Few horror films are as ubiquitous as Godzilla. The Japanese media sensation single-handedly established multiple cinematic standards — most famously kaiju and tokusatsu action films. Its American “remake,” Godzilla, King of the Monsters, further expanded the reptilian monster’s fame. In the over half a century since its introduction, the gargantuan beast has firmly cemented itself as a literal titan of high-stakes action films. It’s a seemingly far cry from Hideo Sekigawa’s Hiroshima, a 1953 war drama centered on the atomic bombing of its titular city.
There are no fantastical inventions or last-minute scientific breakthroughs to save the doomed citizens of Hiroshima. Instead, the 109-minute film revolves around the tremendous suffering that plagued an entire city. One film is fact; the other is fiction. Yet, beneath their drastically different exteriors, they are two sides of the same coin. Godzilla tells the same story as Hiroshima, albeit in a more fanciful way. Likewise, Hiroshima can be considered the documentarian’s version of Ishirou Honda’s influential kaiju film.
Post-War Trauma Shaped the Media Landscape of Japan
- The similarities between the soundtracks for Godzilla and Hiroshima are far from coincidental; both feature musical compositions from the prolific Akira Ifukube and share the same “Prayer for Peace” requiem score.
- Amazingly, Ifukube composed the entirety of Godzilla’s 1954 soundtrack in just one week. During this time, he was only shown a model of the monster, the screenplay, and a bare-bones clip of an unfinished scene.
Released just one year apart, Hiroshima and Godzilla fall firmly within Japan’s post-war media landscape. While Western nations released uplifting films about triumphant battles and strategic victories, Japan still suffered from the lingering effects of World War II. American support was barely enough to salvage anything from cities turned to fields of ash. Perhaps more importantly, MacArthur’s occupation, which spanned from 1945 to 1952, imposed strict bans on any “unapproved” materials depicting the horrors of nuclear warfare.
Not surprisingly, the years immediately following the nation’s defeat birthed few films; few resources remained for such frivolities. But that’s not to say Japan exclusively peddled post-war sob stories. There were plenty of light-hearted films, too. Tokyo Boy, a musical comedy, debuted in 1950. Culturally important works, like Kouzaburou Yoshimura’s The Tale of Genji, were also produced.
Still, the war’s losses left an indelible mark on Japanese art. Over two million people, not all of them avid Imperialists, were killed in the war. Japan, like any other nation, turned to art to grieve those losses. As the 1950s began, the nation’s cinema turned inward. Thinly veiled tales of militaristic tragedy mingled with whimsical depictions of ancient life. Two primary “schools” of post-war cinema emerged: the literal and the metaphorical.
Hiroshima represents the literalist’s approach. The film, whose production was formerly stifled by American-imposed censors, remains a powerful testament to the horrors of nuclear war. It creates a heart-wrenching minute-to-minute retelling of August 6, 1945. The harrowing images painstakingly recreate incomprehensible suffering.
Godzilla, of course, shows the nation’s more artistic side. It’s not a faithful recreation of any wartime events, and it was never meant to be. Though known in the West for its later antics and goofy asides, the original “King of the Monsters” had a more philosophical and introspective side. Even now, it remains a thoughtful examination of nuclear warfare’s countless dangers.
They’re not the same; of course, they’re dramatically different works. One can’t honestly compare the plot details. Hiroshima has no “mad scientists” or idealistic inventors. As in life, no chivalrous scientist comes to save the citizens of Hiroshima. Likewise, Godzilla never explicitly mentions a war. But beneath the disparate stories, both films share the same mournful calls for peace.
Hiroshima and Godzilla Portray Different Types of Post-War Grief
- The highest casualty figures suggest that 140,000, or 41%, of Hiroshima’s citizens died in the atomic bombing. In 1945, the city had a registered population of 340,000 residents.
- The lowest estimates of Hiroshima’s death toll eradicate 20% of the city’s population. On average, the most conservative figures suggest 70,000 people died in the immediate aftermath.
Of course, reflective post-war cinema was not limited to Japan. Every nation produced its fair share of retrospective World War II content. After all, unlike its predecessor, it’s largely portrayed and accepted as a “necessary evil.” The events that birthed the conflict, occurrences frighteningly similar to current affairs, speak for themselves.
Yet, as the only (wartime) victims of atomic weaponry, Japan had — and still struggles with — a uniquely visceral loss. Twice, its cities were struck by horrors hitherto unknown to humanity. In just minutes, two former metropolitan centers became flaming piles of toxic ash. Tens of thousands were killed immediately, and even more suffered slow, painful deaths over the following months.
Many bodies were vaporized; those that weren’t crumbled at the slightest touch. Traditional grief was impossible. And for those that remained, life became a whirlwind of mounting sorrows. While the long-term effects of the bombing are no less horrific, its immediate impact forms the emotional core of these works. The greatest embodiment of this ideological center is a heart-wrenching hospital scene, a feature found in both Godzilla and Hiroshima.
Hiroshima Recreates a Legacy of Suffering
- Approximately 90,000 survivors of Hiroshima’s bombing eagerly volunteered as extras. They also donated bomb-scarred items, many of them the only keepsakes of their loved ones, to support the production team’s pursuit of unflinching realism.
- Two years after Godzilla, Akira Ifukube created a variation of “Prayer for Peace” to accompany another post-war work, The Burmese Harp. Not surprisingly, this version features some light harp undertones.
Hiroshima’s ties to the war are obvious. Its literal battle scars span far beyond the aforementioned hospital scene. Most its runtime is devoted to portraying every consequence of nuclear warfare. Severely wounded and dying civilians represent the immediate aftermath. Ailing parents and dying children embody the long-term effects. Even its “modern” scenes, set against the backdrop of a largely recovered Hiroshima, bear the scars of war.
Hideo Sekigawa pulls no punches. He wants the audience to feel the pain of August 6, 1945. Every story is pulled from true stories, including survivor testimonies recorded in Doctor Arata Osada’s Children of the A Bomb. Hiroshima is not an allegory; it’s not a fanciful tale. It’s a devastatingly straightforward recreation of (one of) history’s darkest days.
It aligns itself with documentaries. It shares countless similarities with works like Hellfire: A Journey From Hiroshima, No More Hiroshima, and White Light/Black Rain. It also overlaps with semi-fictionalized retellings of wartime tragedy. Perhaps its most immediate “relative” is Barefoot Gen (and its multiple adaptations), a semi-autobiographical tale from Hiroshima survivor Keiji Nakazawa. In This Corner of the World is a less graphic but thematically similar film.
All these works represent a gritty, realistic depiction of war. They embody the grim fact that everyone, even the “enemy,” suffers equally. In some ways, the film’s understandably somber tone is comparable to the darkness of World War I cinema. There are no heroes or “winners” in Hiroshima. Everyone is a victim; everyone loses something. Mothers bury their infants with the same heart-wrenching sobs as a soldier buries his fallen peers.
Godzilla Represents a Lingering Fear of Nuclear Warfare
- The first Godzilla outfit weighed a whopping 220 pounds (or 100 kilograms). Its thick rubber and latex skin was applied atop a “skeleton” of metal wires and thin bamboo.
- Not surprisingly, this “original” getup was deemed too cumbersome. Producers sawed it in half and used it for partial shots and close-ups. Full-body footage utilized a slightly lighter (but still immensely uncomfortable) suit.
Godzilla is comparatively “lighter.” Its sci-fi setting cloaks its depressing themes in a layer of plausible separation. The outright fantasy of a gargantuan, semi-aquatic monster acts as the audience’s emotional barrier. The prehistoric beast is a work of pure fiction, and viewers can confidently say, “This would never happen in reality.” That inherent distance lets the film’s implications breathe without stifling them beneath the same weight as more “factual” depictions of war’s brutality.
Domestic audiences understood the references. Everyone knew that the film was more than a monster flick. The sobs and screams echoing down the hospital halls as Godzilla’s requiem plays would have been all too familiar to Japanese viewers. Beneath that veneer of fiction, there has always been a horrific crumb of reality. There are, of course, the immediate effects. Godzilla’s rampage destroys the city and causes countless deaths. Injured citizens crowd hospitals and beg for mercy. The overpowered kaiju is a metaphor; it has always been a metaphor.
Godzilla is the symbolic representation of countless things, from post-war grief to rising atomic age anxieties. While Hiroshima grieves the very real lives and livelihoods lost on August 6, Godzilla grieves a loss of innocence. The beast’s resurrection welcomes in the uncertainty of the Cold War and gives form to the lives lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The message is even stated outright in the film’s conclusion. As he looks at the ocean, Doctor Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura) warns, “If nuclear testing continues, then someday, somewhere in the world, another Godzilla may appear.”
Japanese Cinema Still Grapples With the Complex Trauma of World War II
- Hiroshima’s leading actor, Eiji Okada, later starred in Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour. In addition to snagging the former leading man, Resnais utilized footage from Hideo Sekigawa’s work to depict the atomic bombing.
- Over 30 Godzilla films have debuted since 1954, earning acknowledgment from Guinness World Records as the longest-running cinematic series. The “whackier” American adaptation even inspired Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.
Both films are powerful works of anti-war cinema in their own right, but neither Hiroshima nor Godzilla is without controversy. Like many films of their ilk, the two works face ongoing criticism over their lack of wartime culpability. Japan was, after all, the widely accepted aggressor. In China alone, Japan’s bloodthirsty imperialism killed (by conservative estimates) over three million people; more generous approximations of the death toll number over ten million. The nation also perpetuated many atrocities, including human experimentation under Unit 731 and the Nanjing Massacre.
Ultimately, Japan fell under the Axis umbrella. It aligned with Hitler and embraced the same jingoistic mindset, a reality reflected by countless Japanese recollections of domestic wartime life. Its descent into “Emperor-system fascism” (Kokkashugi) follows some distressingly similar trends. Master manipulators harnessed Emperor Hirohito’s cult of personality as a homicidal weapon. Those who did not parrot the belief that Japan was the greatest nation were branded traitors; most, as shown in Barefoot Gen, were promptly executed, harassed, or imprisoned for “re-education.” Immigrants and foreigners were branded as expendable, “lesser” beings.
Unfortunately, both Hiroshima and Godzilla fall prey to the still-common “sweep it under the rug” approach to Japan’s wartime aggression. Ignorance and malice play equal roles in that debate. Conservative groups, seeking to reclaim what they view as the nation’s “rightful” place in Asia, are more than happy to ignore historical facts. Those same apologists also push for Japanese education systems to eliminate any mentions of the nation’s wartime crimes. Thus, many creators, including My Hero Academia’s Kohei Horikoshi, unwittingly inject denialism into their works.
Yet, as in any “evil” nation (yes, even Nazi Germany), not every citizen was a homicidal extremist. Compassionate people, like Germany’s White Rose anti-fascist group, still fought for positive change. In Japan, publications like Commoners’ Newspaper (Heimin Shimbun) advocated for victims of wartime brutality, and Buddhist monks formed underground resistance networks. Unfortunately, these advocates aren’t common features of most “pop culture” portrayals of World War II.
And it’s ultimately up to audiences to decide what is “worth” praise. Despite their flaws, Hiroshima and Godzilla accurately and loudly remind audiences that nobody wins in war. Yes, there is valid criticism of how the nation’s suffering is portrayed as the result of some vague, unknowable force. Yet, there is just as much value in the films’ strong condemnations of nuclear warfare. These films, like many of Japan’s post-war calls for peace, may not be perfect; nothing is free of flaws. Beneath those problems, they are still relics of a generation’s pain and suffering.
Godzilla
NR Thriller Horror Science Fiction 1
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