar Japan?
Why does this cinematic monster continue to stir our imaginations and attract audiences? Perhaps most importantly, how has the Godzilla series addressed the anxieties of moviegoers in Japan and internationally since the 1950s? From the nuclear fear of the Cold War era to the environmental concerns of the 60s and 70s, to the economic worries at the turn of the millennium, and what role might Godzilla play today as we all struggle with proliferating natural disasters like the earthquake, tsunami and meltdown that hit Japan in 2011, wildfires in the West, hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, and of course, with the current global pandemic.
Now, one of the characteristics of modern societies, it seems to me, and to many cultural commentators, is a sense of ambient fear, a pervasive anxiety that saturates daily life. Sometimes this fear is widely discussed and publicly agonized over, but much of the time people try to avoid speaking of it and try to push it into the background of their minds.
In Japan in the 1950s, when Godzilla was born, this anxiety derived from the unresolved legacies of World War Two, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and from the threat of nuclear annihilation in the Cold War. In the world today, and especially in America, there are more ambient fears than I can list, starting with COVID 19, of course, but including income and health care and security and concerns over issues like democratic governance and racial equity.
Such anxieties often manifest themselves as a widespread fascination with monsters, a fixation that is born of the twin desire to name and give a face and form to fears that are often abstract or invisible, like radiation and viruses, and to domesticate, control, and imaginatively overcome and therefore disempower those things that threaten us. In short, monsters like Godzilla help us make our fears more concrete and thus more manageable.
Seeing a giant lizard on a movie screen, or reading about Dracula in a novel, or hearing about dragons in a medieval tale, allow us to have the cathartic experience of imagining some of our greatest terrors, but also the reassuring and liberating experience of imagining those monsters being controlled and ultimately defeated.
Let's go back, then, to Godzilla's origins. So in 1952, the Hollywood classic King Kong, originally made in 1933, was rereleased around the world and was a smash hit, including in Japan. Hollywood saw the potential in giant monsters, so the very next year, Warner Brothers made The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which, if you've seen it, is about a dinosaur that swims up the Hudson River to spawn and ends up being barbequed at Coney Island.
Also turned out to be a big blockbuster. Japanese film studios have never been shy about stealing a good idea, so Japanese movie makers began work on their own creature feature. But Godzilla was not just created from commercial ambitions at the box office. It was very much ripped from the headlines and conditioned by super power politics and atomic age fears.
So in March of 1954, a Japanese fishing vessel called the Lucky Dragon Number Five strayed into the U.S. nuclear bomb testing zone near Bikini Atoll. The crew was exposed to massive amounts of radiation in the Castle Bravo test, the largest H-bomb test to date. One crew member died, and some of the irradiated tuna on the ship made it onto the market in Japan.
The United States, as was its custom with nuclear tests. In those days, denied everything. Never apologized. Paid only token restitution to the families. But this, of course, was huge news in Japan. It was called the latest atomic bombing of Japan in the media especially, of course, since the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remained very fresh memories. Godzilla was thus very much born of the atomic bombings of 1945, and reflected Japan's collective trauma, still raw in the 1950s at those horrifying events, at defeat in World War Two and it being occupied after the war by the United States for seven years.
Now, Godzilla was apparently the brainchild of a producer at Japan's Toho Studios named Tanaka Tomoyuki. He imagined the story of a dinosaur survivor of the Jurassic period that is rendered monstrous by U.S. H-bomb testing in the South Pacific, and ends up attacking Tokyo to make his picture. Tanaka recruited absolutely top talent, since he intended it to be a very serious, politically charged movie.
So for special effects, he hired a real wizard named Tsuburaya Eiji, who had done amazing wartime propaganda films using miniatures. He really mastered that genre of creating special effects using miniatures. And for director, Tanaka hired a guy named Honda Ichiro, who was personally committed to the anti-nuclear message of the film. Honda had served in the Japanese army in China during the war, and as was common when he was repatriated to Japan in 1945.
The Americans made sure he passed through Hiroshima to see how total Japan's defeat was and the power of American atomic technology, and that had a lifelong impact on him. He became a committed pacifist. He was also a very dedicated professional. In addition to making a number of Godzilla movies. He later would serve as an assistant director for the great Japanese filmmaker Kurosawa Akira and collaborated on films.
You may have seen samurai epics like Kagemusha. The name Gojira, which was later rendered into English as Godzilla, was allegedly a nickname given to an overweight press agent at Toho Studios and was a combination of two Japanese words Gorira or Guerrilla and kujira or whale, and that rendered, Gojira. It was then brought into English as Godzilla.
Now, Toho Studios invested a great deal, in that first film, ¥60 million, almost three times the budget of the average Japanese movie. At the time, although far less. One should note that Hollywood would have spent, on a run of the mill B-movie those days. Godzilla opened on November 3rd, 1954. Box office receipts were strong, and its popularity, as well as its export potential, were such that a franchise was born.
The American version of this first film, called Godzilla King of the monsters, opened in the United States in 1956. It was a cleverly re-edited version of the Japanese original, with the unfortunate addition of Raymond Burr as a voyeuristic American reporter who witnesses the destruction of Tokyo. This version was considerably altered from the original Japanese film. Some have called that censored or even whitewashed.
Notably in that all references to World War Two all mention of the atomic bombs and anything that could be considered even vaguely critical of the United States was removed. Another interesting fact is that the American version was subsequently subtitled in Japanese and released in Japan, where it wasn't turned very successful. So imagine that original Japanese film edited by Hollywood, 20 minutes of the original film left on the cutting room floor.
In comes Raymond Burr that Hollywood altered version is then subtitled in Japanese, released in Japan, and it does very well at the box office too. Now, Gojira is a dark, thoughtful, and politically charged film made for adult audiences, simmering with implicit criticism of the United States repressed feelings of Japanese pride and nationalism and anxiety over nuclear testing and the threat of nuclear war.
It masterfully played upon the audience's fears of the mounting Cold War and the lingering psychological and physical scars of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the fire bombings of Japanese cities during World War Two. Many Japanese viewers at the time left theaters in tears. It was cathartic and therapeutic for a nation still struggling to make sense of its recent history and a world divided by superpower rivalries, where Japan was poor and vulnerable and caught between America and the Soviet Union.
Gojira is surprisingly rich in meaning, especially as a movie about a giant, angry lizard. And even though we may chuckle a little bit at the special effects today, they really were state of the art for the time. Gojira is truly a classic, and if you haven't seen it yet, it should be at the top of your watchlist. Now after that marvelous 1954 original.
However, as you may know, the quality of the series declined quite rapidly. The serious message of the first offering was quickly jettisoned for more crowd pleasing fare, and the age of the target audience declined steadily. By the 1970s, eight year olds were the main market for giant monster pictures. The films degenerated into big time wrestling and rubber suits, and the scripts and special effects were remarkably cheesy, though at the same time quite appealingly campy.
Who could not laugh at the king of the monsters flying on his tail, or teaching his son how to blow radioactive smoke rings, or playing volleyball using a giant boulder with a gargantuan mutant lobster. This change in tone in the movies was due not just to shifting audience demographics, but also due to changes in Japan over time. Japan in the 1950s was an impoverished developing nation, still recovering from defeat economically and psychologically.
By the 1960s, the Japanese economy was booming and people were optimistic, increasingly affluent and not so interested in seeing their nation destroyed by Godzilla and a parade of other giant creatures devised by Toho to battle him Mothra, King Ghidorah, Rodan, and many, many others. So the movies became more lighthearted, and Godzilla was repositioned as a defender of Japan, a heroic figure rather than as a vengeful monster.
Intent on destroying the country. Godzilla has continued to evolve, of course, over the decades, reflecting the ongoing transitions in postwar Japanese society in perception of where Japan stood in the world, in the shifting makeup of Japanese moviegoing audiences, and in the development of the Japanese movie industry, which has weathered some very, very tough times financially. Remarkably, despite the changes in tone and market for the Godzilla films, not to mention the appearance of Godzilla, which also morphed considerably over the years, the franchise continued to engage regularly with the fears of audiences and timely issues of the day, mostly ones of importance in Japan, but also many that resonated with global moviegoers.
The 1954 Gojira was, as I've mentioned, very politically charged and dealt with the legacies of the atomic bombs and the fears of nuclear holocaust with a directness and a kind of visceral impact that was very uncommon in Japanese media at that time. By the 1960s, as Japan recovered economically from World War Two and from the darkness of the 1950s, the issues addressed included political corruption, long a big issue in Japan, and the rampant commercialization of Japanese society, which underwent a consumption boom.
As the country grew wealthier in the 1970s, among the issues that the series took up were school bullying, another longstanding issue in Japan, and most famously, the pollution problem and environmental awareness. And if you have not seen Godzilla versus the Smog monster yet, you are culturally deprived. It is psychedelic and crazy and surprisingly effective politically, and I recommend it to you highly.
From the 1980s through 2004, a wide variety of matters were treated, sometimes superficially, sometimes more deeply. The nuclear issue returned, as you can see, from Godzilla holding a nuclear reactor there, as did environmental concerns re militarization and Japanese nationalism came up memories of World War Two, and interestingly, Japan's wealth and arrogance in the world. Tanaka Tomoyuki, the producer who started the series once said, and I quote, Japan is rich and people can buy whatever they want.
But what's behind that wealth? Nothing. Very spiritual. Everyone so concerned with the material. And then Godzilla comes and rips it all apart. I suspect that's good for us all to see. So Godzilla even became something of a conscience for a wealthy, increasingly self-satisfied Japan. Although many of the movies in the series were not terribly timely or topical at all, what is impressive is the way in which Godzilla's makers regularly tapped into issues of widespread concern in Japan and globally to keep Godzilla something more substantial than just a big, vengeful monster or a big heroic one.
Even in more recent years, as Godzilla has leapt the Pacific and been taken up by filmmakers and Hollywood, the monster has continued to mine the headlines for material and address our collective fears. The 1998 TriStar production, marketed under the classy slogan Size Does Matter, has been panned by most Godzilla fans, myself included, and perhaps not surprisingly for a movie featuring an escapee from Jurassic Park and Ferris Bueller was not a particularly thoughtful or politically engaged entry in the series.
The most recent films are very different stories, however. The latest picture from Toho in Japan is 2016 Shin Godzilla, a remarkably interesting film which dealt with the triple disasters of 2011 and the Japanese government's feeble response. Another film really worth seeing, by the way. And that brings us finally to the latest Hollywood offerings, the suite of Godzilla films in the MonsterVerse franchise.
From Legendary Pictures. Now, the first legendary offering, Godzilla in 2014 was successful commercially and critically. Channeling the best of the Japanese Godzilla series and the best of early 21st century Hollywood movie making, it had a message. It had a heroic Godzilla, and it spoke to timely issues specifically, it addressed the human ordeals of natural disasters like the San Francisco earthquake, Katrina and the 2011 quake, tsunami, and nuclear accident in Japan.
The film did not use a man in a rubber suit to play Godzilla, which I really love personally. And while I might have preferred a slightly trimmer monster, especially a CGI meant there didn't need to be a human inside a bulky costume. It did have great special effects, and the kind of pacing and drama that Hollywood really does so well in action.
Pictures. Legendary's second movie, Godzilla King of the monsters from 2019, was less successful in many respects, notably in its hamfisted and harebrained attempts to address the threat of climate change, long an issue which I felt Godzilla needed to tangle with. I am interested to hear what you all thought about legendary, his third try with Godzilla, the long anticipated Godzilla versus Kong.
I hope that most of you saw it because while the human action was pretty much extraneous, I thought the big ape whomping on the big lizard and both of them whomping on a big robot was all pretty darn cool. One observation I would make about Hollywood's Godzilla movies is that the character of the monsters they present is very different from that of the Japanese franchise, specifically the American Godzillas, with the possible exception of the monsters in Godzilla versus Kong.
See more like animals or other life forms driven by deeply programed genetic or biological urges, rather than like the more human monster presented by Toho. Thus, the TriStar creature is a mother impelled by a profound maternal instinct, while the legendary Godzilla is motivated not by any identification with America, but by a deep, natural, primal compulsion to battle another form of giant monster.
The monsters in the first legendary film for dominance, American filmmakers seem to want to see giant creatures animated by a kind of biological logic, rather than having anything approaching a real personality or character or soul. And this kind of narrow literalism carries over visually as well as Hollywood has. Of course, stressed special effects that are much more sophisticated and detailed and realistic than what Toho's Man in a rubber suit could ever achieve.
Finally, one aspect of the American Godzilla features that has struck and annoyed me is the way in which they all rewrite the origins of Godzilla, deviating from the story established in the Toho franchise to deflect blame for creating the monster away from the Cold War and, above all, away from US nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
So let's go back to 1998 and the TriStar film The Matthew Broderick Godzilla. If you're not going to pin the blame on America, well, who are you going to pin it on? Well, maybe you can try the Soviet Union, but there's someone even more fun than the Russians. If you can't blame America, blame the French. Okay, so Godzilla in that movie is created by French nuclear testing in Polynesia.
And that's why we have the annoying Renault character running all over that film. 2014 legendary started a whole new Genesis story for Godzilla and giant monsters in general. Remember in, the Japanese version, Godzilla is this dinosaur swimming around at the bottom of the ocean, rendered huge and monstrous, by American H-bomb testing. In Legendary's version, the world is hollow and is actually filled with a variety of giant monsters.
And during the 1950s, these giant monsters start popping out of the Earth's core like popcorn, and they start appearing in the South Pacific. The nations of the world are horrified by this, of course, but they do not want to, upset the people of the world by telling them about it so they keep it secret. In this situation, America decides to use nuclear weapons to control the monsters popping out of the Earth's crust.
So they drop weapons, in the South Pacific to knock back Godzilla back down. They tell the world they're testing h-bombs, down there. But really, it really is their, a kind of humanitarian effort, to control, this, monstrous force, coming, to get the world. And of course, in this process, America is blameless.
Let me finish up, because I've been talking a long time already. I'm eager to hear your comments and to, chat with Lisa. Let me finish up by reflecting a little on the meaning of Godzilla in a time of pandemic. The well known writer Mike Davis has long described lethal viruses as monsters. His 2005 book on the avian flu in Asia was called The Monster at Our Door.
With the appearance of COVID 19, he extended the metaphor and titled an updated version of the book released last year, the monster enters. It is a bit hard to imagine a microscopic virus as a monster. And of course, people and filmmakers face the same problem after 1945, when another invisible threat, nuclear radiation, appeared on the scene as a similar challenge to human existence.
Some would argue this was the case with electricity as well. At a much earlier time, when jolts of voltage were unfamiliar and clearly dangerous and profoundly frightening to people. Frankenstein was one of the creatures born of a creative and psychic need to give shape to our fears of electricity. And Godzilla, along with cinematic creatures like the giant ants in them, were physical manifestations of radiation, invisible but deadly.
And with the dawn of atomic weaponry gigantic in scale and sweeping an impact, I am sure there will be monsters created, and Godzilla may well fight them in future movies that give a tangible shape to the menace of an unseeable novel coronavirus. This brings us back finally, to the question of why the world still loves Godzilla after all these decades, and why the monster is seemingly more popular today than ever before.
On the most basic level, Godzilla is just plain fun. The exuberance, the cheesiness, the cathartic nature of the destruction all are just enjoyable to watch. Whether you are 6 or 60, Godzilla is the outrageous guy that breaks all the rules and gets away with the walking disaster, who leaves a trail of devastation behind him and inspires not just fear and loathing, but also admiration, awe, and an odd tingle of delight.
But Godzilla also has a serious side, and I think one reason why we continue responding so strongly to him is because he has functioned as a cinematic conscience for viewers in Japan and globally since World War Two. Godzilla's very presence, the disruption he causes to the status quo and the existential threat the monster poses to our lifestyles, our comforts, our assumptions, and our complacency keeps us asking questions we know we need to keep asking about issues like the environment, war, nuclear energy, arrogance, prosperity, technology and now, of course, bio security, globalization and the appropriate reach of governments during moments of crisis.
Godzilla is, of course, not the only gargantuan creature on movie screens these days, as the whole genre of kaiju or giant monster movies is booming, perhaps more so now than at any time since the 1950s or 1960s. So think Cloverfield, Pacific Rim, Kong Skull Island, and even quirky treatments like colossal. Maybe this is nostalgia, perhaps like the Marvel Universe films.
Perhaps it's our need to keep ratcheting up what excites and scares us with ever better special effects, ever more cinematic destruction, ever larger movie heroes and villains. Maybe it is catharsis in an age of disasters and terrorism and pandemics, just like the Japanese felt back in 1954 when Gojira came out thinking about World War Two and the threat of nuclear apocalypse.
Maybe it reflects a sense of helplessness on the part of individual people facing a hostile and unpredictable world that they feel unable to control or change, not unlike what the audiences who watched Gojira felt at the volatile, uncertain start of the Cold War. In the end, though, I feel that what makes Godzilla so compelling for so many and so significant, not just for Japanese culture or American culture, but for global culture, goes somehow beyond the movie monster is longevity, ubiquity, topical relevance, and sentimental appeal.
Godzilla distracts us and makes us laugh. As entertainment is meant to do, Godzilla challenges us to think and feel in ways that pop culture so seldom does, and the Godzilla films shine with a profound and genuine optimism that we all need more of at a uniquely complex, unsettled and anxiety ridden time. In the Godzilla series. Movie after movie, human society endures, Tokyo gets miraculously rebuilt and the King of the monsters returns once again from the sea.
This essential optimism, this faith and progress and in the resilience of human society was important in the 1950s, when Godzilla helped Japan and the world recover from the nightmares of the atom bombs, and remains powerful even today. In the wake of more recent tragedies to hit Japan and to threaten the entire world on some level, Godzilla is just a man in a rubber suit.
But I hope you'll agree with me that when all is said and done, the King of the monsters is truly so much more. Thank you all so much. I am going to stop sharing now and I look forward, to your questions and comments.
David Pettyjohn: Thank you so much, Bill. Lisa will turn it over to you to ask the first couple questions.
Lisa M. Brady: Excellent. Thank you so much. Well, Bill, as I said earlier, I have read your book a number of times, and even so, I was furiously scribbling notes and new ideas. And so I'm always so, excited to learn from you. One of the big things that I took from today's talk is the idea of the Earth as a giant monster egg.
I love that. I just find that absolutely fascinating. The earth is given to life. All life. And yet we still must control it. And as an environmentalist story. And of course, that resonates with me and everything that I study and think about. So thank you for bringing yet another layer of life to the earth. To me.
So I'll start with a fairly serious question. You had mentioned, that pop culture can oftentimes be written off as sort of superficial or just, sort of window dressing, to sort of touch on things and entertain us. But you also mentioned that Godzilla is much, much more than that. And in your book, you recount a story of giving a talk to a group of fifth graders in a small town in Kansas.
And, it's a wonderful story where you talk about the exuberance of these children and knowing that, you know, some of the questions are going to be, what does he weigh? How big is Godzilla? All these things? And then you get this question by one boy and, and I'll quote the question here. When watching the old Godzilla movies, did Americans enjoy seeing all those Japanese people die?
And it's a very somber question. And I think about what you've talked about here with, Godzilla's connections to, fears about nuclear annihilation, about fears of environmental destruction. And his question was as profound then. And it has resonance now, and I, I wonder, what might we learn from Godzilla today? Especially considering recent attacks against members of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
How how can we learn from Godzilla today?
Bill Tsutsui: You know, it's pretty remarkable. So that's literally decades ago that I was in that fifth grade school room in Carbondale, Kansas. But I remember it like it was yesterday. Because, as you might tell from just listening to me here, I am seldom speechless. But when that young boy asked me that, question. It really I had never once, in watching those films my whole life, loving those films.
I had never once considered something like that that had not crossed my mind. And so sometimes, from the mouths of babes come these profound truths and things that are truly horrifying. But now, every time I watch the movies, this is going through my mind. And I think, especially in this current moment when we're sensitized, as we have never been before, to, some of the struggles of Asian Americans, in our society and especially anti-Asian violence.
We have to consult the fact that all of us who have grown up, in this country have been fed a diet of stereotypes about Asians and Asian Americans from before we can remember, that have, created, the kind of world view, and a kind of assumptions, about Asians and Asian Americans that it is hard to get away from.
So if you go back, to those Godzilla movies, the kid is exactly right. Right. You know, there is something about this not taking place in our country, but taking place to Japanese people that makes the violence and the loss of life more palatable. To audiences, it is more acceptable to see. Not us, killed in these cases.
Also, if you think about it, in those Godzilla movies, the people are inevitably structured as smaller. Okay. So they're diminutive, as we tend to think, of Asian Americans, and they are sort of, helpless, you know, what is the response of a Japanese crowd to seeing a monster? They run in fear and they scream. And I have a friend named Greg ... of Columbia University, who has studied Godzilla posters extensively.
And he compares Japanese Godzilla posters to American and European Godzilla posters. And it is much more common to have small, fleeing people in American and European Godzilla movie posters than in Japanese ones. This clearly was part of the appeal of the films. Was seeing these, you know, this fear, on the part of other people, as part of them, too.
But then just think about that whole process of adapting the films, for showing in America dubbing of the films. Right. You know, for most people, I think the two abiding, characteristics of Godzilla films are the cheesy special effects and the cheesy dubbing. Right. And it just creates this impression that the voices coming out of Asian mouths are humorous.
They're badly accented, they don't match the lips, and they're not perfect English. And so it makes you discount, what Asians say, from the very beginning and think it is humorous. On some level. And so, you know, I think this, you know, I hate to say it, but the Godzilla movies have shaped how we as a society have come to view, being Japanese, being Asian, and being Asian American.
And it continues in the most recent film, if you have seen Godzilla versus Kong, you will notice at the end. And it is a it is intended to be a heart warming, happy ending, for the film. I won't ruin it if you haven't seen it. You will not be surprised, though. Here in the process, Hong Kong gets absolutely destroyed.
And even as, we are waxing poetic all about monsters in the world being saved, and so forth, you have to realize hundreds of thousands of people are probably dead. In this scene at the end. And yet there is nary a thought for them, in the in the film's narrative.
Lisa M. Brady: Yeah, it's just fascinating when we think about how these, these monster movies, humans are byproducts of them in many ways and, and sort of the, the, what's the term, collateral damage? Yeah. Larger fears. And I do think it ties right into what you were talking about as, these big monsters representing our fears.
I think we do, tend to think of ourselves as powerless against them. And certainly we've, I think many of us have felt powerless against the current pandemic, against, nuclear radiation, against global climate change, all of these things. And so these monsters, really do tend to personify these for some isn't the right word, although unless we go back to the original, movies where it is a man in a rubber suit.
So it's just, it's fascinating to think about how these, these movies that we think of as kitschy and perhaps silly really are so much more complicated, complex and tied into, sort of the social milieu. In which they were made.
Bill Tsutsui: You know, they capture the modern condition in many ways, I think, and that's their staying power. Right? That's why, you know, almost 75 years after, that first film, we are still addicted, to Godzilla movies.
David Pettyjohn: Yeah. So I, we have quite a few questions. So, I will start with, what themes or subjects would you like the next 2 or 3 Godzilla films to focus on? And is there any possibility for a true US-Japan collaboration in making of future Godzilla films?
Bill Tsutsui: So I on that final point, I really wish there was, you know, I would love to see the best of Japanese filmmaking and the best of Hollywood filmmaking come together and work collaboratively on Godzilla. I personally don't think it's going to happen, for a variety of reasons. I can't imagine sitting through all the, meetings that would be necessary to make this, possible, but I think it would be fascinating.
You know, I think the recent films have been really thoughtful in most cases. The shin Godzilla from Japan was great. It really was, a politically engaged film about Japan today. It really, I wrote a review of it where I said it should be called Godzilla Versus the Establishment. Because it really was Godzilla taking on the sort of sclerotic, political, dynasties running Japan and saying, we need a change in generations.
We need to really, revolutionize, this country, those sort of a call to action, there. And as I said, the American, the first, legendary Godzilla film, was really great, I think, to address along with this issue of natural disasters, it is inevitable, I think, that Godzilla is going to have to take on the pandemic rather than Godzilla fighting the COVID monster, which is it'd be a good cheesy movie, perhaps, you know, but I would love to see a monster movie where the appearance of a giant monster does not cause society to come together to fight the creature, but instead causes society to fragment, you know, and where there are
lots of people out there saying, well, there isn't actually a giant monster. That's a Hollywood creation, you know, and they're just trying to control us, through the stories of this, creature, running loose. I think you could do some very creative things that are less, perhaps, about monsters and more perhaps about how humans respond, to anxiety, and, to crisis.
David Pettyjohn: So, another attendee has this question. You spoke briefly about the different ways that Japanese and American films portray monsters, one more compassionate and soulful. The other is driven by a biological impulse. Could you elaborate more on this, and what would you attribute this difference to?
Bill Tsutsui: You know, that's a really, really, great question. And I am not sure why, American filmmakers are tied, to this, sort of idea, that animals are animals and, should always act, like animals. It might simply go back to the very first film that really kicked off the monster on the loose, the giant monster genre, King Kong.
Right. Where, the narrative works very well in that movie that, King Kong is this beast from Africa. That is stolen out of the jungle. And then, as sort of plays out, sort of, as it would if you took, a, a creature, and let it loose, in the city, you know, with anger, with fear, with a desire to bond, with someone.
And so for that, it might well be that that that just set the tone in American, movies. What I'm struck with, though, looking at the original Japanese film, is how, Godzilla really has a soul, in that film. And if you have seen the film, I'm going to ask you to think back. Is there any way you could watch that film and not feel sorry at the end, when the monster is killed?
Yeah. No. Because at the end of that movie, you realize the only victims aren't the people of Tokyo. The monster is a victim to the monster. Didn't ask to be irradiated, right? The monster is mad because he was irradiated. Okay, but that wasn't, his choice. And you feel sympathy? Therefore, that at the end, he ends up being sacrificed, as well.
Part of that, I think, goes back to the whole nature of monster culture in Japan. Japan has a very, very rich tradition of monsters. And one of the things that's special about Japanese monster culture is the Japanese have the uncanny ability, stretching back centuries, to imagine themselves looking at the world through the eyes of monsters. So if you look at no theater in Japan, and I'm not going to recommend you look at no theater, if you think opera is boring, no theater will kill you.
But, you know, so this is the, you know, medieval Japanese theatrical form, one genre of no theater is monsters. Okay. And what's beautiful about these no plays is they give you the monsters perspective on the world and let you share in the monsters pain. And it's often about seeking Buddhist redemption as part of that process. And I think you see that in Godzilla two.
David Pettyjohn: Somebody has a question. It says this person has always wondered why Godzilla, a non-human monster, seems to have found more widespread acceptance among Western audience than someone like Ultraman, who is at least a humanoid superhero. So any thoughts on that?
Bill Tsutsui: You know, it's really there are so many interesting, issues bound up in this. One of the things that's really interesting is, of course, that, you know, for many, many years, Godzilla was actually more popular globally than it was in Japan. And if you told somebody in Japan that you were a Godzilla fan, they thought you were weird.
And they never understood why Americans associated Godzilla with Japan so strongly. Because to them, Godzilla was just another sort of cheesy kid's film. But there were franchises in Japan that had become much more successful, and Ultraman was one of them. About this giant alien sort of android thing, that fights monsters, in, in Japan, started in the, 1960s, you know, that have become much more successful and Japanese people identify with, much more.
I think it is actually simply the history that took place here, that Godzilla was the first through the gate. And it's amazing, actually. There's been a wonderful article, written by a scholar named Megan Warner, who compares the Japanese films that were sent abroad in the 1950s. On the one hand, you have, arthouse films like Rashomon, the famous samurai picture that won, like, all the awards at Cannes and Venice, and so forth, and played to really elite audiences.
And then, on the other hand, you have Godzilla, right? Which, was had Raymond Burr put in and played in double features and in drive ins, and so forth. And the irony is, of course, that Godzilla became really popular, right? That Godzilla ended up being the most important property for promoting Japanese pop culture abroad. And I think it's just, that early start that Godzilla got.
And the fact that from the beginning it was pitched at a mass audience, it wasn't just for sort of cinematic elites, but it was for everybody that that just became what Americans related to in Japanese pop culture.
David Pettyjohn: Right. We have time for, I think, two more questions. So in the original Godzilla, the people who get close to Godzilla tend they get the radiation poisoning. So this, questions says, do you think that would be a way to approach Godzilla in the pandemic?
Bill Tsutsui: Interesting. You know, I have never, indulge myself in writing a screenplay for a Godzilla movie, and yet there's still people who will email me occasionally with screenplay ideas. I they tend not to, email the whole thing because I think they'll think they think I'm going to steal it from and sell it in Hollywood or something.
But I think you've got something there. I think that could be that could be sort of fun, actually.
David Pettyjohn: So I will say in the chat, you know, there is some really good conversation going on Team Godzilla, Team Kong, and, the whole notion, with these individual teams is, is fascinating, to me. So this, the final question, are there other similar long running cross-cultural movie series that you know of and would recommend?
Bill Tsutsui: You know, that's a that's a great question. Japanese cinema is actually filled, with movie series, you know, franchises are a huge deal, in Japan. And so, you know, many of the world's longest and oldest film franchises are in Japan, but very few of them have made the leap, to, American audiences. One reason is because many of those Japanese film franchises are comedic, and nothing translates as poorly as comedy, right?
Japanese comedy is not funny even to me. And I speak Japanese fairly well, you know, I just don't have that cultural background to really, understand it. But giant monsters do translate. So to the extent there are other franchises from Japan, at least, that have made it, internationally, there tend to be monster films.
So, Gamera is probably the other one. And if you haven't seen the Giant Flying Turtle, it is a blast. Pick up a Gamera movie. There's some that rival, Godzilla. And, you know, otherwise, in world cinema, a lot of those, franchises have tended to come out of Europe. And those, of course, the cultural leap is not so great.
James Bond works. You know, in the English speaking world and globally, fairly easily, in a way that, some other, series do not.
David Pettyjohn: So I am actually going to reserve the last question for myself. What is your favorite Godzilla film?
Bill Tsutsui: Well, you know, it's like picking your favorite child, you know, it's hard to do, you know? Yeah. Because even ones that for so long I panned, I just went back to watch a movie called Godzilla Versus Megalon. And that is really from what is considered generally to be the artistic nadir of the series, you know, when really they were these movies were produced in the span of about six weeks.
It was a slapdash effort. The special effects, were hilarious. The costumes were falling apart. You know, it's a darn clever, fun movie to watch, you know? So even that one, I can't pan. If you're going to watch one, watch the 1954 original Godzilla. It is really thought provoking and significant. I really think it's one of the great movies, of world cinema.
If you're going to watch to watch the smog Monster, because you're not going to be ready for that. Even with my saying it's psychedelic and mind boggling. It is a crazy movie. And then I'd say Shin Godzilla number three. It really is neat to see the way in which, this can be the monster continues to be a powerful metaphor, decades after it was created.
And to have meanings for Japanese politics and society today.
David Pettyjohn: Bill. Lisa, thank you both so much for joining us here tonight. Thank you all for joining us here tonight. We will have another connected conversation next Tuesday that looks at the upcoming centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Thank you again for joining us. Have a wonderful evening.
Bill Tsutsui: Thanks, everybody.
David Pettyjohn: Thank you. Thank you.