It's interesting how our perception of history is shaped by very specific cultural imagery.
Never the full story.
Just the raw emotion.
Single frames can capture the attitudes of an entire era.
And those images very often appear in fiction,
like with the atmospehe of post-war Japan,
perfectly captured in 1954's Gojira.
One of the boldest political statements ever put to film, masquerading as a creature feature.
Directed by Ishirō Honda with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya,
the man responsible for pioneering "suitmation" techniques and the "tokusatsu" style film-making.
Together with Tomoyuki Tanaka and Toho Studios,
they were able to give form to this persistent fear of nuclear destruction.
A fear that was still very much alive in Japan, given the recent events in the Marshall Islands.
The crew of a boat called Daigo Fukuryū Maru or Lucky Dragon 5
had been fishing off the stream in the Northern Pacific
which also happened to be the testing location for the United States' new fifteen megaton hydrogen bomb.
And that incident is mirrored in the opening sequence of Gojira.
The events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left an empire in ruins.
And, during the post-war occupation of Japan,
the United States tried to sculpt a new foundation of democracy, but with that came a very strict censorship policy,
criminalizing the production of propaganda films and banning military imagery.
And even though Gojira was released two years after that occupation ended,
Toho [Studios] was still under immense pressure by the new media regulations imposed
by the Japanese government,
which had been influenced a great deal by the American censorship policies.
And the wounds of war were still fresh, so Honda and Tsuburaya's used of suggestion and visual metaphor
made for a much more tasteful interpretation of those events.
Godzilla might seem like just an oversize lizard but there was a lot of thought and care put into its design.
If you look here, you'll see that Godzilla doesn't have scales like a normal reptile would.
That grooved [...] was meant to evoke the keloid scarring of the survivors of the nuclear blast
and the blast itself was represented in Godzilla's mushroom cloud shaped head.
Gojira was about perspective, building a window into the post-war fears
and anxieties of the ordinary people involved in these tragedies.
And that's something that wasn't taken into consideration when the Transworld Release Incorporation
acquired the distribution rights in 1956.
The foreign political messages were deemed unsuitable for American audiences
and many of the scenes were cut in the plot, heavily restructured to include an American lead
with the idea that a film with Japanese perspective wouldn't be commercially successful in the US.
Because Americans weren't ready to look at the destruction of Japan through the eyes of its victims
so the film was retitled "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" and scenes were re-shot to include actor Raymond Burr
as an American reporter covering the destruction of Tokyo,
alongside Japanese-American actors standing in as look-alikes to make it seem
as though he was part of the original production,
while references to the dangers of nuclear weapons and American testing were either distorted or outright removed...
...and a lot of the subtextual elements were lost in translation or just not translated at all.
On top of the twenty minutes cut out of the film and the thirty minutes added,
the majority of the original Japanese dialogue wasn't dubbed or subtitled.
And the scenes that were, were done very poorly.
Now, I'll give you an example with one of favorite scenes in the film.
It's a quiet moment in the middle of the destruction,
a mother comforting her children as the city burns around them.
It's one of the most poignant moments in the film.
There's no musical cue, just the crackling of fire and this woman's beautiful performance.
Now, let's take a look at that same scene as it occurs in the American release.
The added score muffles her delivery, she wasn't dubbed,
and I didn't remove the subtitles – that's just how the scene was originally screened.
And you can really see the difference in emotional performance
when comparing the coverage of the Japanese reporter
…to the monotone monologue of Raymond Burr.
[Now you're the one not getting subtitled, Raymond. How does it feel?]
Unsurprisingly, when the film premiered, it was critically panned.
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times calling it "incredibly awful"
saying the same could be accomplished with a dinosaur made of gum-shoes and $20 worth of toy buildings and electric trains.
And that may be harsh, but I understand his disappointment.
It's just a shame that he, along with most people, never got the opportunity to see the film as it was originally intended.
Gojira was a product of, and a response to, oppression and tragedy and censorship…
and what this version did was censor the oppression, trivialize the tragedy,
and introduce an American perspective to an experience that is very specifically Japanese
without understanding it.
The film was designed to be a nuclear allegory, so when it's stripped of its message
all that's left is a dinosaur stomping on buildings.
But, despite the criticism, Godzilla found its success in drive-in theaters and on late night television
its popularity completely obscuring the original film for decades.
The original wasn't even available to American audiences until The Criterion Collection Remaster in 2004.
50 years after its initial release.
And, over those 50 years, Godzilla's significance within the context of man-made disaster and war
has shifted in favor of kaiju battles.
He's embraced his Americanized title as "King of the Monsters"
becoming the defender of Japan as well as the official Japanese tourism ambassador.
And his domestication is due in part to the American sanitization of that first film.
The Godzilla we know today is as much a product of America as he is of Japan.
He's a product of the bomb, a product of the censorship, and a product of Hollywood marketing.
Part of coping with the atrocities of war is twisting them into entertainment
which seems distasteful and strange, but it's something that every culture does.
And Gojira was meant to be a cathartic release for Japanese citizens
something that allowed them to reimagine their history and learn from a tragic wartime experience.
But the war was over now and it was time to move on.
Toho had accomplished its goal in 1954 but saw a potential market in American audiences
with a more lighthearted, campier direction.
And with improving relations between the United States and Japan,
Godzilla was able to reflect the changing demographic.
But it's telling that in his current incarnation he's much more natural disaster than an ally.
So if you only know Godzilla by reputation, a look back at his origins will give a unique perspective
into a very complicated time in Japanese and American history.
[Captions from 3:17 onwards done by HeroEagleEye. Beautiful video, Kaptain!]
Tyler, The Creator - Hey You (Prod. Toro Y Moi)