“This country has treated life far too cheaply”

In 2019, Toho executive and producer Minami Ichikawa approached Takashi Yamazaki, known for Always: Sunset on Third Street (2005), Eternal Zero (2013), The Great War of Archimedes (2019), to direct a new Godzilla narrative. Yamazaki was not only approached because Ichikawa was familiar with his works, having collaborated with Yamazaki on some of his earlier films, but because he and the other producers at Toho believed that he, able to handle VFX, write scripts, and delivers entertaining flicks, was the only one who could succeed Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi.

Given the global success of Godzilla Minus One, the 31st film in the franchise and its third reboot, it is safe to say the Toho executives made the right choice. However, can Yamazaki’s take on Godzilla also breathe new thematical life into the kaiju?

During the final days of World War II, a solitary plane, armed with a bomb, makes its landing on Odo Island where a detachment of the Japanese Naval Air corps has established a makeshift base. Mechanic Sosuke Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) approaches the pilot, lieutenant Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), to question his statement concerning the plane’s mechanical problems, thereby softly implying he merely abandoned of his duty as kamikaze pilot. However, not much later, a fellow soldier offers him some supporting signifiers: Why obey an order to die honourably when the outcome is already clear?

That very night, the raid alarm suddenly blares loudly. The soldiers turn on the spotlights, revealing the monstrous shape of Godzilla. His passage leaves only destruction in its wake, yet, miraculously, Shikishima survives. Many months later, Shikishima takes on the dangerous job of cleaning Japan’s coastal areas of mines to provide for Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and Akiko (Sae Nagatani), a woman and a child he welcomes in his house.  

Before delving into our analysis of Godzilla Minus One, we must outright state that Yamazaki’s narrative cannot be considered a remake nor a reboot. Godzilla (1954), as we have argued in our analysis, gave the unspeakable horror of the atom-bomb a localizable face. The inaugural creative act of providing the post-war subject an image of the unimageable – i.e. the invisible destructive power of the atom-bomb – that can absorb some of his free-floating discomfort and transform it into a manageable quantum of fear cannot be replicated.

However, we can call Godzilla Minus One a reimagining. Godzilla, as we have argued in our analyses of other Heisei films, is a signifier whose signified can be manipulated by the narrative coordinates that contextualize – or refuse to contextualize – his emergence within the narrative. What the concatenation of Godzilla narratives have shown is that the signified of imaginary signifier Godzilla is not fixed. The monstrous image, as a metaphorical emergence, has acquired a latent nationalistic signified by exposing, as an antagonist, the threat of modern discourses (i.e. consumerism, capitalism) for the post-war societal field as well as a manifest nationalistic signified by heroically defying the threat of political discourses (i.e. communism, cultural Otherness) and safeguarding Japan’s sovereignty (General-note 1).   

Given the fact that Godzilla’s signified is determined by narrative context – i.e. the way his emergence is contextualized, it is obvious that we must explore the signified Yamazaki seeks to evoke with his Godzilla. This riddle, however, can be reformulated in two guiding questions:  What of the contemporary societal field does Yamazaki seek to metaphorize with Godzilla? And to whom is this metaphorization addressed?

The spectator, confronted with sudden monstrous shape of Godzilla on Odo Island, might feel that he, just like the soldiers, is left in the dark as to what caused his appearance (Narra-note 1). However, Yamazaki does introduce one associative connection within his opening sequence: the link between the abandonment of one’s national duty and the angry lashing-out of this being called Godzilla.

If we push this association – not yet corroborated nor contradicted by the further unfolding of the narrative – to its interpretative limits, we are led to postulate that Godzilla represents nothing other than the radicalized imperialistic ideal hell-bent on finding satisfaction in self-annihilation. Yamazaki’s narrative choice to make Koichi Shikishima, who out of fear escapes into pacificism, one of the two survivors fits this initial reading.

The contrast between self-preserving pacifism and sacrificial submission to the Word of the nationalistic Other is, almost immediately, re-evoked within the narrative via the conflict between Shikishima and Sumiko (Sakura Ando). In her verbal attack on Shikishima – she calls him a disgrace and attributes the ruins that surround them to his cowardice, Sumiko reveals herself as a subject blinded by imperialistic ideology, a subject who refuses to see that Japan’s defeat is not due to a lack of nationalism, but an excess of it – not due to cowardice or insubordination but due the blind adherence to the self-destructive finality of nationalistic fanatism (Narra-note 2).  

This conflict offers the spectator an echo to correctly situate the cause of the ravished state of Tokyo – i.e. the imperialistic thirst. Yamazaki turns, in other words, the ruins of Tokyo into a symbol of the latent success and the manifest failure of the nationalistic and imperialistic excess (General-note 1).

Yamazaki contrasts the destructive precipitation of Thanatos, the ruins of Tokyo, with the emergence of frail eros, Akiko, the baby Noriko received from a dying mother during one of the air raids. The child, moreover, gives a purpose to Shikishima – an accidental yet welcome chance to reshape his own ego within the post-war ruins – and motivates him to accept the dangerous yet well-paid job of cleaning up mines at sea.  

Koichi, however, is mentally unstable, an effect of the internalized embers of the nationalistic and imperialistic fire he was subjected to. Koichi’s mental frailty and his struggle with guilt is, in our view, the consequence of being haunted by having been unable to inscribe himself, as ego, in the self-destructive finality of the imperialistic discourse. Consequently, he finds himself in a sort of subjective no-man’s land, torn between the death he refuses to realize and the life he cannot fully embrace.   

However, it is also important to note that within the confessional sequence – i.e. Koichi telling Noriko about how his past haunts him, Koichi fails to recognize the shift in his own subjective position. The fear and desire that sabotaged his attempt to heed the order to commit suicide (kamikaze) has a different logic than his inability to injure Godzilla, the threatening shadow of a radical nationalistic discourse. He has, without being able to acknowledge it, chosen for life, yet cannot fully realize because the dark threatening shadows of the imperialistic discourse cloud his judgement – My war isn’t over yet. The question is, as Koichi holds on the pendulum of his subjective void, whether it will sway to the side of life or death.

The sequences of ‘familial’ drama within Godzilla Minus One invite the spectator to sympathize with Koichi Shikishima’s subjective position and offers him a tangible object – i.e. the lives of Noriko and Akiko – to care for. Whether Godzilla Minus One shakes the spectator’s emotional core or not hinges, quite simply, on his capacity of finding within Koichi’s position an echo of oneself.

Before interpreting the attack on Godzilla by a group of private citizens led by Doctor Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), we must address the logic of Godzilla’s transformation and question whether it invalidates our initial reading of Godzilla representing the radicalized imperialistic ideal whose finality lies in self-destruction. In our view, the fact that Godzilla emerges before being radically transformed by the atom-bomb testing at Bikini Atoll – i.e. Operation Crossroads – short-circuits any attempt at reading Godzilla as a mere representation of a post-war fear for atomic devastation (General-note 3). What Yamazaki introduces is nothing other than a sort of squared equation; the transformative impact of the atom-bomb multiplies the self-destructive treat of the right-wing imperialistic ideal to the Japanese societal field (General-note 4). In other words, the transformation of Godzilla echoes the existential danger of the marriage between the atomic trauma and nationalistic extremism.

The narrative revelation that the hands of the governmental apparatus (and the USA) are politically and military tied – they cannot run the risk of escalating US-Soviet tensions – is highly relevant for the way we must read the subsequent attack of the ‘people’ on Godzilla. Yamazaki highlights, in a somewhat naive manner, that the only people that can ensure that Japan – and the Japanese government – does not fall under the sway of nationalistic reverie and repeat the imperialistic mistakes of its past are commoners. The attack of the private citizens is not a sacrificial act to heed and appease an ideal, a radical signifier, but an attempt to shake the threatening shadow of radicalized nationalism off and create the possibility for a different a-radical Other to realize itself (Narra- note 3).

Yamazaki, however, fails to satisfactorily resolve a slightly uncomfortable friction that slips into his narrative due to the reoccurrence of patriotic-flavoured signifiers. Even if the spectator grasps Godzilla’s metaphoric dimension, he might struggle to perceive that these signifiers do not constitute a return to the Imperialistic discourse, but give voice to a collective wish to radically break with the past.  

Yamazaki brings his narrative visually to life with a lot of thought. He takes great care in framing the destruction Godzilla sows in a direct and revealing manner – e.g. catapulting soldiers with his mouth, stomping people to death, … etc, – to brutally reveal the threat Godzilla poses for the Japanese Other. Yamazaki, moreover, utilizes many camera-perspectives and wide range of shots to reaffirm Godzilla’s gigantic shape and the destructive nature of his presence around the Japanese archipelago.  Yamazaki interweaves moments of shaky framing fluidly into his narrative, not merely to emphasize the tensive disruption caused by Godzilla’s appearance, but also to create a frame where the spectator can invest in the fear that takes hold over the characters’ bodies and their speech.

Of course, the fact that Yamazaki can present Godzilla in such a satisfactory and visually pleasing way to the spectator is also due to the impressive visual effects and spectacular way Godzilla was digitally created. Yamazaki has created, quite simply, the most realistic and most horrifying version of the Kaiju yet.  

Yamazaki also proves that he knows how to exploit sounds and create powerful soundscapes. The bass reverberation of Godzilla’s roars and the sound of its movements do not merely amplify its physical presence, emphasizing its horrifying and visceral magnificence, but also pull the spectator into the scene. The spectator, when faced with Godzilla on the silver screen, is duped into feeling present within the scene because the reverberation of the enveloping sounds affects his body – his ‘safe’ presence as spectator. Other auditive decorations, e.g. the spluttering sound of people being crushed under Godzilla’s foot, further emphasize its deadly nature.    

Musical accompaniment within Godzilla Minus One plays an important role in elevating the drama of many of the narrative turns and the emotionality of certain encounters. The unintrusive nature of most musical pieces allows the re-recorded Ifukube suites to stand out more.     

Yamazaki’s success in bringing Godzilla visually and aurally alive as an intimating and awe-inspiring presence also benefits the emotional impact of the film’s many dramatic moments. The ease by which Godzilla reduces everything to ruins destruction does not merely emphasize the frailty of life but makes Koichi’s subjective conflict even more heart-rending.

Godzilla Minus One is not only a triumphant return of the most beloved Kaiju of all, but also a deeply emotional experience that re-assessing the themes of the original Godzilla in a refreshing way. Takashi Yamazaki’s careful re-assessment allows him to evade the trap that many of the earlier films walked into: turning Godzilla is a latent or manifest nationalistic symbol.

Notes:

General-note 1: Godzilla Minus One can only be considered a reimagination because it offers the spectator a recontextualization of Godzilla as signifier. Yamazaki’s film must, in this sense, be seen as the opposite of Godzilla’s Revenge: All Monster’s Attack (1969),which light-heartedly illustrated the commodified endpoint of Godzilla’s decontextualizing as signifier.

Narra-note 1: The way Yamazaki establishes the name of the monstrous being – through a bespectacled soldier who informs his fellow soldiers that locals call this being from the deep Godzilla – invites us to regard Godzilla’s enraged attack on Odo Island as a resurfacing.

Narra-note 2: Sumiko also relies on the imperialistic narrative to narrativize her loss, to hold on some form of meaning to avoid the collapse of her ego.

General-note 2: The fact that Yamazaki focuses on this internal tension within the Japanese societal field within Godzilla Minus One might explain why visual references to USA are rather sparse within the narrative. In our view, this visually spareness allows Yamazaki to focus on the antagonistic friction internal to the Japanese Other.

At the narrative level, however, there are many references to the USA – e.g. new Yankee weapon. American powdered milk, American magnetic mine, Us Navy, Operations Crossroads, USS Lancaster attacked and eliminated by an unknown enemy, America refusing to do any military manoeuvres to not alarm and stir the Soviets.

General-note 3: Operation crossroads concerns nuclear weapon tests the United States conducted at Bikini Atoll during 1946 to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on warships. These tests were the first since Operation Trinity on July 16, 1945, and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

General-note 4: Yamazaki echoes the fact that Japan is considered a nuclear threshold state, a country who, at a virtual level, is nuclear capable. Japan could, if they choose to, develop nuclear weaponry quickly because they have the needed technology, infrastructure, and materials (like plutonium).

Narra-note 3: With his finale, Yamazaki shows that the private citizens’ attempt to remove the imperialistic discourse and its self-annihilating finality from the societal field is only temporary. Annihilation is but mere repression – the right-wing discourse can, in other words, not be excised from the societal field; it will, in time, re-emerge.