Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 43

Toho’s G odzilla

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Japanese viewers of Godzilla. They interpret these films as a “half-dream of ven
geance,” an attempt to resolve national trauma and cope with the rapid transforma
tion of Japanese culture after the war, and critics such as Chon Noriega have pointed
out that Godzilla’s “original political message seems to be lost in America” (77,
n28). But little attention has been paid to Godzilla’s reception by American fans,
how the meanings of Godzilla have changed over time, how these meanings have
been altered through Godzilla’s importation to America, and how American fans
have constructed their own readings of these texts, giving them a whole new set of
contradictory social messages which suggest the potential limitations of fan eth
nography.
Like Godzilla, Toho itself was in many ways a product of World War II,
having gained tremendous success through propaganda films, and the first Godzilla
film was clearly an attempt to address a grieving nation. But while this has led
many critics to interpret Godzilla as a symbol of Japan, the relationship between
the two is much more complicated. Roughly speaking, the early film cycle (19541975) tends to expose Japan’s shame and embarrassment, while the later film cycle
(1984-1995) marks an increase in national pride. Stuart Galbraith traces the roots
of this change by examining how Japan’s own self-image changed between the
‘60s and the ‘90s; in his discussion of Godzilla vs. King Ghidora (1991), for ex
ample, he seems surprised by the film’s “fierce nationalism,” which he calls “an
about-face [for] the studio” (289). To equate Godzilla with Japan’s own national
identity, therefore, is to ignore the many changes in Godzilla’s and Japan’s history
and to reduce the complexities of Japan’s own post-war self image.
An extension of this nationalistic interpretation is the common assump
tion that Godzilla films are anti-American. The presence of Japanese and Ameri
can versions of the same films may have contributed to this sense of competition
between the two countries, but Godzilla was also influenced by American monster
films, and even though Godzilla films were often re-edited for American release,
many of these alterations were borrowed in later Toho films. In other words, the
American versions often show creative collaboration between America and Japan,
rather than commercial competition. For example, the first Gojira was radically
altered for its American release by distributor Joseph E. Levine: the American
version, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, included extensive amounts of new foot
age as well as a new protagonist, an American reporter who narrated the events for
an English-speaking audience. However, this American version was then success
fully released in Japan as a “new” Godzilla film entitled Kaiju O Gojira (“Monster
King Godzilla”) and the use of a reporter as narrator even became a staple of the
genre. Subsequent films, such as King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) and Monster Zero
(1965), reveal an even closer collaboration between Toho and Hollywood. Henry
Saperstein’s United Productions of America was involved in the production of