"You can tell your son about it when he's born, Major Spielberg."
I mean, let's recap the plot: people from the future arrive in Japan giving dire warnings of destruction meaning Godzilla must be destroyed before his birth, but secretly planning to destroy future economic superpower Japan by arranging the creation of the monster King Ghidorah. Fortunately not only is Godzilla brought back bigger than before by a random nuclear sub but the Japanese person amongst them, at one point seeming to be a possible love interest for the male lead but ending up as his great grandaughter (er...) is able to return to her time and bring back a cyborg King Ghidorah to save the day.
Yes, that all actually happens. Gloriously mad, is it not?
This film, with its different backstory for King Ghidorah, with (despite some misdirection) no aliens about, underlines the fact that the films from 1984 onwards are a different continuity. It also adds a nice bit of backstory in that the creature that became Godzilla in 1984 was previously a dinosaur in the South Pacific that saved some Japanese soldiers from an American assault in 1944.
There's lots of splendid city destruction with models. there's lots of cheeky "tributes" to Hollywood too- the computer interface of the time machine looks an awful lot like Doc Brown's DeLorean, while the pursuing android looks suspiciously like the baddie from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. This sort of thing makes the film even more fun.
There's one big caveat, though; Japan never underwent the equivalent of West Germany's de-Nazification, and it shows in the nationalistic subtext here. There's a definite glee in Japan's future economic domination; the android antagonist is definitely coded as American and, worst of all, the Imperial Japanese Army is presented as honourable. Let us be clear: it had absolutely no honour whatsoever, and its officers were not gentlemen.
Disturbing subtext aside, though, I enjoyed this splendidly silly film.
Modern Japan has often been accused of glossing over Imperial Japan's wartime atrocities, which is certainly a fair criticism - as shown in a shocking WW2 museum in Japan, they glorify war criminals, and tend to glide over Japan's war guilt - though in some occasions when it is raised by some modern Japanese citzens who have a more full grasp of the history, it hardly denies it either.
ReplyDeleteJapan in WW2 was a brutal and inhuman oppressor, but in Modern Japan, it is treated that the Japanese are more likely to remember WW2 for Hiroshima, the intense fire-bombing of Tokyo or the heavy losses incurred by both sides during the island-by-island attrition warfare in the South Pacific.
Most modern Japaneses are anti-war, but because they have a one sided viewpoint; because of their own sufferings in WW2. They too have learnt first-hand the horrors of war and the insanity of those who advocate it. When Americans landed in Okinawa, civilians killed their own families and committed suicide in other to escape torture at the hands of the Americans, because they were fed lies by the military government. Young boys were brainwashed into blood-thirsty soldiers who were told to fight to the death for a war that Japan had clearly no hope of winning since Pearl Harbor. Nearly half of Tokyo was razed in the fire-bombing campaign in the final months of WW2. Japan also became the first and only victim of the atomic bomb.
There are plenty of right-wing extremists of course today in Japan, but most Japanese are still strongly against another war happening. Paradoxically, the very thing that makes the Japanese people be anti War is because of a simple thing. The modern Japanese view of WW2 is too neutral and too morally irresponsible.
This is the reason why Modern Germany is respected and has learnt its lessons. The ugly roles of that Hitler and fascism played before and during WW2 and the various crimes have been taught as wrong to modern Germans. The German people gain their respect for peace by understanding both their own sufferings, such as in Dresden, and the sufferings of those who were victimized by the German war machine, such as the Holocaust. Both sides belong to the same coin and Germans learn about WW2 in its entirety and thus gain a respect for peace.
Japan on the other hand, has grossly overlooked the flip side of the coin. Japan’s own suffering during WW2 is overly-emphasised and the rest of Asia is all but forgotten. Japan’s starch anti-war sentiments come not from a balanced understanding of the horrors of war but from its own sufferings. Imagine if a German history textbook on WW2 talks about the carpet bombing of Dresden in great details but skims over the Holocaust. The reader will no doubt still conclude that war is a terrible thing, but it would be due to an entirely different reason. That is what is happening in Japan.
The Japanese people are peace-loving and reasonable people today, but there is a rare view of someone giving a voice to the full picture; I remember a newspaper where a Japanese jouranlist tried to argue for the crimes of Imperial Japan to not be forgotten and even offered his OWN APLOGIES for what his people did to others. In America, you can find publications that slam the Vietnam War and documentary films that talk about the My Lai massacre. In Germany, children learn about the horrors of Holocaust in school. Where are you now, Japan? Where indeed.
Very true, and going far beyond what I knew- thank you! Japan has indeed never come to terms with its war guilt, yet it is nevertheless a strong democracy today, and needs to be an ally in the current climate.
ReplyDeleteOne of the more betters examples where it is done fairly is with the Japanese Anime Zipang, which features a modern day Japanese destroyer being sent back in time to WW2; right from the start, the characters try to AVOID changing history. As modern Japanese, they are aware the country in WW2 is run by imperlists with a mindset different from theirs. While Zipang might make little mention of Japan's wartime crimes, it hardly potrays the Imperial Japanese as honorable either; with various modern Day Japanese characters clearly having a dislike for some of the more stubbon and warmonger imperial Japanese officers, highlighting the modern Japanese as more benevolent and valuing human life, compared to the more cold blooded imperial japanese. There is even a scene where the modern Japanese characters meet up with a fictional version of Mitsumasa Yonai, former Navy Minister, who states his belief that Japan has to lose the war for its own good.
DeleteThe anime even answers the question why the Modern Day Japanese simply not just try to aid the Americans; this is highlighted when one of the modern Japanese, who happens to be a pacifist and against changing history, ends up reluctantly being the one to propose fighting in self defense, because they are a Japanese ship flying the Japanese flag and every Allied/American plane, ship and solider saw them as an enemy and attacked them.
I haven't seen more than a couple of animes, but this seems intriguing.
ReplyDelete