After suffering a devastating barrage of artillery from U.S. stealth bombers, Godzilla lets out a piercing shriek of pain, blood pouring out of his previously impenetrable skin. His red, incandescent epidermis transforms into a bright purple as a haunting chorus of string instruments drown the scene and a serene chorus juxtaposes what is about to transpire. Godzilla opens his gaping, glowing maw, spewing black smoke, which transforms into radioactive flames that engulf Tokyo. The pillar of flames concentrate into a bright purple beam of destructive nuclear energy, destroying everything in its path. Hamamtsucho. Shimbashi. Ginza. Toranomon. Kasumigesaki. Nagatacho. Dozens of square kilometers of Tokyo reduced to rubble, set ablaze and reminiscent of the fire bombings in World War II. Japan can only brace in horror, waiting for the hellfire above to stop. Godzilla is unstoppable, looming over skyscrapers, lumbering around before falling into a slumber near Tokyo Station.
An hour into the film, this harrowing and tragic scene serves as the bone-chilling climax for Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s 2016 Shin Godzilla. Intended to be the spiritual successor and Toho’s third reboot of Ishiro Honda’s 1954 film Gojira, it centers its most important themes around its most recent nuclear disaster. Honda’s film was a direct response to the trauma Japan suffered from not just the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in World War II, but the reopening of its wounds in the Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident in 1954. Gojira was a direct antiwar and antinuclear critique on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; much of the exhaustive scholarship surrounding Gojira concludes that despite the havoc that the monster wreaked on Tokyo, Godzilla was not the perpetrator of violence, but a victim of it. As a true reboot of the original film, Shin Godzilla’s echoes that sentiment, but instead of repeating its messages, it comes from the fresh pain Japan suffered from the Fukushima Daiichi incident on March 11, 2011.
Monsters, be it vampires, ghouls, or zombies, often depict a much more profound message rather than just vessels to frighten audiences with. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Theory” proposes that one may read into a culture’s values just from the monsters that they create. He postulates seven theses that could be used to understand the monster “as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment--of a time, a feeling, and a place.” (Cohen 4). The monster is part of a larger mythos, a cultural artifact manifesting into a fictional being, as “the decoding of myth involves… the unpacking of its narrative structure to reveal a skeleton of circumstance and event… Myth, like culture itself, is something that is generated, revised, and regenerated in response to economic and political forces.” (Stymeist 396) In order to understand a culture or a specific moment in time, as Cohen would put it, one must examine not just its historical events, but also the myths that its people generate.
In the case of Godzilla, his monstrous body calls into the question of nuclear power and its destructive nature. Whether the monster himself is an ancient dinosaur awoken by atomic bombs, or a marine creature mutated by nuclear waste, Godzilla has always been a warning against mankind - that nuclear power has its risks. For Japan, “the monster is less a reaction to the bomb than a symbol of the bomb.” (Jacob 220) In his sixty-year stay in the global culture, the Godzilla character remains because he is meant to be used as a vessel for Japan’s everchanging nuclear symbol. Brophy notes that “the figure of Godzilla--as famous as a suit as he is a character--is less a vessel for consistent authorial and thematic meaning as he is a shell to be used for the generation of potential and variable meanings.” (42) Despite the original 1954 film’s toy-like dioramas trampled by actors wearing rubber suits seen as nothing but mere entertainment by the world, Japan’s reliance on props and puppets in its theatre show that Godzilla is meant to represent, not to convince. While the destruction wreaked by Honda’s Gojira represents the Japanese trauma from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Anno and Higuchi’s Shin Godzilla represents a more nuanced take on nuclear energy. Godzilla is also a force of nature, embodying whatever challenges Japan faces at the time, forcing politicians and citizens to desperation. Anno’s monster is likely meant to specifically embody “natural disasters that tests [Japan’s] infrastructure and its government and bring into question the effectiveness of government.” (Bivens 54) Using Cohen’s “Monster Theory” as a theoretical framework, I will explain how the 2016 Godzilla, as a monster, serves as a narrative vessel to heal the pain caused by the Fukushima Daiichi (3/11) incident. His monstrous body is a cultural body, and it stands as Japan’s cautious attitude towards nuclear body - that as dangerous and destructive as it is, it has its potential to be a powerful energy source. Before I dive deep into the film and its relation to Cohen’s “Monster Theory,” I shall provide a brief synopsis of the film below. I will also henceforth use Shin to refer to the monster as a whole to distinguish it from the film and other iterations in the franchise, but will use nicknames of its different forms when necessary.
Shin Godzilla takes place in modern Japan, and opens with the Japanese coast guard finding an abandoned pleasure boat off the coast of Tokyo. What is initially believed to be an earthquake is later revealed to be an unknown, gargantuan sea creature, who later tramples through Tokyo. The red tape surrounding bureaucracy significantly slows any meaningful action by the government. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Rando Yaguchi, frustrated by the government’s hesitation in dealing with such an anomaly, decides to assemble a “crack team of lone wolves, nerds, troublemakers, outcasts, academic heretics and general pains-in-the-bureaucracy” (Shin Godzilla) to try to combat this new threat. After Shin reigns terror and destruction upon Tokyo, it is discovered that the monster’s body operates much like a nuclear reactor, with his blood acting as a coolant. As the U.S. government threatens to exterminate Shin with a nuclear warhead as a last resort, Yaguchi and his team execute “Operation Yashiori,” a plan to freeze the monster with a blood coagulant drug. After an exhaustive attempt to deplete Shin of his nuclear energy, the team mobilizes to flash freeze him, temporarily ending his rampage.
To best understand how the monster in Shin Godzilla I must first briefly explain Cohen’s “Monster Theory” and its seven theses, and how Godzilla follows most if not all of them, even though Cohen notes that these theses are a “set of breakable postulates.” I intend to focus specifically on his first thesis, and use the other six as peripheral references to relate to in the film.
Cohen’s first thesis is simple: the monster’s body is a cultural body. The monster’s body “quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy… giving them life and an uncanny independence. The monstrous body is pure culture.” (4) Shin represents Japan’s current attitudes towards nuclear power, not just as a monster who has burned Tokyo with his atomic breath for over sixty years, but because his body is literally powered by nuclear fission. Shin is destructive, but the way his body works poses a potential solution to mankind’s energy crisis; his body symbolizes Japan’s moral dilemma on nuclear power. According to the World Nuclear Association, “Japan was generating some 30% of electricity from its [nuclear] reactors and this was expected to increase to at least 40% by 2017.” Despite Japan’s traumatic history with atomic bombs during World War II, the country’s willingness to use nuclear energy shows its improving attitudes towards it. This is also evident in the “Public Opinion” section of the article. According to polls, most recently in a February 2023 survey by Asahi Shimbun, 51% of Japanese respondents were “in favour [sic] of restarting nuclear plant operations.” From outright calling against nuclear power in Honda’s Gojira to a more pragmatic approach in Shin Godzilla, it is clear to see that Japan’s attitudes on nuclear power has significantly improved, with a wisdom that stems from its trauma. As one character in the film notes, Shin (in this case, nuclear energy) “is both a threat to mankind and also poses a revelation of limitless potential.” (Shin Godzilla)
In Shin Godzilla, the monster goes through four stages of metamorphosis, featuring four official forms that parallel the ever shifting fears of the Japanese people towards nuclear energy, and each symbolizing the a devastating aspect of the Fukushima incident.
As a monstrous body, Shin’s first two forms are aquatic by nature, meant to represent the earthquake and tsunami that kickstarted Fukushima incident. The first form (Figure 1) appears near the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line as a giant tail, flooding underground tunnels and stumping politicians and experts, who initially believe him to be “A new undersea volcanic eruption,” or a “submarine.” (Shin Godzilla) Much of the Japanese government is comprised of old men whose rigid ideals and protocols make the possibility of a monster incomprehensible. Even Yaguchi’s suggestion that it may be a “giant marine creature” is met with ridicule until they are shown footage of Shin’s tail. “Yaguchi’s joke may be a serious thing,” comments Yaguchi’s senior.
Shin’s second form, nicknamed “Kamata-kun” by Japanese fans (Wikizilla), makes landfall right after the Prime Minister assures the public that there is “no danger of coming ashore.” (Shin Godzilla) Possessing gills and an elongated body, Kamata-kun closely resembles a salamander when making first contact in Tokyo by crawling through rivers and urban areas. Kamata-kun crushes every building in his path as Japanese citizens run in terror, away from the flood and debris. His rampage spans through much of Tokyo’s streets, toppling buildings and crushing anything and anyone that stands in his path. But one might notice that Shin’s initial rampage through Tokyo is not born out of malevolence or anger, but as a mindless force of nature that the Japanese government is ill-equipped to stop. The destruction caused by Kamata-kun parallels the natural disasters that struck the Fukushima Daiichi plant. According to the timeline described in atomicarchive.com, “a 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes off Honshu island… an hour later, a 46 tsunami hits, [overflowing] the 19 foot seawall, inundating the plant…”
As Kamata-kun advances, government officials debate which department holds jurisdiction over the extermination of the beast. Even the JSDF, which is supposedly Japan’s frontline of defense, is hesitant to engage Shin in fear of causing casualties in the urban areas. As Shin’s presence in Tokyo “doesn’t qualify as an armed attack… ‘by an aggressor country or equivalent’,” (Shin Godzilla) Japan’s laws and protocols make it difficult for the government to launch a timely response. With a wandering beast trampling through the dense city, the Japanese government must cut through an equally dense web of red tape and tedious bureaucracy just to even take any meaningful action. While debates, meetings, and press conferences are important aspects of the mundane decisions of a democratic nation, the emergence of a giant monster like Shin shows that the slow process of government procedures hinder any effective response to an unexpected emergency like natural disasters. As a simple beast, both Shin’s first form and Kamata-kun serve as a black mirror for the Japanese people to reevaluate their country’s initial responses to natural and nuclear disasters.
Japan’s response to Shin is further exacerbated by rigid protocols. As Kamata-kun stands upright and lets out a low, haunting roar, his body shimmers. His previously soft body hardens over the red sinew and muscles, growing much taller and transforming into his third form (Figure 3), nicknamed Shinagawa-kun. (Wikizilla) This form is much stronger, capable of flinging trains and bulldozing through residential buildings. The JSDF mounts an aerial assault on Shinagawa-kun, but has to immediately abort the mission due to a civilians passing by. “Civilians present. Can we fire?” is repeated at least four times in a stressful game of telephone relayed through the chain of command. Shinagawa-kun charges into Tokyo Bay, leaving the city to clean up the mess. Assessing the damage caused by the monster, Yaguchi laments that the government “had as long as two hours to mount an initial response. Disappointing.” (Shin Godzilla) His seniors rationalize it as “a surprise” and that it “can’t be helped.” Frustrated at his seniors’ ineffectual governing, Yaguchi assembles a team, and quickly discover that Shin has left dangerous amounts of radiation in his wake. They also receive information that sixty years ago, Shin fed on the “unregulated dumping of radioactive material,” causing him to mutate and grow into “an organism that could withstand it.” (Shin Godzilla) Concluding that the monster’s body sustains itself via nuclear fission, the team reassesses their approach and formulates the “Yaguchi Plan,” and the Japanese government is finally prepared for Shin’s next arrival. But what reemerges from the shores of Kamakura city.
“Kamakura-san” (Figure 4) is Shin’s fourth and final official form in the film. Now standing completely upright and even more menacing, his size has “nearly doubled” since Japan’s last encounter with him. (Shin Godzilla) But his unexpected size increase is “beyond expectations,” as described several times by one of the ministers in the film. As noted by Mihic, Anno intended to parallel the Shin’s unexpectedness with TEPCO’s similar claim that about the tsunami height in 3/11. (90) This time, civilians have more time to evacuate, and Japan mounts a swift military response to fight the monster. However, as Shin has evolved to Kamakura-san, his hardened skin renders the JSDF’s attacks ineffective; machine gun fire bounces off his body, missiles all but scratch his head, and heavy artillery--including tanks, rockets, and cruise missiles--only slows him down. Shin is completely unfazed, however, and a single kick that launches a piece of a bridge cripples the JSDF, forcing them to halt the attack. At this point, the United States Airforce launches stealth bombers in an attempt to assist, only to trigger Shin’s iconic atomic breath and the aforementioned climactic scene. The devastation renders much of Tokyo uninhabitable due to high radiation, leaving Japan demoralized and a power vacuum, as Shin’s atomic breath has killed the Prime Minister along with most of his Cabinet.
Kamakura-san, or rather, Shin as a whole, has left Tokyo with a city riddled with dangerous levels of radiation. It parallels the poisoning of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, and in real life, the affected Tohoku area “continues to be marked by fears of heightened levels of radiation, while many families remain unable to evacuate to other cities due to financial constraints… the lives of Tohoku citizens remain unstable even a decade on.” (Katsuda) Kamakura-san’s body, one might notice, may seem like folds of hardened skin or chitinous armor, but some scholars believe there is reason behind the design. Citing Japanologist William Tsutsui, Yuki Miyamoto notes that Godzilla’s skin, “thick and furrowed like the keloid scars that afflicted the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, evoked the agony of irradiation.” (1091) Staying true to the original design in the 1954 film, Kamakura-san’s skin is thick and furrowed like an overgrowth of irradiated scar tissue, representing the nuclear pain that many Japanese people suffered from the 3/11 incident. The horrifying nature of his body is caused by the very same Promethean advancements in technology that humanity seeks to perfect. And much like the still unresolved situation in Fukushima, Shin is not defeated nor killed, but frozen in the middle of Tokyo.
In his fifth form (Figure 5), humanoid figures emerge mid-stasis from Shin’s tail. There is concept art that indicates that they would have resembled humans, perhaps symbolizing that the true monsters was humanity all along. According to one of the members of Yaguchi’s team, Shin is capable of “asexual propogation via single organism growth,” and that he could “kick start a rapid colonization all over the world.” Another member, biologist Hazama, comments that “not only could it evolve to a smaller size… it could sprout wings capable of intercontinental flight.” (Shin Godzilla) Shin’s ability to adapt and survive befits the “God” in “Godzilla.” The etymology of Godzilla and Shin Godzilla must be considered. “Gojira” is derived from the portmanteau of kujira (meaning whale in Japanese) and gorilla. To avoid delving too deep into the semantics of Japanese linguistics, I will only clarify through my understanding of the Japanese language. The “shin” in Shin Godzilla has double meanings: the kanji 新, meaning “new,” indicates the film as a reboot, and 神, though conventionally pronounced “kami” but can be alternatively pronounced as “shin,” meaning “God.” mirrors the wrathful nature that Godzilla is meant to embody as a godlike creature. Had Shin not been stopped through Yaguchi’s “Operation Yashiori,” he would have overwhelmed the planet with his many copies, which represents the terrifying spread of the nuclear arms race around the world.
In Cohen’s second thesis, the monster always escapes. In Shin Godzilla, the monster does not escape and is eventually defeated, but avoids total destruction thanks to his constantly evolving body. Thanks to the concerted effort of the Japanese government, its task force, and the U.S. military, Shin is rendered immobile, frozen in stasis amongst Japan’s ruins. But there is no telling when he will break out of his prison. Despite the barrage of missiles, bullets, and bombs humans hurl at him, Shin can never truly die, but instead will adapt to any threat. “No monster tastes of death but once. The anxiety… can be dispersed temporarily, but the revenant by definition returns. And so the monster’s body is both corporal and incorporeal; its threat is its propensity to shift.” (Cohen 5) Shin, as Shinagawa-kun, manages to escape the JSDF and into Tokyo Bay, and returns as Kamakura-san. As a grotesque and gargantuan creature, Shin’s nuclear body is almost impervious to conventional weaponry, and can only be halted, not destroyed.
Godzilla, like most monsters, defies any scientific identification. In most iterations, he resembles a lizard and breathes fire like the mythical dragons, but does not fit in any real category. As the harbinger of category crisis, Shin “always escapes because [he] refuses easy categorization… [he is a] disturbing [hybrid] whose externally incoherent [body resists] attempts to include [him] in any systematic structuration.” (Cohen 6) Throughout the first half of the film, the government struggles to scientifically categorize or identify the source of their problems. When he first appears, the government attempts to employ experts to better understand Shin, but none of them can provide any scientific explanation in fear of losing their credibility. Maki Goro, an enigmatic figure in the film, has left cryptic notes that are not solved until Yaguchi’s task force examines them through a different perspective. Shin’s body is impossible - not just from the fact that he is impossibly huge, but his body is essentially a nuclear reactor, and he “can suddenly mutate from sea organism to land.” (Shin Godzilla) The nuclear experts also discover that Shin’s body “harbors new elements” thanks to his extraordinary body. “In the face of the monster, scientific inquiry and its ordered rationality crumble.” (Cohen 7) As such, befitting Cohen’s fourth thesis, Shin “dwells at the gates of difference.” (7) The monster represents what is the Other; they are cultural abjects, creatures that embody what a society seeks to expel and villify. In his rampages, Godzilla often destroys the country in which it is made, “because it is a body across which difference has been repeatedly written, the monster seeks out its author to demand its raison d’etre.” (Cohen 12) The otherworldly yet iconic roar of the monster, originally developed by composer Akira Ikufube, was also meant to be viewed as Other. The monster, according to Ikufube, was “like the souls of the Japanese soldiers who died in the Pacific Ocean during the war.” (Kerner 175) Godzilla embodies the “Japanese war dead who are unable to rest in peace, due to their ambiguous status as both victimizers and victims.” (Ching 22) The souls of the dead have come to haunt humanity, and instead of repenting and reflecting on its use of nuclear power, humanity instead seeks to expel it. In a way, Godzilla is terrifying because he is a black mirror.
As a monster, Godzilla serves as a warning to those who seek to use nuclear power. The original film’s director, Ishiro Honda, experienced the horrors of World War II firsthand. He “resolved to use the monster as a metaphor for the growing fears of a nation living in the shadow of doomsday. As [he] said years later, ‘I wanted to make radiation visible.’ As a result, the Bomb became the Beast.” (Brothers 36) The original 1954 film Gojira was meant to be a somber testimony of the horrors of nuclear power and war. In the case of Shin, Anno’s thesis in his reboot is clear: use it wisely, or face annihilation. Cohen’s fifth thesis states that the “monster polices the borders of the possible.” (12) With Shin’s destruction threatening the rest of the world, the United Nations, along with the United States, warn Japan to evacuate the city, as they plan on dropping a nuclear warhead on Shin in an attempt to destroy the monster. But with his body powered by an organic nuclear reactor, the United States’ quickfix to the problem could have strengthened him, destroying Tokyo in vain. Kayoko Ann Patterson, a special envoy to the President and one of the main protagonists, laments at the decision, saying, “I won’t see a third bomb dropped on the country of my grandmother, who lived through it.” (Shin Godzilla) The Japanese trauma lingers in the 21st century. The threat of nuclear devastation, marked by the recent 3/11 disaster, is ever present in the collective consciousness of the Japanese people. “And because tragic loss of life usually unites a people, these sentiments are ever laced with the theme of ‘never again.’” (Szasz and Takechi 751) Not only is Shin a threat to humanity, but so is mankind’s responses. Rather than working with Yaguchi’s team on their plan to freeze the monster, the Americans choose the quickest, most destructive path. This rings true in what Cohen notes in his fifth thesis: “from its position at the limits of knowing, the monster stands as a warning against exploration of its uncertain demesnes… to step outside this official geography is to risk attack by some monstrous border patrol or… to become monstrous oneself.” (12) Shin exists as a warning sign to all who wish to use nuclear power; whatever reasons one desires to use it, one must consider its ethical ramifications. Another quote by Cohen supports the theory that Shin polices nuclear power: “the monster of prohibition exists to demarcate the bonds that hold together that system of relations we call culture, to call horrid attention to the borders that cannot--must not--be crossed.” (13) It is only with Yaguchi’s freezing plan where Shin could truly be stopped, and with almost no time to spare. We can see in the end of the film where Shin is frozen in stasis, mid-transformation into his fifth form. Had Japan acquiecsed and allowed another nuclear bomb to drop on Tokyo, one shudders to think how Shin would have responded.
Cohen’s sixth thesis posits that the monster “is really a kind of desire.” (16) For Cohen, people can be attracted to the monster because its fictitious existence serves as an escapist fantasy. What it represents is often forbidden and taboo, and we desire it because of its inability to be tethered, as we “distrust and loathe the monster at the same time we envy its freedom, and perhaps its sublime despair.” (Cohen 17) While audiences love Godzilla for his iconic status, they would clamor in fear if the monster had truly appeared in Tokyo. With a franchise spanning 60 years and 33 films, there is no denying that Godzilla is a Japanese icon. Despite the antinuclear and antiwar messages in the original 1954 film, Godzilla remains a cultural mainstay, though what he represents has since lost its impact. According to Leo Ching in his article “When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira,” the fire-breathing monster’s repeated returns to Tokyo are telling of Japan’s inability to let go of its trauma; it is “an attempt by the Japanese society to ‘sanitize, sterilize, neutralize, and normalize’ the uncanny represented by Gojira [sic] and Japan’s war dead.” (22) The film features a brief snippet of protestors chanting “Gojira is God!” and “Save Gojira!” perhaps in a bid to appeal to a vengeful, destructive god for mercy. Are they chanting out of fear, worship, desire? While the film mainly focuses on the perspective of Yaguchi and his fellow civil servants and experts, what is interesting to consider is the civilian perspective. The clips of shaky civilian footage depict the fear and panic, and this specific clip, 45 minutes into the film, seems to show a drastic change in public opinion. An all-powerful creature with an imposing stature is bound to inspire awe.
But Cohen’s sixth thesis also posits that a monster is desirable because the monster itself is taboo. As noted by Brophy, “the Japanese monster movie is more about the monstrous energy than it is about the ‘monstrous-ising’ of sexuality. This is the subtextual drive of the Toho monster movies: to plainly destroy… As juvenile as it sounds, destroying things can be highly gratifying. Destroying whole cities has to be exhilarating.” (41) Godzilla himself embodies energy; in both Gojira and Shin Godzilla, he embodies the destructive power that nuclear energy can have on the postindustrial world. As a kaiju (giant monster) film, it has as much entertainment value as the more bombastic sequel films in the sixty-year franchise, but rather than portraying Godzilla as a heroic champion of the Earth, this version is a scared animal in constant pain from its nuclear body. Shin’s pained cries and tragic rampage throughout Tokyo invoke horror as well as sympathy.
Cohen’s seventh and final thesis posits that “the monster stands at the threshold… of becoming. ” As cultural artifacts, monsters dare mankind to question their values and reassess what we reject and hold dear. “... Monsters ask us how we perceive the world, and how we have misrepresented what we have attempted to place. They ask us to reevaluate our cultural assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, our perception of difference, and our tolerance toward its expression. They ask us why we have created them.” (Cohen 20) In the end, monsters are fictitious, and they do not come from a vacuum. Instead, they spawn from the outer reaches of our cultural boundaries, and what we deem as Other. We reject and vilify monsters because we seek a scapegoat upon which to place our fears, anxiety, and hatred. But Cohen begs the question of the monster’s existence--as it carries the burden of our vitriol and sometimes admiration, does it not deserve sympathy? Is the monster’s destruction on mankind not a cry for help?
The soundtrack that plays in the scene mentioned at the beginning of this essay brings into question the Japanese interpretation of nuclear pain. Composed by Shiro Sagisu, “Who Will Know” is a somber piece sung in Shin’s perspective. The first verse is as follows: “If I die in the world/Who will know/something of me?/I am lost, no one knows/There’s no trace of my yearning” Shin is in constant pain. His origins as a deep sea creature who consumed nuclear waste shows how his rampage is not of malevolence, but as a scared animal lashing out at the tragedies that befell upon him. As the world perceives him as a monster that should be destroyed, the song portrays the deep sorrow he feels when he unwillingly unleashes nuclear devastation on Tokyo. The accompanying male chorus sings, “But I must carry on / Nothing worse can befall / All my fears, all my tears / tell my heart there’s a hole” as Shin’s despair manifests in the destruction that he has wrought. The only reception he has received since his arrival in Tokyo has been fear, rejection, and hatred, and the only salvation he can find is through fire and annihilation. The song ends with a refrain, combined with the male chorus: “I wear a void (as long as breath comes from my mouth) / Not even hope (I may yet stand the slightest chance) / A downward slope (A shaft of light is all I need) / Is all I see (To cease the darkness killing me)” Through this song, Shin questions the purpose of his existence, and why he feels such pain. “As long as [atomic] breath comes from [his] mouth,” Shin may feel some semblance of catharsis, but his presence alone is harmful to humanity. As the lyrics aptly put, “a downward slope” is the only path Shin sees.
As a tragic creature placed in a liminal space between victimizer and victim, the monster in Shin Godzilla serves as a vessel for Japan’s nuclear anxieties and pain at any given cultural moment, kickstarted by Honda’s Gojira. Tragedy often unites a people, and Godzilla as a whole “positions Japan as a victim and enables the reconstruction of national identity.” (Cho 222) Shin Godzilla, like the original, serves to stroke Japan’s nationalistic pride with its feel-good alternative to the 3/11 disaster, and the fact that it was directed by Anno of Evangelion (cult anime series of the 1990s) fame further supports the popularity of the film. (Mihic 88) By featuring Japan’s “cool” technology, corporate culture, and nerds to combat the monster, Anno strokes the Japanese pride as a way to heal from the trauma of the 3/11 disaster. He intends to show that Japan is perfectly capable of “dealing with a disaster like Fukushima in the future, so long as the old rogai are removed and the young talents and misfits are able to shine.” (Mihic 103) The ineffectiveness of Japan’s older government officials slowed down the initial response to Shin’s arrival, and after their deaths from Shin’s atomic breath create a power vacuum, Yaguchi’s team and his peers take their place and are able to enact “Operation Yashiori.”
As Japan’s cultural monster, Shin also serves to depict relations between Japan and the world in the nuclear context. His oceanic origins as a creature who consumed illegally dumped U.S. radioactive waste stands as the Other of Japan’s culture, and represents “contemporary transpacific networks.” (Suzuki 13) Despite being Japan’s iconic monster, Godzilla, in most of his iterations, remains as America’s as well. The DOE’s interest in Shin paints the United States, as helpful as they were trying to be, remain self-interested. America’s solution to the Shin problem is a third nuclear bomb, which invokes a familiar sense of dread for a lot of Japanese people. The monster reflects the anxieties about Japan as well as the United States, and since Shin represents not just the bomb but also nuclear power in general, his body is Japan’s cultural nuclear anxieties of the Other.
Godzilla is Japan’s monster, and as a cultural body, he embodies the contemporary Japanese attitudes towards nuclear power. Shin is as much of a cultural monster of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in 2011 as Gojira was for the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. By creating a version of Godzilla as a mutating monster, Anno intends to portray the evershifting and unpredictable nature of nuclear disasters. Not only is Shin an abject horror made to symbolize Japan’s suffering, he also stands in an awkward position as victimizer and victim, much like Japan’s moral dilemma throughout its history. Because of his nuclear body, he is in constant pain, and yet violently lashes out against the humanity, who was responsible for his agony. Shin as a monster holds a dark mirror against Japan, to encourage audiences to reflect on their attitudes on nuclear energy and the future it holds for humanity. Cohen’s “Monster Theory” serves as an interesting framework to examine Godzilla and his status as Japan’s cultural icon. He stands as a warning for humanity to use the fires of Prometheus wisely, or the nuclear damage could proliferate all across the world.
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