English Translation of Original "Godzilla" Novels Released Just In Time for New Movie

    

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                Sixty-nine years ago, Toho Studios released Godzilla's wrath upon the world, becoming an international sensation and inspiring nearly 40 more films and hundreds of television shows, comics, manga, and books.

            While America waits for the newest Godzilla film from Japan, Godzilla Minus One, set to release in theaters December 1st with English subtitles, the original novellas based on the 1955 classic are finally getting their English translation. The translation is done by Jeffrey Angles, professor of Japanese literature and culture at the University of Minnesota with the University of Minnesota Press.

    While the idea of the 1955 Godzilla movie came from Tomoyuki Tanaka, he recruited famous mystery and sci-fi author Shigeru Kayama. Kayama gained popularity in Japan post-WWII after publishing Orang Pendek's Revenge, later winning awards for various published works. After helping give Tanaka's movie a story, he published two novellas, Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again the same year that the original Godzilla movie came out in order to give the story more depth.

    As much fun as big monster action movies are, Angles and Takashi Yamazaki, the director of the latest installment of the Godzilla franchise, work to maintain the original message behind the story. 

    Having been released just 10 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and just one year after the Lucky Dragon No. 5 tragedy caused by the United States reckless nuclear weapon testing, Godzilla addresses dangers of nuclear weaponry and war. Its a tragic story of a legendary being who is attacked and becomes the attacker, just to be taken down again; a cycle of violence that ends in death and destruction on both sides. 

    Researchers from the Project Kayama blog talk about Kayama's reaction to the screening of the original Godzilla film:

"The 50-year-old writer had been deeply affected by the finished film, and later said that his tears were for the monster’s second punishment from mankind. After being burned and disfigured by the H-bomb, he had fallen victim to a second, more terrifying doomsday weapon. To Kayama, Godzilla was a character to be pitied, an entity whose wretched existence made him as much a victim of the bomb as any human might’ve been."

    Though many adaptations have strayed from what made the original Godzilla so powerful, Yamazaki has told The Japan News that his adaptation keeps the "Japanese spirituality." Angles' timing with the latest film installment will hopefully result in more exposure to Kayama's lessons. With tensions rising across the globe and conflicts escalating, Kayama's passivist reflection of the futile and destructive idea of an arms race may be just what the world needs.

References:

 

About Shigeru Kayama. PROJECT: KAYAMA. (2021, November 4). https://projectkayama.wordpress.com/about-shigeru-kayama/

The Japan News. (2023, November 4). Director of new godzilla film pursuing “Japanese spirituality” of 1954 original. The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun. https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/culture/film-tv/20231104-147574/

Kosaka, K. (2023, October 29). “godzilla” novellas expand on infamous Monster’s origins. The Japan Times. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2023/10/29/books/shigeru-kayama-godzilla/