Godzilla: Lizard of Peace - Page 3

In the uncut Japanese version, Nakane clearly blames the underwater hydrogen bomb testing for driving Godzilla to the surface and, it is suggested, that Godzilla's natural food supply was killed by the testing. Yet somehow, Godzilla had survived. Nakane identifies Godzilla as a living fossil, a link between the aquatic and the land-dwelling dinosaurs and definitely carnivorous. This theory wasn't so far fetched because in 1938, the Coelacanth, a kind of fish that pre-dates the dinosaurs, was rediscovered.

In Japan, there is a saying: Jishin-kaminari-kaji-oyaji. Translated this means: earthquake, lightening, fire and father. These were supposedly the four things the Japanese feared most. This was, of course, pre-Godzilla days.

And with the absence of the intrepid American reporter, Steve Martin (Raymond Burr), the plot centers on these three things although slightly altered. Godzilla brings both fire and lightening (his breath untamed by anything minty fresh can melt cars and metal towers) and his every footstep is an earthquake.

Nakane is the father of Emiko (Momoko Kochi), a woman raised with her father's favorite student, Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), and in love with a dashing seaman, Hideo Ogata (Akira Takarada). Ogata hopes to ask Emiko's father for permission to marry and Emiko needs to gently inform Serizawa that she hopes to marry Ogata, despite whatever expectations others might have had for them.

Serizawa was injured in the war, losing sight in one eye. With a patch over his eye, he has isolated himself--not because of post-war stress, but because he harbors a secret. Serizawa has discovered the Oxygen Destroyer, something that once released causes a flash of light and strips the flesh from the bones of the animals immersed in the water with it. He reveals his secret to Emiko, but after Godzilla attacks Tokyo, she reveals this secret to Ogata.

If the A-bomb stripped the skin off of people, the Oxygen Destroy, strips the flesh, leaving only bones. At least that's what happens to fish when they are exposed to the flashing light as the Oxygen Destroyer begins to work.

Ogata confronts Serizawa, attempting to convince him to save the world. Yet Serizawa wonders if by saving the world and destroying Godzilla, he won't be adding to the arsenal of WMD, a matter he doesn't take lightly. While in the American version all references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are excised, the stereotype of Japanese men committing suicide makes Serizawa's suicide seem more part of a cultural quirk than an accusatory commentary. Murata and Honda insinuate that the creators of the A-bomb and the H-bomb should have taken more time to consider what kind of destructive force they were releasing into the world--a world filled with military aspirations they as scientists could not control.

Article Author: Purple Tigress

Former theater critic for the LA Weekly and Los Angeles Times . For the last five years, an editing slave at a dot-com but recently laid off. Currently an under-employed freelance writer and artist.

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