How Shin Godzil­la reframed the trau­mat­ic events of 3.11

It’s now 10 years since the triple dis­as­ter known as 3.11 occurred. A mag­ni­tude nine earth­quake hit the Tohoku region of north­ern Japan, result­ing in a tsuna­mi and trig­ger­ing explo­sions at a nuclear pow­er plant in Fukushi­ma. Five years after the tragedy, the kai­ju film Shin Godzil­la, direct­ed by Anno Hidea­ki and Higuchi Shin­ji, was released. While osten­si­bly about the tit­u­lar sea mon­ster attack­ing Tokyo, the par­al­lels between Godzil­la and the dev­as­ta­tion wreaked on Tohoku five years pri­or were all-too clear.

Godzilla’s debut in Hon­da Ishiro’s 1954 film was con­ceived as a metaphor for nuclear weapons after the atom­ic bomb­ings of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. As Japan was forced to rede­fine itself after World War Two, the bomb­ings marked a total cul­tur­al upheaval result­ing in the country’s accel­er­at­ed mod­erni­sa­tion in the sec­ond half of the 20^th century.

Shin Godzil­la like­wise marked a turn­ing point in the nation­al under­stand­ing of nuclear pow­er. While the orig­i­nal Godzil­la is awok­en from its deep-sea slum­ber by under­wa­ter nuclear weapons test­ing, the shin (new) Godzil­la is a mon­ster pow­ered by nuclear fis­sion. These his­tor­i­cal inspi­ra­tions have served as a promi­nent cul­tur­al metaphor for the unpre­dictabil­i­ty and dan­ger of nuclear pow­er for Japan­ese peo­ple. In turn, Shin Godzil­la makes use of many visu­al par­al­lels to the wreck­age of the after­math of Godzilla’s ram­page in Tokyo to that of the Tohoku area after 3.11.

As Godzil­la con­tin­ues to maim and destroy, bureau­crats waste valu­able time argu­ing among them­selves and propos­ing task forces instead of ini­ti­at­ing direct action. Only when the kai­ju​’s destruc­tion results in the death of many high­er-lev­el gov­ern­ment offi­cials do the sur­viv­ing bureau­crats eschew pro­to­col to defeat Godzil­la with the assis­tance of the Japan­ese Armed Forces. The film ulti­mate­ly ends on a hope­ful note as Godzil­la is defeat­ed and the film’s heroes acknowl­edge their vic­to­ry and the rebuild­ing that is to be done.

But if Shin Godzil­la is in any way intend­ed to par­al­lel the events of 3.11, this shift in tone from satir­i­cal to valiant feels like an exer­cise in his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism. Though, of course, a sea mon­ster has yet to attack Tokyo’s shores, the film most­ly begins as a satire of the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment. Though Tohoku’s recov­ery efforts were sim­i­lar­ly marked by myopic bureau­crats deal­ing with a large-scale cri­sis, the area has not under­gone recov­ery efforts marked by the opti­mism of Shin Godzilla’s end­ing. In real­i­ty, the Japan­ese government’s response to 3.11 in the years since the dis­as­ter has been marked by passivity.

The Tohoku area con­tin­ues to be marked by fears of height­ened lev­els of radi­a­tion, while many fam­i­lies remain unable to evac­u­ate to oth­er cities due to finan­cial con­straints. While the char­ac­ters in Shin Godzil­la envi­sion a safer future for Tokyo, the lives of Tohoku cit­i­zens remain unsta­ble even a decade on. Abe Shinzo’s time as prime min­is­ter was marked by Tokyo’s Olympic bid, a high­ly crit­i­cised tac­tic used to dis­tract from Japan’s ongo­ing trou­bles with dis­as­ter recov­ery. Abe him­self praised Shin Godzil­la, not­ing his plea­sure at the depic­tion of the Armed Forces, in line with his desire to remil­i­tarise the paci­fist nation.

This brings into ques­tion whether Shin Godzilla’s ulti­mate­ly pos­i­tive vision is nec­es­sar­i­ly for the best. In Shinkai Makoto’s 2016 ani­mé Your Name, anoth­er suc­cess­ful film inspired by 3.11, the pro­tag­o­nists save them­selves and their home­town from being dec­i­mat­ed like Tohoku. Shinkai stat­ed his inten­tion in the movie was to cre­ate an alter­nate his­to­ry that would allow Japan­ese peo­ple to find solace in the fan­ta­sy where the events of 3.11 nev­er occurred.

How­ev­er, Shin Godzil­la does not com­mu­ni­cate the same com­forts as Your Name, as the former’s fic­tion is built upon the ulti­mate virtue of mil­i­tary might and effec­tive gov­er­nance. While patri­ot­ic images of Japan’s bureau­crats and Armed Forces may warm the hearts of some, Shin Godzilla’s hap­py end­ing per­haps con­flates real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy in ser­vice of its nation­al­is­tic mes­sag­ing over real-life tragedy.