The Broken Telegraph Godzilla and Post-WWII Japanese-American Relations

ANTHONY MASUCCI

OBJECTS OF STUDY

Ishiro Honda’s 1954 film Gojira in comparison with its Anglo-translated 1956 American release as Godzilla, King of the Monsters! to discuss post-WWII and post-occupation relations and visual culture translation through Darko Suvin’s Estrangement and Cognition.

THESIS

Ishiro Honda’s 1954 film Gojira is significant in the Post-WWII era because Japan uses estrangement through cognition to discuss their direct experience of the destruction that nuclear warfare brought with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Gojira’s use of cognitive estrangement to represent nuclear trauma however becomes subjected to American censorship and visual culture Ishiro Honda, Gojira, 1954. translation with the creation of America’s 1956 Godzilla, King of the Monsters! Through investigating the American translation of Gojira, what becomes gained and lost from manipulating visual culture to translate and estrange Japan’s collective trauma is critical in discussing post-WWII Japanese-American relationships. I will argue that Godzilla equally represents itself as a significantly relevant product of both postwar Anglo-American culture as well as postwar Japanese culture: a product of the atomic bombs, American censorship, and of translating postwar visual culture through cognitive estrangement. [In Proportional Notation] (1952/53) Notation] [In Proportional

RESEARCH AND SOURCES

My preliminary research began with sources investigating Japanese visual culture of manga and anime. Manga and anime’s ability to estrange and emphasize aspects of the everyday has been written extensively and I became interested in looking into its massive international success, especially with concern to its translation into other languages. Through researching multiple articles discussing 4'33" Cage, John Terry Morse and Ishiro Honda, Godzilla: King of the Monsters!, 1956. Japanese translation of media, one author kept appearing in all bibliographies: American author and historian John W. Dower. Dower’s extensive research in his novels War Without Mercy and Embracing Defeat were crucial in my research of the historical dynamics of Japanese-American relations between 1945-56. Dower’s historical approach in his writings lead to me exploring both American and Japanese government documents focusing on the censorship and exploitation of Japanese media expression, as well as American-military documents focusing on the atomic bombings, which lead to my interest in investigating Japan’s largest media export post-WWII: Godzilla.

I was surprised to find the lack of academic sources that investigate the Godzilla movie franchise beyond its cinematic techniques and its nuclear metaphor. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito’s bring together one of the only critical essay collections, In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, to examine Godzilla’s significance as contemporary visual culture. David Kalat’s novel A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series is crucial in the contemporary discourse of Godzilla’s visual culture as he provides the most extensive discussion of Godzilla beyond nuclear metaphor in all of my research. Kalat explores the Godzilla movies in the context of media and public responses, as well as providing extensive research in each film’s production to create a historic-timeline of Godzilla’s relationship with global events. Kalat however does not discuss Japanese and American censorship of cinema extensively, which is where another critical source to my research arises: Kyoko Hirano’s Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Under the American Occupation, 1945-1952. Hirano’s expansive research of censorship ultimately lead me back to my original research of manga and anime’s strategy of emphasis and estrangement which drew many similarities with Godzilla. In the context of Honda’s film being science fiction, I ended my research with science fiction critic Darko Suvin’s Estrangement and Cognition: a source regarded as the origin point for decades of literary and theoretical criticism of science fiction. Suvin’s emphasis on the significance of estranging what is defined as cognitive became my primary scope in interpreting Godzilla as a Japanese-American visual language.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Does discussing postwar experience through the estrangement of science fiction negate or validate those traumas?

How does Honda’s Gojira visually translate the first-hand Japanese nuclear warfare experiences and American censorship from the 1945-52 occupation? Ishiro Honda, Gojira, 1954.

How is Japanese visual culture translated and altered into American visual culture with Morse’s Godzilla, King of the Monsters! ? What becomes lost and gained through this process?

Are there issues of translation throughout the continuing Godzilla movie franchise that has been lost or gained from Honda’s 1954 film? BIOGRAPHY

CONCLUSION Anthony Masucci is a recent graduate of the Visual and Critical Studies program and Toronto-based The censorship and mistranslation of Honda’s original film ultimately allows Godzilla to speak for more than its intentional purpose photographer. He has exhibited photography work of expressing Japanese experiences and now becomes an estrangement of American translation of visual culture. This is apparent in in Canada, Japan, and South Korea, as well as Godzilla, King of the Monsters re-purposing scenes to only progress a narrative of entertainment, English dubbing of original Japanese having both written and photographic work in dialogue and censorship of scenes that criticize nuclear technologies in their continual testing. Godzilla through postwar-American several published journals. His current translation changes its context from being an estrangement of postwar Japanese experience and recovery to American media photography work investigates and exploits entertainment: both of which are crucial in understanding the dynamics of post-WWII Japanese-American relations. The American methodologies of objectivity and subjectivity translation of Godzilla in Godzilla, King of the Monsters is significant because of its complete alteration of Japanese perspective being through memory, possession and vocabulary. only beneficial to the American narrative of postwar visual language. Through giving agency to both American and Japanese perspectives, Godzilla will continue to be a visual language which ultimately estrange the realities of its environment, whether it be You can view his photography projects at: nuclear warfare or an expression of entertainment of a dinosaur stomping on buildings. masucci.format.com

Honours BA in Visual and Critical Studies Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences

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