GODZILLA vs. MONSTER ZERO in Japanese Giants Forum

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GODZILLA vs. MONSTER ZERO

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LCranston		#41	[-]
Sep 16 11 3:38 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	My maternal grandparents were Polish and in Poland when hostilities broke out. They survived forced labor camps and other atrocities (no need to elaborate). These events totally influenced the types of people they became after moving to this country. When my wife and I had our honeymoon, we went through Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, and other cities that are still rebuilding after WWII. We saw the scarred, bullet-ridden walls of buildings that still stand, or parts of bombed-out churches, which all serve as daily reminders to the people living there. I CAN'T believe that WWII doesn't have a similar, continuing effect to many of the people of Japan, consciously or subconsciously. I don't believe it guides every aspect of creative expression, but if I see something that looks like it might be, I'm going to comment on it. "I live the unknown, I love the unknown... I AM the unknown."
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Hachigatsu		#42	[-]
Sep 16 11 5:30 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	"The entire genre of 50s [American-made] sci-fi is basically America's cold war anxieties being played out." Perhaps a better term would be "exploited". But, this is not how Japanese films are being dissected, here. The dissection is from a very simplistic reading of Japan and the Japanese — I wasn't addressing you, specifically, but the posts, collectively — which is my point. One can't analyze subtext from a society that they are only remotely aware of. The analysis of the psyche of American Science Fiction films, even in a couple of sentences is far more than the Japanese have gotten in this thread, and the Japanese are only being evaluated in WW2 and Post-WW2 terms — as if they didn't exist before then. Or that Japanese Science Fiction didn't exist before the mid-20th Century. It's sort of like repeating what has been perpetuated in old English texts on the subject at face value, without looking beyond it — or before it — or in a deeper context. Keep in mind, I'm speaking in general terms. There's a lot more to the Japanese, obviously, than what our American cultural perception of them, leads us to believe. I'm not saying that we all have to have doctorates, but its nice to have some real facts (and not second-hand postulating). As for the films, GODZILLA is a trieste on War itself (not specifically WW2), and the fear of a coming atomic holocaust that could end all life on Earth, manifest as the monster — according to Ishiro Honda, himself. THE MYSTERIANS could be seen as an indictment of Imperial Colonialism (Japan having followed in the footsteps of the Americans, Brits and Europeans in that endeavor), and Honda's message is that all nations will need to join hands to solve the really big problems that Mankind will face, or we will fall. No particular angst, there — it was simply Toho's response to the George Pal production of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) with the nations coalescing and sharing cutting edge technology to defeat their would-be conquerors. But, these were conscious decisions made by filmmakers, not subconscious. Karakiri or Altruism? In both films, a scientist (played in each by Akihiko Hirata), ends up sacrificing his life in order to weaken/destroy the antagonist. While "suicide" is hardly the patent of the Japanese (Uchujin or Gorozilla cited the Romans; and there are many other examples in history and across cultural lines), Americans reveled similar "sacrifices", in history and cinema, as "heroic acts" — and were never compared to kamikazes or samurai — such as Robert Taylor's character in Tay Garnett's BATAAN (1943) and Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan in STAR WARS (1977), or real-life historical heroes like John Brown (1800-1859) and many others. "I feel like filmmakers, in any culture, often like to subconsciously deal with their culture's collective anxiety in the context of their art." While there can be "art" in film, film is not "art". But seriously, the subconscious works on such an abstract level, that usually, any intent by the filmmakers are either planned, inherent or merely coincidental. August Ragone Author EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS Blog THE GOOD, THE BAD AND GODZILLA Last Edited By: Hachigatsu Sep 16 11 5:51 PM. Edited 1 times.
Hachigatsu		#43	[-]
Sep 16 11 5:44 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	LCranston wrote: I CAN'T believe that WWII doesn't have a similar, continuing effect to many of the people of Japan, consciously or subconsciously. I don't believe it guides every aspect of creative expression, but if I see something that looks like it might be, I'm going to comment on it. Does WW2 effect the psyche of you or I? I doubt that it effects the psyche of anyone — anywhere in the world — who was born after 1945 (rather, it was the Cold War effected my psyche, in one way or another, but it doesn't rule my life). Similarly, MONSTER ZERO was made in 1965, twenty-one years after the close of WW2, with Japan on its greatest upswing in the wake of the 1964 Olympics. Most of the films during this period were reflective of what was happening in the world — Vietnam was escalating right "next door" to Japan, China had exploded their first nuclear weapon the year before, and the tensions between the US and the USSR were at their height — with Japan stuck in the middle. Films are the product of their times, so the Japanese fantasy films of the 1960s, reflected this precarious global teetering, known as The Cold War, more than any of the ghosts of WW2, which (while not forgotten) were being left behind. Today, WW2 is hardly a part of the national psyche, since the majority of Japanese currently in the film business were born during the last days of the War, or thereafter. Conversely, I don't think that the Attack on Pearl Harbor scars anyone born after 1945 (or 1941 for that matter), either — much like how Americans born today, will not bare psychic scars from 9/11. Our Monsters from the ID do indeed die with us. As for Japan today, she has been throughly rebuilt — and they are constantly knocking down old buildings and building gleaming, futuristic spires in their place — nary a reminder of the War, with some exceptions, including the biggest: The Hiroshima Memorial. We must keep in mind that Japan has an unbroken 2,000 history, and the Imperial Expansion and the Pacific War only occupies a decade of that 2,000 years. It's kind of hard for many Americans to process this, since they have 100 times the history, compared to ours. Also, since the 1960s, Japan's Imperial Expansion and involvement in WW2 has been downplayed in High School Text Books, and can be a pretty complex issue, when in review or under discussion. But, when I lived in Tokyo during the mid-to-late 1980s, I never really felt, heard or experienced any sort of anxiety over WW2. Although, you would find those — born after the War — who were fascinated by aspects, such as military hardware (from all sides), as we can find in other cultures since (such as our own). With that being said, do the Japanese need to have a special psychic spectre of WW2? More so than the US, the UK, France, Italy, Poland, Germany, etc., do? Or is it because Japan lost the war and we think that they should have an eternal ghost looming over them? Interesting... NOTE: I just want to make sure that no one takes my comments, personally, which are posted in the spirit of discussion. August Ragone Author EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS Blog THE GOOD, THE BAD AND GODZILLA Last Edited By: Hachigatsu Sep 16 11 6:28 PM. Edited 7 times.
Uchujin65		#44	[-]
Sep 16 11 9:45 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Also, remember that when I said things like the Xilians were a bit of a perhaps subconscious reference to Imperial Japan and perhaps the Japanese have a deep-seated self loathing complex because they lost the war and that's why they illustrate themselves with Caucasian facial features in their cartoons, I said things like perhaps, possibly, etc, I made it very clear that these are just opinions, hunches, conjecture, not hard, unequivocal facts. These could be true but they could also be quite untrue. I disagree on how much/little of an effect World War II has had on us. Had it not happened or had the Axis won, the world would be a completely different place, though I am starting to wonder if the world would be that much worse off if Japan and Germany had won the war, since America hasn't exactly taken care of the world very well since and winners really do write the history. World War II drastically altered the course of civilization, I think there's no denying that. Also, though I am a Westerner, I have always been very much enamored with who the Japanese are, their history, what makes them tick, both the negative and positive effects they've had on the world, etc, so I said what I said with some contextual knowledge of their culture behind it. And I think many Japanese filmmakers born after the war are still making films that very much pay homage to World War II and its legacy from Higuchi's Lorelei to the new Space Battleship Yamato movie. Hideaki Anno particularly has an obsession with World War II. jlcarrozza.com
Hachigatsu		#45	[-]
Sep 17 11 1:08 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Uchujin: I remember; that's why I stated that I'm speaking in general to the group at large. Now, to answer your questions: The X-ites or X-ians (because the "Xillians" is the English name for the aliens in GODZILLA FINAL WARS, not MONSTER ZERO) are "pale" (actually, the register on the green-grey scale when seen in 35mm) because, like the Morlocks in THE TIME MACHINE (1960), they are subterranean. As for Anime characters, there are really two things in play: 1) In the early days, the style was aped from Disney and Fleischer (perpetuated by Tezuka, who had a meteoric rise in the manga industry) and 2) Because right out of the gate, in regards to animation produced for television they were exported (such as the first, being ASTRO-BOY), almost immediately, to big US companies (such as NBC Films); and the more ambiguous the characters looked, more they could be exported. Also, if you look at the first feature-length animated color film produced in 1958, THE WHITE SNAKE ENCHANTRESS (released as PANDA & THE MAGIC SERPENT in the US), and it's follow-up SASUKE SARUTOBI, THE BOY NINJA (Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, released in the US as MAGIC BOY) featured characters that looked Asian. By the mid-1960s, this had changed due to the proliferation of exported animated television series, which featured "caucasian"-looking characters and manga, which also followed this same aesthetic. Again, the decisions were either dictated by: A. The American Buyers (NBC made numerous demands during the pre- and production of KIMBA, THE WHITE LION) and B. To conform and even produce shows strictly for export (such as MARINE BOY and JOHNNY CYPHER IN DIMENSION ZERO). About WW2: I never said that there was "little" or "no effect" — you need to re-read my posts, perhaps — what I said is that Outsiders have put too much emphasis on a "WW2 Complex", based on NOTHING. As for Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno, I already addressed them a couple of posts ago: "Although, you would find those — born after the War — who were fascinated by aspects, such as military hardware (from all sides), as we can find in other cultures since (such as our own)." Perhaps to enlighten some people on "Military Otaku" in Japan, one should watch Gainax's insightful mockumentary OTAKU NO VIDEO (1991) — released in the US by Animeigo — which actually features characutures of Anno, Higuchi and Gainax founder Toshio Okada (the self-proclaimed "Otaking" or "Otaku King"). This film is an outrageous, but very insightful to the mind of the post-war, baby-boom generation of fans. Again, when this "Post-War Generation", such as Anno and Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato), reference WW2, it is a "conscious" effort, not "subconscious" — which is what kicked off this particular discussion. These writer-artist-director's "obsession" with WW2 is not based in guilt or remorse, but rather in fascination — like their counterparts across the world — and a lot of their particular "obsession" revolves around military hardware, or "Mecha" has the Japanese came to term war machines (which later extended to all manner of vehicles, real or imagined). August Ragone Author EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS Blog THE GOOD, THE BAD AND GODZILLA Last Edited By: Hachigatsu Sep 17 11 1:18 PM. Edited 3 times.
Uchujin65		#46	[-]
Sep 17 11 4:25 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Anno himself has hinted that he very much believes in something of a "World War II complex", or at least that Japan's atomic bombings and massive defeat at the hands of the allies have had an indelible mark on the Japanese psyche. His words were honestly what really got me thinking about it. Here's a chunk of an article written about him years back when the first Rebuild film came out: Anno understands the Japanese national attraction to characters like Rei as the product of a stunted imaginative landscape born of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. “Japan lost the war to the Americans,” he explains, seeming interested in his own words for the first time during our interview. “Since that time, the education we received is not one that creates adults. Even for us, people in their 40s, and for the generation older than me, in their 50s and 60s, there’s no reasonable model of what an adult should be like.” The theory that Japan’s defeat stripped the country of its independence and led to the creation of a nation of permanent children, weaklings forced to live under the protection of the American Big Daddy, is widely shared by artists and intellectuals in Japan. It is also a staple of popular cartoons, many of which feature a well-meaning government that turns out to be a facade concealing sinister and more powerful forces. jlcarrozza.com
Hachigatsu		#47	[-]
Sep 17 11 9:30 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Uchujin, this is the opinion of one man. He has a belief — that doesn't make it so — many people also believe in a God. Again, I never said that there wasn't a "complex" at all, but rather that foreigners in critiquing Japanese Fantasy Films — generally mainstream critics who aren't Japanophiles (who have no education concerning Japan or the Japanese, and therefore are pulling guesses out of thin air) — seem to overuse their perceived "WW2 Complexes" and "Atomic Bombing Anxiety" theories to analyze the premises of said films. My contention was and is that they are over-exaggerating such readings like armchair Freuds. Again, while those Japanese who lived through the War, and those born during (and a short time after, before the economic boom of the mid-1960s), are likely to have strong feelings (those living in war-torn urban areas, especially so), but the generations born since are less and less burdened by such things as time goes by. I'm sure most American kids in their 20s today have no complexes from the threat of nuclear war with Russia or China — that's before their time (but, that may weight heavily on people who were in the midst of that era, such as I). The rest is all semantics. If more critics understood what they were looking at, they wouldn't make such elementary or knee-jerk assumptions. August Ragone Author EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS Blog THE GOOD, THE BAD AND GODZILLA Last Edited By: Hachigatsu Sep 17 11 9:34 PM. Edited 1 times.
Uchujin65		#48	[-]
Sep 17 11 10:00 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hachigatsu wrote: While there can be "art" in film, film is not "art". Also, I strongly disagree and think cinema is a creative artform like any other: painting, sculpture, calligraphy, etc. Especially as someone who makes them. Yes, it is also a business and more often than not a film is a commercial product as much as it is a piece of art, but note that in other artistic disciplines the majority of artists sell their art to make a living from it and sometimes wh0re their talents out to commerce to make ends meet. Art made for money is still a form of, less creative, art. A bland piece of shopping mall kiosk art by Thomas Kincaid and a Micheal Bay movie aren't too different to me. I'm sorry, but film is an artform. Ultimately August though, I do understand what you are trying to say. The "shadow of WWII" is definitely not looming over the younger Japanese (of Gen-X/Y/Z) nearly as much as the older generation, but I disagree in that I still believe it very much blackens Japan collectively. There is a huge difference between things on an individual level and a collective level. Most of the Japanese politicians in power today are the children and grandchildren of the WWII Imperialist crew and much controversy still frequently makes headlines over things like Prime Ministers' visits to Yasukuni, mention of war crimes being omitted from text books. Okinawa still has US bases on it and there is still strife between Okinawa's prefecture government and that of the Japanese mainland, etc. The Chinese and Koreans still largely dislike the Japanese (though they are flaming hypocrites). The effects of the war still continue to felt there, far less severely than in 1954, mind you, but still more significantly than in many other countries, from my point of view. jlcarrozza.com Last Edited By: Uchujin65 Sep 17 11 10:20 PM. Edited 6 times.
Hachigatsu		#49	[-]
Sep 18 11 4:40 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Thanks for understanding, I'm not having any difficulty stating what my personal experience of 35+ years of Japanese studies have taught me about Japan and the Japanese, including growing up exposed to Japanese culture here in San Francisco (my first after school job was working in a Japantown toyshop for a Japanese expat couple), as well as living in Japan in the 1980s (and my many return visits since then). You could say, that my life (more or less) revolves around all things Japanese. So, I do think that I know something of what I've put down here in these posts — and I'm not guessing or apologizing for anything. I just call them as I see them, based on many years of hands-on experience, whatever that amounts to. And to the Outside Observer, somethings things can seem one way, when there may be far more at play — or nothing at all. Sometimes a cigar is only just a cigar. (As for the "dislike" between Japan, China and Korea, those rivers run far deeper and farther in their histories, than the Imperial Japanese Expansion of the 1930s-1940s. There were Toyotomi Hideyoshi's two invasions of Korea, which took place from 1592 to 1598, in which China was involved. The Japanese Pirate Raid of 1555, and so on.) P.S. Respectfully, your opinion of film being art is valid as your opinion — as someone who went to film school, in the 1970s-1980s, and who has written about film since I was a teenager (my Japanese film addiction is why I began writing), your opinion does not invalidate mine, and both of our opinions have merit, in their proper context. Still, not all film is art — movies were born out of the Nickelodeons, and were exploitation novelties from their very inception. I don't think that Japanese fantasy films are art — they are entertainment — if you want Japanese "art" films, I suggest the works of the Art Theater Guild, such as FUNERAL PROCESSION OF ROSES. August Ragone Author EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS Blog THE GOOD, THE BAD AND GODZILLA Last Edited By: Hachigatsu Sep 18 11 4:53 AM. Edited 3 times.
gorgozilla		#50	[-]
Sep 18 11 10:57 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Uchujin65 wrote: Also, remember that when I said things like Uchujin65 wrote: perhaps the Japanese have a deep-seated self loathing complex because they lost the war and that's why they illustrate themselves with Caucasian facial features in their cartoons, I am starting to wonder if the world would be that much worse off if Japan and Germany had won the war, since America hasn't exactly taken care of the world very well since and winners really do write the history. If you really want to get all deep and analytical and subtextuable about it, one could speculate that perhaps a certain American could be seen as projecting a little subconscious "self -loathing" of his own. Personally, I don't read between the lines when nothing is written there. And I'm certain that, yes, the world WOULD really be much worse off under the Nazis and the Japanese Empire. Ask any European Jew or Asian Christian who lived through WWII.
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Uchujin65		#51	[-]
Sep 18 11 1:19 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	gorgozilla wrote: If you really want to get all deep and analytical and subtextuable about it, one could speculate that perhaps a certain American could be seen as projecting a little subconscious "self -loathing" of his own. Personally, I don't read between the lines when nothing is written there. And I'm certain that, yes, the world WOULD really be much worse off under the Nazis and the Japanese Empire. Ask any European Jew or Asian Christian who lived through WWII. I knew someone would take offense with that and with good reason what with the Nazis' genocidal agenda, but the older I get the less black and white I see World War II. American's role in the war was largely one of self interest and our allies Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek were just as evil as Hitler and Hirohito, Chiang once killed more of his own people after flooding out a town so the Japanese couldn't take it than the Japanese did at Nanking and the Russian army was infamous for its brutality, putting nearly as many people to death in their gulags as the Krauts did in their camps and raping untold thousands of German women when Berlin fell and during the occupation of the Eastern half. Winners very much write the history and these facts are not printed in US history books just as Japanese history books make little mention of the armies' war crimes. I take a colder, more objective view of the war now than I used to and the more I learn about human nature. I think fate was definitely on the Allies' side and it was meant to be, but I honestly don't think things would be as bad if the Japanese and Germans had won the war as we think. There probably would have been a "Cold War" between them just as there was between the US and Russia. There definitely would have been about 20 years of hell, genocide, etc after 1945. Also a lot of the worst atrocities committed by the Japanese and Nazis were when they started to realize they were losing the war and got more desperate to win at any cost, perhaps they would have settled down and become more humanistic had they had the luxury of victory. I even actually wonder if things would possibly be better right now after all the dust cleared (decades and decades later) because the world's population would be lower and we wouldn't be struggling with overpopulation (the world's number one problem now, threatening our survival as a species) and perhaps the world would be more peaceful since we'd have gotten more piss and vinegar out as a species in that time period. I am not saying this is true nor am I pro-Nazi by any regards, just speculating. In fact I say all this is a true liberal humanist and progressive, with how disappointingly the last several decades have panned out for positive change, did our victory over tyranny in WWII really make much difference at the end of the day? It's worthless to say anyways since they lost the war but I wonder if there's some alternate dimension where they did win the war, it would be interesting to see what would had happened, just saying. Ultimately pathological human behavior is pathological human behavior, regardless of which wars are won by who. One must remember that America is hardly the champion of freedom we think it is, our history (and that from which we were spawned off from, England's) is every bit as bloody as that of the Japanese or Germans. This is a country that was founded upon the ethnic genocide of the aboriginal North Americans (see King Phillip's War) and was kept alive through the brutal practice of slavery which was every bit as repugnant as the Final Solution, the shadow of which still very much remain on America, just as Japan's WWII shenanigans have left quite the legacy. jlcarrozza.com Last Edited By: Uchujin65 Sep 18 11 10:04 PM. Edited 6 times.
bipolarber		#52	[-]
Sep 21 11 10:52 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	A really fun film... Yeah, the monsters are relegated to being almost bit parts, but there was a lot of other cools eye candy to soak up... Not the least of which was Miss Namikawa... UFO's, underground civilizations, snappy "Devo" costumes... alien invasion, monsters being floated away like party balloons... And that music score! Easily, it's my all time favorite of the Toho film scores... the track "magnetic feilds" (used as the main title track in the American cut) just thrills me right down to my toes every time I hear it. Sorry, I was too busy watching the movie, crunching popcorn, and grinning like an idiot, to take in all the socio-political subtext you guys were talkin' about. Still... fun film. Glad Classic Media finally put out the nice DVD of it, and the original japanese version. "[The audiance] will populate the darkness with more horrors than all the horror writers in Hollywood could think of. If you make the screen dark enough, the mind's eye will read anything into it you want! We're great ones for the dark patches." -VAL LEWTON
Godziwolf		#53	[-]
Sep 21 11 11:29 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hachigatsu wrote: The analysis of the psyche of American Science Fiction films, even in a couple of sentences is far more than the Japanese have gotten in this thread, and the Japanese are only being evaluated in WW2 and Post-WW2 terms — as if they didn't exist before then. Or that Japanese Science Fiction didn't exist before the mid-20th Century. While overly simple, there's a lot of truth to both of those statements. Much like the Russians, the Japanese were largely feudal and pre-industrial until fairly late. (The US had finished the Transcontinental Railroad before the Japanese had trains at all) By the time H.G. Wells finished his stretch from The Time Machine to First Men on the Moon, Japan had as much railroad mileage as the city of London. Japan simply didn't have much time between industrialization and the onset of WWII to generate a pre-war SF tradition -- less than half the time the British, French, and Americans had.
Uchujin65		#54	[-]
Sep 21 11 3:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Yes, I think Godziwolf is right and it's very much my perspective too: the vast majority of Japan's science fiction pop legacy was formed in the face of the defeat in World War II and fires of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from Godzilla to Yamato. The Of course there were some science fiction stories before that, but so much of the most iconic stuff has themes and connections to World War II. Even so much non sci-fi stuff or that has only very light elements of it, like Battle Royale, the book is set in a world where the Axis won the war and Kinji Fukasaku used his own experiences as a teenager witnessing Japan's defeat as inspiration for the film. Fukasaku also made many comments over the years about the indelible impact he thought the war had on the Japanese psyche. They stress WWII's importance in the context of anime a lot, the main reason so many anime have such apocalyptic themes, from Macross to Akira to Evangelion, is because Japan is one of the few countries in the world to basically see its own apocalypse, for when Imperial Japan fell, many Japanese who had bought into all the propaganda believed the very world was ending for a while as almost everything they held dear came crumbling. They saw their cities on fire, the Yamato which they believed was an outward physical manifestation of Japan's inner strength lying in pieces on the bottom of the Pacific and a man who they thought was a god renounce his so-called divinity. jlcarrozza.com Last Edited By: Uchujin65 Sep 21 11 5:45 PM. Edited 6 times.
Hachigatsu		#55	[-]
Sep 21 11 7:11 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	There's a lot of "thinking" going on, lots of stabbing in the dark, based on what? I dunno. I suggest reading some books on the subject, which the two of you seem to be lacking. If we're strictly speaking science fiction (the human condition vs. technology, super science, extraterrestrials, man's journeys beyond the earth, etc.), you should read the essential "Japanese Science Fiction: A View of a Changing Society" by Robert Matthew (Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies, 1989). I cannot overstate how important this book is to understanding Japanese science fiction — for those of you who can't see before WW2 or The Bomb. Next, I recommend, "Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination" by Rampo Edogawa (Tuttle, 1989; 14th edition), which showcases the ero-guro most famous aspects of Japanese weird fantasy literature, written by the master, Rampo Edogawa (1894-1965), which has permeated the Japanese psyche, and helped to inform post-war science fiction in Japan. (In the same vein, I would also recommend "Japanese Gothic Tales" by Izumi Kyoka [University of Hawaii Press, 1996].) As for reading post-war science fiction, I recommend "The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories", edited by John L. Apostolou & Martin Harry Greenberg (Barricade Books, September 1997; most recent edition), featuring a collection of post-war science fiction stories by Shinichi Hoshi, Ryo Hanmura, Sakyo Komatsu, Kobo Abe and Morio Kita. But, if were talking Japanese monsters, horror, ghosts, and things that go bump in the night, those streams go way back — thousands of years — so, I would recommend reading "Japanese Tales" by Royall Tyler (Pantheon fairy tale & folklore library, 2006). Last, but not least, I recommend reading the jackpot of all Japanese fantasy stories: "The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters" by Basil Hall Chamberlain (Tuttle Classics, 2005) (one could also read the "Nihon Shoki" as well), and if one would like to read more on the supernatural aspects of Japan and the Japanese psyche, there are a number of books about Japan's indigenous pagan religion, "Shinto" (or "Way of the Gods"), of which I recommend "A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine" by John K. Nelson (University of Washington Press, 1996). August Ragone Author EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS Blog THE GOOD, THE BAD AND GODZILLA
Hachigatsu		#56	[-]
Sep 21 11 7:16 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	"...from Macross to Akira to Evangelion... because Japan is one of the few countries in the world to basically see its own apocalypse [in the atomic bombings]..." Japan, as we know her today, has suffered numerous major catastrophes and mass destructions at the hands of both nature and man in her two millennia of history. There was the Genroku Earthquake of 1703, the Ansei-Edo Earthquake of 1855, the Hietsu Earthquake of 1858, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and so on (the Hakuho Earthquake of 684 caused a tremendous Tsunami and subsequent destruction). She is also littered with 108 active volcanoes, and in the eruption of Mt. Fuji in 1707, the ash covered Edo (now, Tokyo), and the eruption of Mt. Asama in 1783, caused major destruction. The Japanese have become "accustomed" to utter destruction and rebuilding — it still preys on their minds, but they seem to be far more "accepting" of such disasters than Westerners, or the Westerners who like their movies. "While overly simple, there's a lot of truth to both of those statements." Well, "duh"! This is a message board about "monstas", not academic discourse. August Ragone Author EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS Blog THE GOOD, THE BAD AND GODZILLA Last Edited By: Hachigatsu Sep 21 11 7:35 PM. Edited 4 times.
Uchujin65		#57	[-]
Sep 21 11 11:10 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	There is no denying that is true about Japan being a disaster prone country and that does very much shape that, but I don't just mean the physical apocalypse of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as really shaping the modern Japan as we know it and having an indelible impact on the Japanese (and Japanese sci-fi, anime, pop culture). There was a heavy psychological element as well in that in the span of a few short months, the summer of 1945, the Japanese basically saw everything that they held dear dashed: their cities were bombed, their battleships that they took pride in were smashed to bits and sunk, their army had to retreat from all the countries whom they "liberated from Western imperialism", their Emperor whom they basically saw like how Westerners view Jesus Christ renounced his divinity, etc. To the Germans, Hitler was just another politician or ruler, one they very much loved and trusted for a time, but it wasn't the same. Japan basically saw a thousand or so years of its traditional and cultural zeitgeist torn down that fateful month of August 1945. Hirohito by all regards should have been tried for war crimes and hung but General MacArthur chose Tojo to take the fall. His uncle Prince Asaka was one of the Rape of Nanking's masterminds yet didn't do a day of jail time, the largely innocent Matsui Iwane who was one of the few army figures to take remorse in what the army had done ironically took his fall. There was a reason why MacArthur didn't choose to prosecute the Imperial family as was done with the surviving Nazi leaders, because he knew the Japanese people would not be able to handle it for the most part and would have been suicide bombing the American GIs like in some certain Middle Eastern countries we know. He chose instead to take away their ability to wage war so descendants of the Emperor couldn't make the same arrogant moves Hirohito did whereas the Germans still have an army. Granted August, maybe I am not totally on the mark about the Japanese and "their WWII complex". You lived in Japan for years, I have not even been there (the exchange rate sucks now so it's going to be a while until I can go) and you definitely have had much more exposure to their culture than I have as you were probably living in Japan before I was even born (1986). Perhaps we're both right, I'm just coming at it from a different perspective? jlcarrozza.com Last Edited By: Uchujin65 Sep 21 11 11:23 PM. Edited 4 times.
.		#58	[-]
Sep 23 11 8:41 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I don't personally see the Japanese of today as having a WWII complex. I think Ishiro Honda and co used the first Godzilla to exorcise their demons, and thus the transference to more fantasy based films. Kinji Fukasaku - I don't think it really left him.
Uchujin65		#59	[-]
Sep 23 11 7:40 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	GoughForever wrote: Kinji Fukasaku - I don't think it really left him. No, I agree. I guess because picking up his classmates' entrails and blown off limbs after an American bombing raid as he was made to do is something that you never really forget. jlcarrozza.com
dracsback		#60	[-]
Sep 25 11 3:49 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	bipolarber wrote: A really fun film... Yeah, the monsters are relegated to being almost bit parts, but there was a lot of other cools eye candy to soak up... Not the least of which was Miss Namikawa... UFO's, underground civilizations, snappy "Devo" costumes... alien invasion, monsters being floated away like party balloons... And that music score! Easily, it's my all time favorite of the Toho film scores... the track "magnetic feilds" (used as the main title track in the American cut) just thrills me right down to my toes every time I hear it. Sorry, I was too busy watching the movie, crunching popcorn, and grinning like an idiot, to take in all the socio-political subtext you guys were talkin' about. Still... fun film. Glad Classic Media finally put out the nice DVD of it, and the original japanese version. ...love Miss Namikawa. And, it is a good popcorn crunching - M&M downing movie - don't know nothing about any subtexts - way too overanalytical for my tastes when it comes to the G-man. "I saw what I saw when I saw it!"
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