East meets West (1853 – 1945)
In his May
2005 UCLA lecture entitled ‘Godzilla and post-war Japan’, Professor William
Tsutsui quoted a 1985 survey of Americans in which they were asked to name
three famous Japanese people. The results revealed much about how this
still-foreign country was perceived by its former enemy of forty years before.
The most popular responses were Emperor Hirohito (so far so good), Bruce Lee
(news to him and his fellow Chinese) and…Godzilla. While this last answer is
somewhat confused as to what defines a person, it gave two valuable insights:
that a far Eastern fictional dinosaur had now bestrode the Western world like a
rampaging colossus, and that he was imbued with a recognisable personality - arguably even humanity – that encouraged
respect, awe and fanatical love across a truly global fan-base.
On one
level, over time the Godzilla movies became
increasingly madcap escapism, a ring-side seat for us to watch guys in rubber
suits battering each other as well as realistic miniature Tokyo cityscapes. The original inspiration for Godzilla’s
creation however was a sombre and compelling mix of science-fiction and devastating
real-world tragedy. He was to be a unique monster born during uniquely harrowing
post-war circumstances for his homeland, and like many children bore a
fascinating imprint of his creators, the sum of their fears.
The century
in history of Japan’s relationship with the West had begun hesitantly. Until
the 1850s, theirs had been an isolated society closed off to any influence from
the outside world. Only repeated pressure from Russia and other nations forced
the reluctant Tokugawa government to cautiously open up a few strictly
controlled ports to international trade. While ultra-conservative samurai
factions strongly opposed these external relationships, many saw the advantages
to be gained from Western advances in science and the military. In fact it was
the threat of the superior firepower technology of the United States Navy under
Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853-1854 that ‘persuaded’ them to open up their
borders.
After the
fall of the ruling Tokugawa Shoganate, Emperor Meiji became imperial ruler of a
country that now found itself signatories to unfair treaties favouring their
western partners both economically and legally. The only way Meiji could
restore his country to respect on the international stage was to undertake
drastic reforms. Japanese society was levelled into a full democracy, wiping
out the privileges that the samurai military class and daimyo (feudal lords)
had previously enjoyed. The Emperor also insisted on a radical program of
westernisation for his people. To develop from their agrarian into a modern
industrial nation, many scholars were sent abroad, foreign teachers were
invited to lecture in Japan, and compulsory education was decreed for all. The
country’s armed forces were revolutionised by universal conscription and overhauling
the navy and army along British and Prussian models respectively.
As part of
its societal remodelling, Japan established its first parliament, the Diet, in
1889. Though Meiji was the sovereign, he was artful in negotiating with the elderly
Genro oligarchy who controlled the real reins of power. (For the public’s view
of their modern government, look no further than the first Godzilla film’s Japanese release in 1954 where the only time a city
landmark’s destruction was cheered at was the Diet building.)
Japan began
to flex their new military muscle, and incur the stirrings of future hostility
with the West, with two wars over territory. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-94
against China won them Taiwan but due to the Triple Intervention (of Russia,
France and Germany) they were forced to return others. The Russo-Japanese War
in 1904-05 disputing Korean and Manchurian strategic land resulted in Russian
army and navy defeats, which gave Japan a new respect in the world as valuable
as their annexation of Korea in 1910.
It was in
the era following Emperor Meiji’s death in 1912 (succeeded by the enfeebled
Emperor Taisho) that relations between Japan and Western nations started to deteriorate
into ultimate conflict. They had joined the Allies in a minor capacity during
the First World War, but it was their membership of the League of Nations that
became a flashpoint for mounting international mistrust. Japan’s hoped-for ‘racial
equality clause’ amendment to its covenant was rejected by the USA, Australia
and Britain. When the United States passed the Oriental Exclusion Act in 1924
blocking future immigration into America, Japanese people perceived themselves
as the intended targets.
Mirroring the bully’s victim who becomes an aggressor himself, the Japanese subjected China to the same political and economic inequality that they had suffered earlier under the West. The 1930s saw them puff up their chests to a state of military hubris that would eventually be their undoing. Japanese forces occupied Manchuria in 1931, then virtually the whole Chinese coast in the Second Sino-Japanese War that ran from 1937 concurrently with the Second World War till both ended in 1945. In this period China endured monstrous atrocities under the occupying Japanese.
Meanwhile, Japan
added French Indochina (Vietnam) to their territories, then sided with the Axis
Powers of Germany and Italy, a move that inexorably headed them toward
full-scale war with the Allies. The Japanese capture of Indonesia (the Dutch
East Indies then) and its vital oil reserves was followed a year later by their
fateful sudden bombing of the U.S. naval base at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbour on
December 7th 1941. The element of surprise gave Japan six months of
territorial advantage until the Battle of Midway in June 1942 signalled a
gradual Allied claw-back of land.
By 1945, the
Allies had made punishing air-strikes upon Japan and seized their island of
Okinawa in a notorious battle. The Potsdam Declaration’s formal request for Japan’s
unconditional surrender on July 27th 1945 fell on deaf ears. Thus
was triggered the most notorious military action in history: on August 6th,
the world’s first weaponised atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, obliterating
80,000 people and 90% of the city. Within three days, another was deployed over
Nagasaki leaving a human death toll of 40,000.
Despite
these unimaginable actions, and Russia’s entry into the war against Japan,
Emperor Hirohito held out until August 14th when his Jewel Radio
Broadcast played to the Japanese nation accepting the terms for surrender. He
had no choice but to realise the shattering power their enemy wielded – “a new and most cruel bomb, the power of
which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable” - and that without their acceptance,
more than just his people’s future was at stake – “it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.”
After paying
tribute to those most devastated by the bombings, the Emperor urged his people
to begin the hardly-conceivable task of rebuilding wrecked lives and cities.
When he referred to “the hardships and
sufferings to which our nation is to be subjected hereafter”, he could not have imagined that a
nuclear shadow would once more be cast over his subjects, nor that, through the
arts, they would find a truly remarkable way to come to terms with their
legacy.
Shadow of the Bomb (1945-1954)
Any hope
that the end of World War Two would also end use of the Allies’ new near-apocalyptic
trump card was extinguished by U.S. President Truman’s decision in December
1945 to begin joint Army and Navy nuclear testing – as if Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were not a horrific enough ‘proof of concept’. Once brought into play,
such a hideously effective tool could not be de-invented; instead, it was to be
refined: "to determine the effect of
atomic bombs on American warships."
The chosen
location was Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean,
north of the equator. This once-idyllic spot was considered remote enough for
safety, though in a grotesque irony Commodore Ben H. Wyatt, the Marshalls’
military governor, convinced the Bikinians to leave temporarily on the pretext
that (codename) Operation Crossroads was for "the good of mankind and to end all world wars."
Japan’s
connection to the Marshalls dated back to their administration of them in the
early 1900s. During the war, they maintained a strategic military outpost at Kwajalein
Atoll. In February 1944, a brutal battle resulted in its capture by U.S.
forces. Now its Bikinian neighbour was to play host to a far more destructive
occupier whose influence was to involve the Japanese with equally terrible
consequences.
Two early
tests on Bikini Atoll in 1946 were filmed dropping nuclear payloads of a
similar scale to Nagasaki. These were merely dry runs for a more potent project
of a thousand times greater magnitude. In the early Fifties, the icy wind of
the Cold War chilled the U.S. government with fears that Russia was secretly
testing their own advancing nuclear capability. Plans were stepped up to
unleash Operation Castle’s Bravo bomb on the northwest corner of the atoll - the
most powerful hydrogen bomb the world had ever seen.
American
Arms Race paranoia may explain, though never justify, why on March 1st
1954 Joint Task Force 7 went ahead with the Bravo air detonation despite clear
evidence that wind direction would irradiate the northern Marshall Islands and
their inhabitants. The Defence Nuclear Agency reported "it was recognized
that both Bikini and Eneman islands would probably be contaminated." Like
some horrific sorcerer’s apprentice, the damage from the resulting 15-megaton
blast exceeded its masters’ expectations by two and a half times, vaporising
all island vegetation within a 66-mile radius, and injecting incalculable
radiation into the surrounding atmosphere.
Amongst the
spectators watching the awe-inspiring mushroom cloud were the 23-man crew of
the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryū
Maru (Lucky Dragon 5). Whilst every
effort was seemingly made to notify all outlying vessels, this lone one was not
so lucky. Tragically, the time it took the men to retrieve their nets before
fleeing exposed them and their haul to several hours of radioactive fall-out. They
were transfixed by the “gritty white ash” that rained down on them two hours
later, not knowing the confetti’s deadly properties would soon induce radiation
sickness in the form of itching, vomiting and nausea – after which one man
died. There were even more sickening repercussions as much of the ship’s irradiated
tuna cargo would find its way onto dinner tables back home.
Of course
the fate of the Lucky Dragon 5 was a
small example of the far wider effects of the Bravo bomb - residents of Rongelap
Atoll, roughly 125 miles from Bikini, would see similarly awful side-effects in
their people. It is a damning indictment of the U.S. government’s handling and
irresponsibility that no inhabited islands were fore-warned about the inevitable
falling debris and its toxicity, a poisonous snow under which children
innocently played in wonder. But the shock-waves emanating from Hiroshima,
Nagasaki and now Bikini Atoll were to reverberate long after their aerial
bursts, echoing in the Japanese conscience. One of the first expressions of
this hideous coming-to-terms would be rendered a mere six months later through
the lens of the horror motion picture…
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