The Japan Society Review 103
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 103 Volume 18 Number 3 (December 2023)

Welcome to the December issue of The Japan Society
Review! We are finishing 2023 with a great selection ofliterary works, from classic authors to new voices, fromshort stories to long historical novels, and the comebackof the iconic Godzilla. We hope you all have enjoyed ourreviews this year and would like to thank once again our
dedicated reviewers for their work. From 2024, The Japan
Society Review will be switching from a bimonthly to aquarterly publication, but will still include stimulatingsuggestions to read, watch and learn more about/from
Japan. Please let us know if you have any recommendationsof books, films, plays, exhibitions, or events to review. We
are always open to ideas and feedback from our readers.
The issue opens with a review of one of the mostbeloved classics of modern Japanese literature, Night
Train to the Stars by Miyazawa Kenji. A collection of shortstories, Miyazawa’s fairy tales and fables captivate readerswith unforgettable characters and descriptions of nature,
while also offering insights into Japanese society, folklore
and traditions. The issue also includes reviews of threeworks written by women showcasing the wide rangeof topics, styles and concerns of contemporary female
writers. The monumental The End of August, from theauthor of Tokyo Ueno Station, Yu Miri, explores the history,
trauma and identity conflicts of the Korean populationin Japan through a semi-autobiographical story. Trinity,
Trinity, Trinity by Kobayashi Erika constructs a dystopian
world where dementia, memory and the invisible threadof nuclear radiation are all intertwined. The short story of
Sasayama by Nadifa Mohamed, originally published in
Granta in 2014, details the young writer’s experience of asummer in Sasayama, a rural city in Hyogo prefecture, andher reflections as a black woman in Japan.
The last pages of the December issue feature areview of the last instalment in the legendary film saga
of Godzilla. Godzilla Minus One, directed by Yamazaki
Takashi, returns to its origins in the postwar era, deliveringa message that is at once hopeful and subversive.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

Night Train to the Stars by Miyazawa Kenji

2)

The End of August by Yu Miri

3)

Trinity, Trinity, Trinity by Kobayashi Erika

4)

Sasayama by Nadifa Mohamed

5)

Godzilla Minus One directed by Yamazaki Takashi

EditorAlejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Reviewers
Chris Corker, Laurence Green, Renae Lucas-Hall and Azmina
Sohail.
Image: Detail from the cover of Night Train to the Stars.

Night Train to the Stars
by Miyazawa Kenjitranslated by John Bester and David
MitchellVintage Classics (2022)
ISBN-13: 978-1784877767
Review by Renae Lucas-Hall

Night Train to the Stars is a collection of short stories
written by Miyazawa Kenji (1896 – 1933), one of themost cherished and enchanting authors in modern
Japan. Hailing from Hanamaki in Iwate Prefecture, anarea renowned for hot springs and stunning mountain
ranges, Miyazawa loathed his family’s pawnbroking
business because it took advantage of poor farmers, so
he chose a career in agricultural science. Unfortunately,
he passed away at the age of 37 without everexperiencing fame, despite having written over 100
stories and 800 poems. It was his family and friends who
revealed his genius to the world. His Buddhist faith isevident in most of his stories, posing philosophical andreligious questions and answers. Creating a world of
fantasy comparable with Narnia in The Lion, The Witch
and The Wardrobe (1950) by C. S. Lewis, Miyazawa‘mixed local elements with his imagination to createa literary world that is truly magical’, according to
the introduction by author and lecturer Nagai Kaori.
‘Miyazawa called his fictional world Ihatov, which hedefines as Iwate as a dreamland that really exists in his
mind. In his dreamland, everything is possible’ (p. xiii).
The first tale of the collection titled ‘Night Trainto the Stars’ takes place in Japan on the day thatcelebrates “the Festival of the Milky Way”. A young boy
called Giovanni and the rest of his class are encouragedby their teacher to go outside and look at the stars
after school. The first few pages are a lesson on the
Tanabata festival or Star Festival that takes place oncea year on the 7th day of the 7th month. Everything
seems ordinary up until the section titled “Milky Way
Station” when one is transported into a unique worldof make-believe. Giovanni and his friend Campanella
can run like the wind in this fantasyland without
getting out of breath, geese taste like sweet candy,
and maps given out at the Milky Way Station are madeof obsidian. Giovanni’s train ticket allows him to travel
all the way to Heaven and beyond.
In Japan, fox spirits or kitsune can shapeshift,
bewitch, and trick people. The theme is jealousy in thenext story ‘The Earthgod and the Fox’. This fox reminds
us of people who stretch the truth to impress others.
2

However, the death at the end of this story provesthat a lot of Miyazawa’s fables may not be meant forchildren.
Foxes are mentioned again in the tale, ‘General
Son Ba-Yu’. ‘They can put a whole army of close on
ten thousand under their spell’ (p.66). This is a story of
three Chinese doctors who are also brothers living in acountry called La-yu. General Son Ba-yu returns to his
village from ‘the sands beyond the Great Wall’ but hehas been riding for so long he is stuck to his horse andhe cannot dismount! The doctors rectify all his pains
and problems with their magic medicines and potions.
‘Ozbel and the Elephant’ is a story about greed
and trickery. Ozbel puts an elephant to work andtakes advantage of him until his friends rescue him.
In ‘The First Deer Race’, the protagonist Kaju cansuddenly understand what the deer are saying (deerare considered messengers to the gods) and thefamous bear hunter Fuchizawa Kojuro can understandthe bears talking in ‘The Bears of Nametoko’. In thisnarrative, the death of the bear hunter is treated witha high level of respect showing the fine line between
the living and the deceased as both are considered
to be of great importance. This is connected to both
Buddhism and Shintoism.
Mr Kaneta Ichiro is invited by the Wildcat to a trial
as a judge in ‘The Wildcat and the Acorns’. The fact there
are 300 tiny acorns all wearing red trousers reminds
the reader of Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swiftand his interactions with the Lilliputians. The acorns
are competing to be the roundest, the biggest, or thetallest. The Wildcat offers a reward to Ichiro for helping
him which brings to mind the Japanese customs of on(benevolence) and giri (obligation). Gift giving is an
essential aspect in Japanese culture for fostering social
connections between friends and business partners.
The Wildcat also arranges for a carriage to transport
Ichiro back home. ‘A magnificent carriage, constructedwith a large white mushroom, materialized before
them. It was pulled by a peculiar grey horse, resemblinga rat in appearance’. Filmmaker Miyazaki Hayao, afervent admirer of Miyazawa, may have been inspiredby this mushroom carriage described on page 103. It
could have potentially influenced the creation of the
nekobasu or catbus in the Studio Ghibli animation film
My Neighbour Totoro (1988).
Remember the ‘Drink Me’ potion in Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll
which makes the drinker shrink in size? What about
the red and blue pill that Morpheus offers Neo in thefilm The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999) ? In another
Issue 103 Volume 18 Number 3 (December 2023)

Miyazawa’s tale, ‘The Man of the Hills’, a Chinese manoffers the protagonist a drink which turns him into asmall box on page 136. Later in the story, he is offereda pill to change him back to his normal self.
‘The Thirty Frogs’ is a cautionary tale which is notunlike a yakuza trap in Shinjuku. These 30 frogs work
hard and enjoy their daily tasks. Everything goes wellfor the frogs until they came across a new shop with asign ‘Imported Whisky – two and a half rin a cup’ (a rin
is one-thousandth of a Japanese yen) on page 166. This
shop is run by a bullfrog who plies them with whisky.
When they cannot pay their bills, he sets them to work,
keeping them inebriated so they cannot escape but, inthe end, the bullfrog does shows remorse.
One of the most charming stories is ‘The Fire
Stone’ which features a young hare named Homoi
who saves a baby bird from drowning and in doing
so he receives a fire stone from the king. It is a special

and very beautiful stone, and he can see the Milky Way
inside it when he put it to his eye. In this enchanting
yarn, the animals gracefully emulate the Japanesetradition of bowing. A heartwarming moment occurs
when the mother bird instructs her young lark to bid
farewell with a proper bow. As readers delve into thisdelightful chronicle, reminiscent of Beatrix Potter’s The
Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), they will find themselves
captivated by its gentle lessons on goodness andkindness.
Miyazawa’s fairy tales and fables not only captivate
readers with their unforgettable characters and superb
descriptions of nature, but also offer profound insights
into society, relationships, the class system, values,
vices, and the importance of acceptance. By reading
his stories, we are enriched with a sense of joy andinspired to improve ourselves as individuals and as acollective.§

The End of August

relations between Japan and Korea are exposed
through characters such as a young teenager who istricked into becoming a comfort woman for Japanesesoldiers. Yu is present within the story as both potential
authorial self-insert and character in her own right.
Touted as a semi-autobiographical dissection ofnationhood and family, the novel goes to great pains to
cut deep into the minefield of identity as comprised ofwhat we are born into, and what is imposed on us. Yu’s
authorial voice is sharp and modern in its approach,mixing in a constant breath-like refrain of inhalationand exhalation (the ever-present rhythm of the runner),whilst simultaneously feeling in debt to classic familial
sagas like Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters. The result
is a work that feels like a totem of high literary ‘art’ impossible to consume as a straightforward narrative,
but rather as a series of interlinked experiments; penportraits that need to be chewed over, savoured, andanalysed in minutely slow page-by-page detail toextract maximum value.
What fascinates about Miri is her multifacetedness
as a writer. The now sadly out of print Gold Rush saw her
operating with a literary tone and pace that felt moreakin to a crime thriller author, while some of the best
moments of the aforementioned Tokyo Ueno Station
felt like the script to a primetime TV documentary.
The End of August feels like something else again; solyrically (and sometimes quite literally textually) boldin places - with many passages of Korean language
left largely untranslated in this English version - andyet offering a tale that is ultimately about the mostby Yu Miritranslated by Morgan Giles
Tilted Axis Press (2023)
ISBN-13: 978-191128469
Review by Laurence GreenHow does one go about piecing together the minutiae
of generational trauma? To unpick and unpack theheavy theme of postwar migration of Koreans to Japanin novel form, without appearing trite or superficial? Ifanyone is up to the challenge, then surely it is Yu Miri,whose Tokyo Ueno Station was a razor-like intervention
into the much-overlooked theme of homelessness
in Japan. Unafraid to tackle arguably taboo themes,
Yu was well-deservedly rewarded when Morgan
Giles’ deft translation of Tokyo Ueno Station picked
up a National Book Award in 2020, simultaneously
prompting renewed interest in the book back in Japan.
In The End of August - originally released in
2004 in Japanese, but appearing for the first time in
English translation, again from Morgan Giles - Yu
turns the lens on another complex, intimidating topic.
Taking as its setting 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea,
the plot centres around star runner Lee Woo-Cheol,
who - in what is a deft bit of blurring between autofiction and reality - is the grandfather of Yu Miri. The
novel plays out as a complex familial web of relatives
and acquaintances, past and present intermixed andinterwoven in much the same manner as the fraught
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3essential of human drives and desires. The novel feels
intimately wrapped up in a zone of consciousness inwhich nation and body are inseparable - sex, language,
blood, birth - all become an inseparable tangle ofthoughtspace in which identity - Korean, Japanese,
both, neither - become questions that require thespace of 700 pages worth of textual disassemblage to
get even halfway closer to answering.
The End of August stands as both a supreme
literary accomplishment, and supreme literarychallenge. Its intimidating length and style will proveinsurmountable for many - while for those with thepatience to work at it, excavating its rewards piece bypiece, the lyrical beauty at its heart will begin to shine
through. For those new to Yu’s writing, this is resolutely
not a great entry point - but make no doubt about it,
this hefty tome is another landmark entry in the careerof one of Japan’s most important contemporary voices,and the sheer accomplishment of its translation into
English is an impressive statement of intent in allowingthat voice to shine through to the widest possible
audience.§

Trinity, Trinity, Trinity

onset of dementia dubbed ‘turning Trinity’, the stigma
around both radiation and old people deepens.
While the emotional core of the novel is agrounded and touching tale of ageing and the fadingof memory, housed within the feverish prose is anattempt to come to terms with the aforementioned
nuclear heritage. This is not a novel about what will
happen if the world becomes irradiated; this is astory about what we have to do now that the worldis already irradiated. How can we, as human beings,
live with this invisible threat, and how can we respectradiation without revering it?
Also a visual artist by trade, Kobayashi stateson her official website that the aim of her work is torepresent the invisible. In one section of Trinity, this is
illustrated by the tireless efforts of Marie Curie to give aface to the radium she had proved only in theory, but
alongside this is the repeatedly mentioned ‘unseen
force’ that thrives in invisibility, opening doors, runningtaps and even unlocking mobile phones without theneed of touch. While the danger of Curie’s work wasplain to see in her physical deterioration, this ‘unseen
force’ is an apparently benign convenience that is intruth still dependent on the invisible threat of nuclear
radiation.
With convenience and invisibility comes
ignorance, and this forms the backbone of thegenerational conflict in the book, a war waged
between the elderly who want to remember the costof the modern world and the young who want toforget it. The rocks that the old carry are thus physicalrepresentations of a phenomenon the young haveforgotten altogether. Even while it remains.
An old man arrested for handing out irradiatedbills delivers the following message in his online
manifesto: ‘If making visible the suffering and anguishof the invisible is terrorism, then call me a terrorist. Thisis the beginning of the revenge of the invisible’.

by Kobayashi Erika
Translated by Brian Bergstrom
Astra House (2022)
ISBN-13: 978-1662601156
Review by Chris Corker
There are a number of reasons for us to be afraid of
nuclear radiation, but two in particular distinguish itfrom our other fears: its invisibility and its longevity.
The first fuels paranoia, the second a sense of futility.
Japan, the only country to have been the victim of
an atomic bomb, continues to have a complicatedrelationship with nuclear material. In fact, it is difficult
to overstate the ambivalence towards atomic energy
and its role in a sense of modernising progress. For
better or worse, nuclear power and radiation are
now part of the Japanese national psyche. The 2011
Fukushima disaster was thus not an isolated disaster,
but a resurfacing of an enduring social anxiety. Just
as with the lifespan of radiation itself, an end to thisongoing threat can seem incomprehensible.
Trinity, Trinity, Trinity by Kobayashi Erika is arumination on incomprehensibility. This sounds like a
bit of a contradiction, but all philosophical speculations
begin by trying to understand what cannot be
understood, and this book is as much a philosophicalspeculation as it is a novel. Trinity takes place during
the run up to the 2020 Olympics (although, being
written before the games, much is imagined) andcentres on a grandmother suffering from dementia,
in addition to her daughter, who seems to be on
the verge of her own form of physical and mental
breakdown. Both of these deteriorative conditions
are somehow linked to radiation, the fear of which is
beginning to divide society at large. As elderly people
begin to carry radioactive rocks, a symptom of a new
4

Issue 103 Volume 18 Number 3 (December 2023)

Revenge is a dish best served cold, but tensions
run hot as the younger generation fight to combat
this retribution, even if its only purpose is to get themto acknowledge a hidden reality. The novel itself,
which never condescends to its reader, does not shy
away from incomprehension but rather embraces it
as the first step towards understanding. The timeline
is not always clear, giving the feeling that what ishappening is not only happening now but always,that the future and past have seeped into the present
like poison. The 1964 and 2022 Tokyo Olympics form
two points on a Mobius strip so that celebration
always leads to concealment (and concealment tocelebration): spiriting away the homeless before theopening ceremony, the big questions of societal ill areforgotten in the fanfare. This concealment leads themother’s teenage daughter to conclude that reality
seems ‘obviously fake’.
Much of the world we live in now is invisible
or, we could say, virtual; but it is only when we stoptaking these virtual things (those ‘unseen forces’) for
granted that we can question at what cost comes theirinvisibility. This effort to know – even to know ugliness– is key in Trinity.
Informed by contemporary reality and painstaking
in its historical research, there is a different kind ofincomprehension at work outside of the narrative.
Translator Brian Bergstrom has done an admirable
job capturing Kobayashi’s quick-fire style, what wemight call “memo-prose”. The novel is so stuffed withimagery that it leads to a literary FOMO in which thereader suspects some deeper truth just beyond theirreach. A familiarity with modern Japanese society
and its challenges, especially the ageing populationand controversies surrounding TEPCO (Tokyo ElectricPower Company) during the Fukushima disaster,
however, should help those feeling overwhelmed.
Knowledge of the Manhattan Project would also be aplus, but a certain newly-released blockbuster movie
will help with that.
Even for the uninitiated, the array of imagery andmetaphor in Trinity is enticing. Images cascade in theblinding inundation of a death dream. Lead, the RisingSun, a shaking bed. A black cylindrical object atop a
Mahogany chest of drawers. There is a heavy metal
band named after the late pastor John Donne, whose
final sermon was considered a pronouncement of his
own demise. Several times an isolated countdown
runs down the page: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

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But counting to what? Ignition, detonation,
extinction. The music of an alarm clock is the tolling ofa bell. A chime announcing a birth and a death at thesame time. The two are conflated so that the ejectedovarian eggs of the mother are always accompanied
by a deluge of blood, ‘flowing forth to be flushed away,
to disappear completely, meaninglessly, creatingnothing, being nothing’. As with Tawada Yoko’s
equally haunting The Last Children of Tokyo (2014),
the future for subsequent generations is bleak, thenoted miscarriage of Marie Curie’s own baby a dark
premonition for those that follow in an age of nuclear
contamination.
The thought of a line of female descendants
is something that soothes the mother, but as thenovel draws to a close it becomes clear that her line
has been cursed to suffer her own fate of destructive
morbidity. A Donne poem quoted in Trinity ends: ‘oneshort sleep past, we wake eternally. And death shall be
no more; death, thou shalt die’. The only eternal entity
here seems to be radiation, levels of which, Kobayashi
writes, are still detectable in the graves of the long ago
deceased.
While the symbolism of the rock as radioactive
vessel is most apparent in Trinity, an arguably more
important symbol is that of fire, the most enigmaticof humankind’s symbols. Just as Oppenheimer andhis scientists in New Mexico gathered around ‘thegadget’ and hoped for a flame, so the charactershere crowd around the television for a glimpse of
the Olympic torch. As she does so well elsewhere,
Kobayashi manages to intertwine two Prometheanconflagrations representing progress and its cost. ‘Aslong as there was fire,’ thinks the mother in Trinity,‘they were powerless not to fly into it’. Detonation andjubilation seem to go hand in hand.
To return to the epigraph at the beginning of thisreview, Trinity, Trinity, Trinity asks how the Japanesepeople can hope to contest with an invisible andundying threat. Perhaps the simplest answer thebook has to offer is that we must first recognise that itexists. Kobayashi has written a novel that does a truly
impressive job of threading modern anxieties into acompelling story that is informed by both wartime
history and contemporary societal issues. Like all goodworks of art, this one does not preach but asks thereader to begin searching for answers themselves,because to understand the incomprehensible you
must first admit that you don’t know what it is.
And then, that you want to learn.§
5Sasayama
by Nadifa Mohamed

Granta (2014)
Review by Azmina Sohail
When reading about meetings between Eastern andWestern cultures we often associate it with contrasts
between an Asian tradition and a European tradition. But
what happens when the Eastern culture is Japanese andthe ‘Western’ culture is African, or in the case of Nadifa
Mohamed’s essay, Somalian? Sasayama, published in
Granta in 2014, details the young writer’s experience ofa summer in Sasayama, a rural city in Hyogo prefectureand her reflections as a black woman.
It can be argued that one of the outstanding
physical qualities of a black woman is her hair. The
beauty of the Afro is that it is a particular texture that
requires specific care and treatments. Mohamed is fully
aware of this and implies that it was unlikely she would
meet a black hairdresser on her trip so had brought
products from London, namely “relaxers”. On thisoccasion however, she had had a mishap after using ‘ahome-dye kit’ and resorted to visiting a salon.
Her cycle ride through Sasayama to the salon
details the epitome of rural Japan with the ‘heavy
washing machines spinning in yards, discarded snake
skins... rice paddies sibilant with crickets and tended
by bent-backed old women wearing neon plastic
visors’. The imagery here connotes a homely life withlaundry, food, and families - a stark contrast to her life
in London she details later on. She ultimately enjoys
her environment stating ‘I felt far from home and free’.
When she arrives at the salon, her insecurity of
appearing different is made apparent. She gestures
to the owners in ‘the stiff-necked way that the local
teenage boys seemed to find so amusing’ to blow dry
her hair. The owners seem happy to help by exclaiming‘Hai! Hai’(Yes! Yes)’ and lead her to the central chair in theroom. They then attempt to style her hair with ‘paddle
brushes’, dryers and flat irons, ‘sweating’ and ‘flushing’Godzilla Minus One
Directed by Yamazaki Takashi (2023)
Cast: Kamiki Ryunosuke, Hamabe Minami, Yamada
Yuki
Review by Chris Corker
There is a tendency to think lightly of the Godzilla
franchise, to chalk it off as a popcorn entertainment
6

around her. What’s interesting is that the owners
themselves look different from what is associated withrural life. The man is wearing ‘tight black trousers’, has‘heavily plucked eyebrows’ and a ‘line of foundation
along his jaw’ whilst the girl has a ‘row of empty piercings
along the cartilage of her ear’. It’s possible that theirappearance may have caused them insecurity living
in Sasayama; in this moment the notion of “appearing
different” actually binds them together but it’s unclear
whether Mohamed herself recognises this.
Mohamed then thinks back to her life in London
which is equally busy, fast-paced and full of life. In
contrast to Sasayama, London was uncertain, where‘decisions need to be made, seemingly so quickly
about where to work, where to live’ and ‘who to be’.
It seems to match the uncertainty of the hairdressers
and how to treat her hair. Despite their efforts, her hairturns out to be ‘large, newsreader-style and brittle withhairspray’ which she quietly accepts eventually cycling
back home ‘letting the breeze do the rest.’
The essay gives a brief but strong insight into
the notion of cultural diversity within rural Japan.
Mohamed is fully aware that this is something yet
to develop but appreciates the efforts being made.
“Difference” comes in all shapes and sizes with thehairdressers themselves appearing different fromthose traditionally associated with rural Japan. It will
only take time and exposure to people like Mohamed
for the people of rural Sasayama to fully embrace andunderstand the life of a young black woman.§that is principally for those in their mid to late-teens.
This view undervalues its cultural significance. While
the original movie may have its origins in the lessthan-stellar American monster flick The Beast from
20,000 Fathoms (1953) – itself an adaptation of Ray
Bradbury’s The Fog Horn (1951), in which a dinosaur
rises from the depths to answer the low moaning callof a lighthouse – the Godzilla movies have from their
beginnings been intertwined with a postwar moral
Issue 103 Volume 18 Number 3 (December 2023)

reconciliation and the ongoing threat of nuclear
disaster. While some of the films in the franchiseembody the more lurid delights of the aforementioned
The Beast, others have embraced postwar tragedy
for a more elegiac tone similar to that found in the
Bradbury short story.
Minus One is most certainly an elegy. In
interviews director Yamazaki Takashi has been keen to
stress that this movie is a very different beast (get it?)from 2016’s Shin Godzilla, and it is difficult to overstate
how disparate the two films are. Where Shin, a satiricaltake on the ineptness of the government during the
3/11 Tohoku disaster, is darkly comical in tone, Minus
One is a film that takes itself entirely seriously, attimes perhaps to the extent of feeling overwrought.
Given the directness of its historical setting in theyears immediately following 1945, however, andan approach that does not squirm away from theugliness left behind as the shadow of war recedes,
Minus One still packs an emotional punch. Moreover,a switch from what Yamazaki calls the ‘creepy’ designof Shin’s Godzilla to the intensely wrathful version
found here results in a genuine malice to the creaturethat it could be argued has not been seen since theoriginal 1954 design.
The plot follows a former kamikaze pilot,
Shikishima who, with the war coming to an end,
withdraws without orders from the front lines to a
repair base on Odo Island. Already filled with shame,
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an encounter with an as yet un-irradiated Godzilla on
the island once again sees him paralysed with fear andunable to take action. While his life is spared, he carries
the further burden of those he believes died becauseof his inability to act. While he might expect his returnto Tokyo to be a form of escape from the horrors of
the war, in the ruins of his former community he finds
only further death, guilt and misery. When the now
gargantuan Godzilla begins to run amok in the wardof Shinagawa a year later, Shikishima must muster thecourage to protect his adopted family and the modest
life they have managed to make for themselves.
What Minus One captures best is a sense ofhelplessness, important given the historical context.
The characters in this film have little with which tocombat Godzilla, a monster taller than a skyscraper,
fuelled by a seemingly endless supply of nuclear
energy and with the ability to regenerate its wounds.
One of the tensest scenes in the film features a sea
bound chase reminiscent of the film Jaws (1975), with
our heroes trying to defeat the creature with a small
mounted automatic gun and recommissioned mines.
When a Japanese battle cruiser arrives to assist, it
becomes clear that no matter the size of the gun, no
matter the ferocity of the weapons that have taken
the lives of so many humans, they are no match to
Godzilla, the result of savage prehistorical evolution
and a potentially world-ending elemental force. As
has been noted by scholars writing on the Godzilla
movies, such as William Tsutsui, there is a strange
catharsis in viewing this hopelessness. Hubris reduced
to futility thrills as much as it disconcerts.
In the face of such overwhelming power, only
a miracle can save the day. In the Showa era (19261989) original, this was the development of a new
deadly weapon that its creator, Doctor Serizawa,
believes is so dangerous that he takes its secrets to
his early grave. This gives the film, even as its heroes
celebrate at the conclusion, a sombre tone, as well as
leaving the audience with the unsettling idea that theadvancement of lethal technology will never cease.

7As much as it echoes the original, one of Minus One’s
real strengths is in its deviation from that conclusion.
Yamazaki has told interviewers that while Shin wasconcerned with the government, this new film isabout civilians; and here those civilians are not only
victims but the basis for a miracle that comes from
community rather than government. And, while thetechnology used is hardly benign in its application, it
is starkly different to the destructive force that gives
birth to Godzilla. In reality, the weapons here are ones
intended for military use but put to new purpose, areapplication in fitting with the overall credo of thecharacters here: we must live beside this postwar
legacy but move forwards and away from it.
Minus One delivers a message that is at once
hopeful and subversive. It is an assertion thatgovernments cannot be trusted to deal with an evilthat they help to spread. In our modern ecologicalsituation, in which nuclear contamination can be
replaced by a number of other forms of insidious
harm, the film contains a call for communities to cometogether to combat a legacy of destruction that thosesame governments are seen as incapable of fixing.
In this, Shin and Minus One are similar. But while theending of Minus One stops only marginally short ofsaying ‘Godzilla will return’, its tone is not as sombre,even if there is a closing hint at the radiation-based
sickness that is left in Godzilla’s wake. There are somemistakes, after all, that do not permit recovery withouta caveat.
Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Bebergal describes
the ‘paradox’ of Godzilla as a character of both joy
and fear, concluding that the monster has evolved so
far beyond his original metaphor for scientific hubristhat he can never return. But is this versatility not thestrength of such a cultural icon? I would argue that

Godzilla has never been entirely cut loose from histies with nuclear disaster and the 1954 Daigo Fukuryu
Maru incident, and those ties are no clearer than in
Minus One. Closing in on the 70th anniversary of the
franchise, this film is a return; it is a return to a Godzillawith the presence to incite terror, and a return to alandscape ravaged by war, but it is also a return to thetrue cautionary warning that Godzilla embodies: thepitfalls of unshackled progress. Now that the word hasentered common parlance we can add another tag tothis versatile character: Godzilla is the product of the
Anthropocene.
Despite all of this subtext, Godzilla: Minus One
manages somehow to be an entertaining blockbuster
that, while sometimes overt in its use of pathos, forthe most part earns its emotional highs and lows. It
is also a movie that deserves to be seen on the big
screen, to feel that strange viewing catharsis as thepower of Godzilla’s roar hits you like the train hethrows so effortlessly through the sky. Minus One is
one of those rare films that delivers both in ecstatic
thrills and sobering reflections: in sum, it is a film that
fulfils the potential the films have always possessed,
even if only a handful have realised it. §