Almost 70 years prior to the recently released \u201cGodzilla\u00a0Minus One<\/b>,\u201d director Ishir\u014d Honda, a long time friend of\u00a0Akira Kurosawa<\/span><\/a>, revolutionized what is called Tokusatsu (a Japanese term for live-action films or television programs that make heavy use of special effects). Eiji Tsuburaya (special effects director and a co-creator of the\u00a0Godzilla\u00a0and Ultraman franchises) and Honda became the driving forces of Tokusatsu which was implemented in 1954\u2019s \u201cGodzilla<\/span><\/a>\u201d \u2014 the original film which spurred on the genre of Japanese monster movies.<\/p>\n Inspired by the American film \u201cKing Kong<\/a>,\u201d Tsuburaya formulated many of the techniques that would become staples of the genre, such as so-called suit-mation \u2014 the use of a human actor in a costume to play a giant monster which was combined with the use of miniatures and scaled-down city sets. Not only had the two developed an unprecedented approach to make the original \u201cGodzilla<\/span><\/strong>,\u201d but they were also addressing the core theme of the film, and what Godzilla<\/span> intended to represent the coming nuclear agenda: the threat of atomic bomb proliferation.<\/p>\n Director Honda had served in the Sino-Japanese War. It ended in China, where he was a prisoner of war for six months. During that time, all of Honda’s siblings had passed away. Then, in 1945, while returning home by train from China, Honda saw Hiroshima destroyed by an atomic bomb and was deeply shocked and haunted by this memory. Now, in the latest film, \u201cGodzilla<\/span> Minus One<\/strong>\u201d it syncs in perfect unison with the original idea and resonates with an emotional after effect of what Honda had originally intended \u2014 to represent Godzilla<\/span> as a nuclear bomb. The two bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in human history.<\/p>\n @Courtesy of Toho Co., LTD.<\/p>\n For months afterward, many people died from the after effects of burns, radiation sickness, and injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. It took years to grow any vegetable in the radiation-infused soil. Apartments and stores were eventually built from the ground-up. After World War II, many people lost family members, and barely scraped by on a daily basis. In those days, Japanese people not only lost their homes or family, but also their beliefs. During the Meiji period, Shinto had been made Japan’s state religion. Shinto priests became state officials, important shrines received governmental funding and Japan’s creation myths were used to foster a national identity with the emperor at its center.<\/p>\n The Japanese concept of the divinity of the Emperor is often misunderstood by Westerners. During the \u201830s, there were some who taught that the Emperor was akitsu mikami (\u201cmanifest god\u201d).\u00a0 The Emperor’s kami nature, coupled with his direct descent from Ameratsu (the highest kami), made him so superior that the Japanese thought it entirely logical that people should unquestioningly obey the Emperor and worship him.<\/p>\n With all that in mind, the film starts off with its Kamikaze pilot protagonist, K\u014dichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), finding excuses not to sacrifice his own life for what is now seen as a lost cause. Doubting his belief in Shintoism, he engaged in the action by landing his plane on an island service base, figuring that his complaint of machine faults was a way to avoid responsibility and his death.<\/p>\n @Courtesy of Toho Co., LTD.<\/p>\n Not only did he abort his suicide mission by landing his plane on Oda Island, but Shikishima froze when he was first confronted by an emerging monster \u2014 what the locals called Godzilla<\/span>. In his hesitation, he fails to shoot at the creature for fear of drawing deadly attention and indirectly costs the life of almost the entire ground crew of the island\u2019s airbase. K\u014dichi is trapped in the moment through his cowardice, unable to move on with his life because \u201cmy war isn\u2019t over yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Carrying the guilt of surviving, imagine if you couldn\u2019t sacrifice your life to the Japanese government or the Emperor, and you had to carry that guilt for the rest of life. It\u2019s not just Shikishima, that recurring guilt trip was faced by most of the surviving Japanese soldiers in those days.<\/p>\n Shikishima returns to a Tokyo burned and smashed by air raids and finds out that his parents are deceased and his home is a pile of matchsticks. He then builds a makeshift family with a young woman, Noriko (Minami Hamabe) who also lost everything, and baby Akiko (adorably played by Sae Nagatani who later appears as a three-year-old). Noriko ends up looking after the child when she sees Akiko\u2019s mother die in a bomb shelter.<\/p>\n Even though K\u014dichi doesn\u2019t feel worthy of love while being with Noriko, he steps up to the responsibilities. He provides for her and the infant by taking a risky but well-paying job manning the gun on a wooden mine-clearing boat working in the coastal waters outside Tokyo.<\/p>\n Before long, K\u014dichi again comes face to face with the slavering jaws of his mega-lizard nemesis. But now Godzilla<\/span>, having been bathed by radiation from the first Bikini Atoll nuclear test in 1946, Godzilla e<\/span>manates a devastating heat ray which mimics the heat wave of a nuclear weapon. The post-war Japanese government, which then had no military force, and GHQ, the occupying force, are too concerned with the Soviets, so, the streets of Ginza are left to be completely eradicated.<\/p>\n @Courtesy of Toho Co., LTD.<\/p>\n With his failed suicide mission and the entire army unit frozen in front of the big creature, he realizes that he was destined to face the monster. Shikishima joins forces with other former soldiers who also had been living in a corner of Tokyo, and with their limited equipment and supplies, they devise a strategy to destroy Godzilla <\/span>in order to prevent its next attempt to land on Japan.<\/p>\n![\"Godzilla](\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/640-1.jpg\")
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@Courtesy of Toho Co., LTD.<\/p>\n