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30 minutes later godzilla minus oneThe 33rd film in Japan’s most famous film series, and its first Oscar nomination, writer-director Takashi Yamazaki throws the historical revisionist equivalent of a curveball. In less than 60 seconds, the fast-paced black-and-white montage flashes us back to the impending impatience of a TikTok newsreel cut: classified documents, nautical charts, flickering radar screens, garbled, nearly incomprehensible text. The narration in English and Japanese is refreshingly clear, all set to deliver an unpleasant message.
A giant, irradiated monster hurtles across the ocean toward the Japanese archipelago, slicing through a U.S. Navy destroyer and sending military Geiger counters into overdrive. The United States will not protect Japan. In fact, it’s the opposite. Towards the end of the newsreel barrage, General Douglas MacArthur formally signs the letter to Dear John, followed by grainy footage of him descending the stairs with a grand salute. A man from the U.S. occupation forces headquarters in Tokyo urged Japan to “start strengthening its security forces” as he scrambled out of a Dodge.
Back in the real world, when this fictional event took place in 1946-1947, Americans were in the second year of their seven-year occupation of Japan. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the so-called Tokyo Trial) was underway, and it would have been impossible to miss American military personnel and civilians on the streets, not to mention other foreign nationals of the Allied Powers. Tokyo. However, just as the Japanese were absent, oppenheimerthere is little room for Americans Godzilla. History is being rewritten to meet the emotional needs of the present. In the 21st century, Japan is called upon to protect itself from regional threats, but lacks confidence in its modern identity as it sees no distorted version of the once reliable American example.
From the moment of the montage, America’s presence is erased from the story, save for the hanging Tokyo PX sign. godzilla minus oneAnd Yamazaki turns his populist lens on a ragtag group of Japanese civilians, engineers, and ex-military personnel, and on his bumbling, self-pitying hero Koichi Shikishima. Shikishima’s surname is also an ancient poetic term that once literally meant “Japan.” Shikishima, a failed kamikaze fighter pilot who also happens to have a family and suffers from a crisis of modern masculinity, is an action hero paralyzed by fear of commitment and unable to take much action. The absence of the United States as a victor, ally, and protector exposes Shikishima’s plight to the light of day. his parents are deceased. His neighbor calls him a “coward” and reminds him that he should too. But he lacks the ego and agency of a rugged individualist. He is inconsolably lonely.
After Japan surrendered, Shikishima toured the ruins of the Tokyo suburbs that had been destroyed by U.S. air raids. His motherly neighbor chastises him for neglecting his military service, but a young single woman named Noriko persuades him to become guardian of an orphaned baby girl she is raising. He then races through an elaborate Ginza shopping district, nearly destroyed by Godzilla’s atomic breath, and Noriko risks her own life to rescue Godzilla.
Amid these modern plotlines, the films also often explicitly call back to the 1954 original and the era in which it is set. Revisiting the first fictional Odajima. Godzilla movie. A close-up photo of a burnt-down and dilapidated shack in Tokyo suggests (inaccurately) that the entire country is homeless. Retired Imperial Army soldiers huddle together in drab military uniforms, trembling and grim expressions on their faces. Food is scarce, the black market is in disarray, and the rain continues. The documentary-style timecards reinforce the illusion of historical veracity, and the scene in Ginza, where Godzilla chews through a train car and smashes a building with his tail, is particularly striking with its sepia tones and architectural idiosyncrasies, and the film’s Reenacting some scenes from the first beat of. For beats.
One might speculate that Japanese viewers would not want to revisit scenes of post-war poverty, especially for some older viewers. However, Yamazaki is famous in Japan for his popular books that romanticize the revival of Japan’s economy. Always Sunset on Third Street The trilogy (including a cameo appearance by Godzilla) found a way to tap into audience nostalgia by depicting the spirit of makeshift families and communities in the face of adversity. These themes include a country with the lowest marriage and birth rates in the world, a rapidly declining population, and an American-built ruling party that has ruled for 65 of the past 69 years, experiencing scandal after scandal after scandal. This is very suggestive for this country. As the years pass in the film, the sky brightens and wider shots remind us of what was just over the horizon at the time: dizzying growth rather than annual shrinkage.
The depiction of America abandoning Japan in crisis speaks directly to the anxieties of Japanese people today. As both China and North Korea become increasingly belligerent, Japan is heeding MacArthur’s film’s call to rethink its pacifist policies and strengthen its defenses. Last month, the Cabinet approved a record 16% increase in the country’s military budget and revoked a post-war ban on the export of lethal weapons.
Despite hosting by far the largest number of U.S. troops outside of the United States and paying 75% of the cost of stationing them (despite complaints from former U.S. presidents), many Japanese believe that they would protect U.S. troops from war. They are losing faith in America’s willingness to provide assistance. attack. In a 2022 survey, only 51% of Japanese respondents said they believed the United States would protect Japan in the event of war with China, and only slightly more (64%) in the case of an attack from North Korea. And then that number is likely to be even lower now. the long-term US inaction in Ukraine and Gaza; (In Taiwan, trust in the United States is further eroded.)
The film’s revisionist view of America’s unreliability in Japanese history is matched by Shikishima’s portrait of indecisiveness. Shikishima is not only the early name of Japan itself, but also the early name of one of Japan’s first two battleships, built by the British in the 19th century and dismantled in 1948. there were. He is the very model of a modern-day major man boy and represents what the Japanese media has labeled him as. Kanadeki Danshi— Grass-eaters and herbivores, young men who are not interested in sex, marriage, ambition, or competition, and are instead content to eat grass.
Knowing the rigidity of the Japanese Imperial Army’s ruthless and often violent class system, Shikishima first melts after a mechanic named Tachibana recites his first lie, a ruse about his strategy. I had to stifle a laugh as I went down and stomped around like an emo teenager. His plane malfunctions, forcing him to abandon the suicide mission.I was expecting Shikishima to attack Tachibana or prepare for the crime. seppuku, He attempted ritual suicide out of protest and rage, but instead he walked away in a fit of rage and sat on a rock staring out to sea. In fact, a series of outbursts punctuate Shikishima’s character arc from hopeless to heroic. When one of his colleagues suggests that he marry Noriko and enjoy her family life, he becomes upset, slams the table, and yells, “That’s not what I want!” He was troubled by a stack of photographs of the families of deceased mechanics, and his brow furrowed several times. He has a nightmare about Godzilla and he jumps out of his futon and rolls on the tatami. Poor Noriko, a working woman who helps pay the household bills, like more than 80 percent of her peers in Japan today, rushes to his side to “live,” and basically advised him to overcome this problem.
Shikishima’s narcissism wore off my sympathy, and I think that was intended. In the post-war era in which this film is set, most Japanese people, including my now 85-year-old Japanese mother, have become pragmatic, forgetting the recent and tragic past, and pursuing the indigenous roots of Japan. They were struggling to survive by relying on their values. Patience, or the ability to withstand any situation. In contrast, Shikishima seems like a creature of a later era, putting his own well-being above the needs of others.
In order to get his way, Shikishima lies twice, both times to Tachibana. Tachibana actually knows how to solve things and ultimately saves the pilot’s life. The ending scene of minus one The film depicts Shikishima sobbing as she sees Noriko in the hospital, who somehow survived Godzilla’s radiation but whose skin shows signs of eerie contamination. “Is the war finally over?” she asked him before he knelt by her bedside and let go of her adopted daughter’s hand, with whom he had reluctantly agreed to co-parent while rejecting any pretense of marriage or family life. As Shikishima buried her face in Noriko’s stomach and cried, she stared dryly at the top of his head with an expression of infinite pity on her face.
in short: top gun This is different.Also, it is Godzilla In the 1954 film, the protagonist, a scientist with a lot to lose, dies by suicide in order to silence the monster and save the world from the destructive technology it unleashes. instead, minus one, a citizen scientist is trying to inspire his fellow civilians to fight a new war that “doesn’t cost lives at all.” The central government has become dysfunctional (there are no civil servants in the film, although they are fired several times for betraying the people). And Japan’s big brother, America’s allies, are either indifferent or preoccupied. The main character, driven by remorse, has always had self-preservation as his main goal, but he probably has no time to bask in the glory of having saved the day. No high-fives from his wingman either. Sharply, Noriko doesn’t even feel like thanking him.
Japan’s Godzilla has evolved over and over again, from symbol of nuclear failure, to protector of Japan, to cuddly children’s toy, to what it is today: a giant conduit for audiences’ fears and longings. In the final frame of the latest film, viewers are taken deep beneath the ocean’s surface, where fragments of Godzilla’s decomposed body bubble back to life like blisters, and toxicity regenerates in the darkness. are doing. What will be Japan’s next war? China? north korea? No matter what the threat is, minus one This is an insidious portrait of a people who are currently unprepared, both materially and spiritually, to face it.
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