“Godzilla Minus One” is Held Back by Misguided and Troubling Nostalgia
Takashi Yamazaki’s worst tendencies as a writer and director undercut a great initial concept.
Godzilla Minus One is a movie about the people of Japan learning to live in the wake of the fire and atomic bombs dropped by the United States, which leveled cities and murdered hundreds of thousands. It is also about the damage done internally by the Imperialist government. Inevitably, a country already beaten down by war is forced lower as Godzilla wades ashore in the years immediately following the end of WWII. Stomping, chomping, tail-whipping, and unleashing an all too familiar destructive power upon a people whose cities are still in the early days of recovery. Unfortunately, despite this fantastic core premise, director and writer Takashi Yamazaki can’t help himself but to tell a contrived story of patriotism that seeks to simplify a far more complex history.
Minus One opens on protagonist Koichi Shikishima landing his aircraft on Odo Island after feigning a technical malfunction in order to get out of meeting a kamikaze’s fate. Only to once again be paralyzed by fear as Godzilla viciously tears through the mechanical crew stationed on the island. Shikishima is one of two survivors, the other blames the deaths on Shikishima’s cowardice. In the couple years after, we follow Shikishima as he returns to a Tokyo devastated by America’s firebombing campaign. He forms a family with a woman named Noriko and a child of no relation. In the desperation of a Tokyo populated by makeshift homes, and black markets, Shikishima gets a job disposing of naval mines around the waters of Tokyo. All the while the guilt of failing his comrades intermingles with accusations that if fewer people were cowards like him, Japan would have won the war. Thus we have come to the big questions. What do we fight for and what do we live for?
The use of civilians as labor to clear out dangerous remnants from the war. The utter wasteland that is Shikishima’s neighborhood. The reliance on community when a government has not only failed but continues to dangerously control information and see its people as disposable numbers, there is plenty to like within the opening 30 minutes. However, the good inevitably gives way to Yamazaki’s worst tendencies.
Minus One is deeply nostalgic for the original. This is apparent in the opening as astute fans might notice that Odo Island is also where an early portion of the first movie takes place. There too, the villagers speak of a monster who rises from the sea… Gojira. In the original this is also where we first see the big G. Both films tie in a concern for the effects of Godzilla upon sea life via the displacement of fish. The original, unintentionally, reflects the real world event of a Japanese fishing vessel being hit with radioactive fallout from the U.S. testing an atomic weapon at Bikini Atoll. Shikishima and Noriko adopt an orphan as Ogata and Himiko do in the original. Upon the discovery of Godzilla both movies debate the value of making its existence public. During Godzilla’s first landfall, in the original he chows down on a train car. The same thing happens in Minus One. In the 1954 Godzilla’s big rampage takes it through Ginza, decimating the iconic Wako building and its clock tower. In Minus One, its big Godzilla moment sees the creature doing the same. In the midst of this attack deliriously dedicated journalists cover horrific scenes only to have their perch toppled over by Godzilla. Again, this happens in both films.
Yamzaki’s script so heavily relies upon nostalgia. Nostalgia for an idealized form of Japanese perseverance and for the film whose enormous footsteps Minus One follows in. When Akira Ifukube’s music is reused, I won’t lie, it’s effective. The scene of Ginza is more powerful for it, but largely because it plays on the sense of nostalgia I’ve built up for that iconic theme since I first heard it nearly three decades ago.
In its waning minutes, the desperate citizen’s militia are miraculously assisted in their greatest moment of need by a group of tugboats that appear out of nowhere. With all the previously mentioned moments of nostalgia and reference, I couldn’t help but think about another enormous intellectual property that I adore that is so painfully beholden to nostalgia… Star Wars. The sequel trilogy is unfortunately defined by J.J. Abram’s inability to imagine a story outside of what was laid down by the original trilogy. Both The Force Awakens, and especially The Rise of Skywalker, are cowardly films with little to say, and few intentions other than capitalizing on iconography. Minus One, while not as bad as either, it still embodies the nostalgia for iconography nearly devoid of meaning. It trembles at the idea of a different future proposed by Shin Godzilla in favor of the familiar. It wants to leave it’s audience feeling like they saw a Godzilla like the one they watched years ago as a child or with a sense of pride for the ignoble spirit of the everyday heroes espousing “good patriotism.” Preferably both.
Which is the big hang-up of Minus One. Where does a story about Japan recovering from WWII become a nationalistic one? Having the occupying US forces not vanish, but be non-existent outside of a historical footage reel where General Douglas MacArthur warns the Japanese people to “arm themselves” is maybe the quite telling.
“Sidelining the Occupation is a jarring stylistic choice for a film set in this time period. Japan was, quite literally, American territory at this time in history. Little infrastructure survived the firebombings of 1945. What remained was requisitioned by the occupiers. U.S. soldiers were everywhere. The roads were filled with American Jeeps and tanks, to which Japanese had to give right of way, regardless of traffic laws. GHQ, as the occupation forces were also known, heavily censored the Japanese press and entertainment industries, and cracked down whenever citizens gathered in too large of a number — such as when they helped crush a strike at Toho in 1948, the very same studio that produced Godzilla Minus One. Ironic, that,”
— Matt Alt in their piece Godzilla Minus One Doesn’t Quite Add Up.
As Alt is getting at and what becomes clear in the film itself, is the removal of U.S. forces makes way for an easy narrative about average people being able to fight back for Japan’s future without having to think too hard about how an occupation would complicate such.
When Yamazaki isn’t directing adaptations of classic franchises such as Lupin III, Dragon Quest, or Doraemon, he’s obsessed with post-war and late Imperialist Japan.
In the week leading up to the North American release, I decided to watch Yamazaki’s other post-war films, the trilogy of Always: Sunset on Third Street. Well, actually I only managed to see the first two, but those are the ones that take place in 1950’s Tokyo that has just entered, as one character describes it a “post post-war” period. The lasting effects of the war are still felt by its people and seen within the society, but Tokyo have largely been rebuilt. Also, the second film opens with a fake-out scene of Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo in what feels like Yamazaki calling his shot that he would one day make Minus One. The Sunset on Third Street films are incredibly cheesy. They’ve a thick pair of rose-tinted glasses as they tell their feel-good story about the people of Japan, and the nation, not just recovering, but thriving as it enters what is known as the Japanese economic miracle. There is little interest in interrogating what post-war Japan actually was, and the costs of the country becoming an economic powerhouse in the capitalist world.
Each entry largely focus on the little people. Centering on the Suzuki household who run a small auto-repair shop and Chagawa household who are a found family made of an orphan, a struggling author, and woman who has had to resort to sex work to pay her debts. The films don’t ignore these harsh realities, but they do mostly sweep them aside or trivialize them in the pursuit of the schmaltzy, contrived, and emotionally manipulative tearjerker story about how all the people of Japan came together and lived happily ever after. Even its antagonistic businessmen are convinced by the power of love to stop being utter pieces of human refuse.
Outside of the Sunset Third Street films, some of Yamazaki’s biggest are The Great War of Archimedes and The Eternal Zero. The former is a story set in the early 30’s about a college student booted out of school and recruited by the navy to help in an internal squabble to decide which absurdly expensive vessel will receive funding. Eternal Zero meanwhile follows two late twenty-somethings in the modern day investigating the truth of their supposed cowardly grandfather who became a kamikaze pilot. Both films attempt to be critical of particular aspects of Imperial Japan, but Yamazaki’s patented sentimentality and naivety often betray any anti-imperialist intentions. At the heart of both films are breathless concerns for the nation’s future while never taking the kiddy gloves off and tearing into what led the nation to war in the first place, or the many horrific things committed in the name of it. It’s a simplification that opts for emotionally charged moments over getting into the actual nitty gritty.
At its core Minus One is a film about post-war Japanese identity. It’s about average people coming together to not only save themselves but Japan. But what ideals of Japan are they saving? Throughout much of Yamazaki’s other post-war or Imperial Japan set films, there is a running theme of national pride. Even when it’s attempting to be critical of the use of kamikaze pilots, the greatest concern is that of the nation. Also, Eternal Zero sure does end with a scene of a kamikaze pilot framed rather heroically…. Conversations of outliving the war to make Japan a better country are commonplace. The Great War of Archimedes has incredibly goofy lines such as “use numbers to save Japan” and “math will save this country.” Which, I know, sounds delightfully silly out of context , but in a movie about using the power of autism to Most Beautiful Mind your way into making 1930’s Japan less imperialist…it’s not great!
The first Always: Sunset on Third Street is charmed by a quaint parallel recovery of both the average Japanese citizen and the capitalist society at the heart of what Japan would become post-war. The father of the Suzuki household is not only a former soldier, but a man carving out his family’s place in Japan through his small auto repair shop attached to the family home. Their stability is directly tied to one of the key symbols of industrial capitalism and one of Japan’s biggest exports of its post-war economy. The film constantly cuts to Tokyo Tower being constructed bit by bit. Standing tall over the neighborhood, and fawned over as a symbol that Japan hasn’t simply recovered but can compete with any other country out there.
Trouble is, even though there are criticisms of Imperial Japan’s disregard for the lives of its citizenry and questioning of the incestuous relations between the Imperialist military and Japanese industry, one cannot convincingly stand opposed to these subjects without a leftist foundation. Ultimately, Yamazaki’s work espouses such a naive understanding of how to actually oppose these issues. His idealistic solutions are so easily co-opted by the very thing he claims to be critical of. Famous history revisionist and very dead former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, came to the defense of Eternal Zero when it was met with controversy. And well, if you’ve got Abe in your corner, you should probably question how anti-imperialist you actually are.
While writing this piece I rewatched the original Godzilla. What makes the film hold-up to this day despite your feelings about older styles of acting or small model planes obviously attached to wires, is what it speaks to. It is a raw and open wound of speculative fiction. In 1954, Japanese people went to the theater and saw themselves reflected. Nights out on the town and normal days on the train to and from work. In the midst of the economic miracle life meant being able to go to the theaters free of the fears of what the next air raid siren could bring. But in the background of their lives loomed a threat, one that they knew all too intimately. One that Ishiro Honda and Takeo Murata’s script expressed deep and earnest concerns of. With humanity forging its way into nuclear power — a force that the minds wielding it did not truly comprehend — that the normalcy Japan had started to achieve could end. That they would not be sitting in a theater. Instead, they would be cowering in the streets as buildings crumbled, neighbors burned, and indiscriminate destructive power once incomprehensible ripped through their homes.
Godzilla Minus One is far from the worst entry into the franchise, but it is certainly one I am struggling to understand the praise for. Less so from the wider audience, but from a number of people and places that I would hope could see the troubling politics through schmaltzy contrivances, admittedly impressive visuals, and ample nostalgia.
I could not find a good place to fit this in, but the news of Yamazaki wanting to direct a Star Wars movie is immensely funny to me. I hope it happens! Not only because series like Visions has shown the value of non-American production companies working on Star Wars, but I suspect it would be an utter disaster, further proving my point that Minus One is the Force Awakens / Rise of Skywalker of the franchise.
I would highly encourage folks to read these three pieces that better speak to the politics of Godzilla Minus One.
