In Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning period film Oppenheimer, a biopic of the “father of the atomic bomb,” Robert J. Oppenheimer is consumed with guilt upon hearing the news of the bombing of Hiroshima-Nagasaki during World War II. Cillian Murphy’s stone-cold blue eyes watch his audience drown into oblivion as he addresses a press conference. This is the only scene when Nolan tells us the outcome of Oppenheimer’s inventions, leaving Japan’s war-torn fate to the audience’s imagination.
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Oppenheimer has been criticized by many, including filmmaker Spike Lee, for not showing Japan’s side of the story. The biopic remains focused solely on its subject, not giving us the chance to travel to the other side of the Pacific Ocean to understand the devastation his scientific exploits wreaked on an entire country and its people. There is not a single Japanese face in the entire film, making it entirely US-centric and conveniently missing out on including a more important, global picture.
Another Oscar winner, Takashi Yamazaki’s Japanese kaiju film Godzilla Minus One, has emerged as a worthy companion piece, covering what Oppenheimer missed. Since its global release on Netflix, Godzilla Minus One has been regarded as arguably the best Godzilla film in recent memory, several notches above Adam Wingard’s recent American blockbuster Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. With the new kaiju film, Japan not only reclaimed its original IP of Godzilla but also reclaimed the pop-culture narrative surrounding the bombing of Hiroshima-Nagasaki by the US at the end of World War II.
survivor’s guilt
Koichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot, escapes World War II by landing on Odo Island by feigning technical problems in his fighter jet to save himself from the battlefield. That same day, Godzilla returns to attack his comrades. He freezes and falls unconscious before he can shoot the creature. He is one of two people who survive the attack and upon returning to Tokyo he learns that his parents have been killed in American air raids. He takes two orphaned children – a woman and a child – under his protection.
Although the bombing is not shown in the film, its aftermath is shown on screen as Koichi returns home. During his return home he is confronted with loss and guilt as he slowly realizes how much damage the war has caused. His pain reflects the destruction of his country – a wound that will take years to heal. But at the heart of his personal atonement is the guilt of betraying his country. This is very different from Oppenheimer’s guilt – the guilt of standing by his country while it destroyed another.
Koichi’s guilt is that of the survivor, a far cry from the destroyer’s guilt that consumes Oppenheimer. While the American nuclear physicist could not have foreseen the damage his invention would cause, the Japanese kamikaze fighter never had a choice. When he chooses to save himself rather than his country, that choice haunts him until he gets it right. He has no choice but to look Godzilla in the eye, unlike Oppenheimer who could escape his unwitting complicity by repenting in an asylum.
Godzilla – Allegory of Nuclear War
Takashi Yamazaki’s kaiju film is Japanese company Toho Entertainment’s first live-action Godzilla movie in 7 years, made possible thanks to a contract with American production house Legendary Entertainment, which has made three sequels in the same time frame – Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024). Clearly, the US is making money off of a property inspired by its own atomic bombing of Japan in 1945.
Godzilla was conceived a mere nine years after the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it reflected the horrors of nuclear war. In the first Godzilla film released in 1954, director Ishirō Honda showed that the prehistoric monster was awakened by nuclear radiation. In fact, the wrinkles and scales on Godzilla’s skin resembled the keloid scars on survivors of the US bombing of Japan. But when the US adapted it into Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, it erased references to the atomic bombs and World War II. In fact, in later installments, it even blamed Godzilla’s reawakening on a French nuclear experiment and described the atomic bomb as the antidote for the monster Godzilla.
Now, with its design of the MonsterVerse, the US has presented Godzilla as an anti-hero, often teaming up with American scientists to save the world from a greater threat. But those films have never moved beyond the hallmarks of money-grubbing or empty spectacle. After the Godzilla movie-bombing, Japan’s new kaiju film is the most faithful to Godzilla’s origins. It presents the monster as a symbol of all things bad – war, nuclear weapons and the apocalypse.
Christopher Nolan never admitted to denying Japan’s side of the story in Oppenheimer. But he did call Godzilla Minus One a “tremendous” film. Takashi Yamazaki, on the other hand, wanted to one day make a Japanese film that would be a fitting answer to the Oppenheimer omission. With Godzilla Minus One, it seems he’s already made one. Oppenheimer may have dominated the Academy Awards, but Godzilla Minus One also achieved a historic feat. While it gave Japan its first win in the Best Visual Effects category at the Academy Awards, it also accomplished what none of Hollywood’s countless kaiju films have been able to do – get Godzilla his first Oscar.
