Problematizing Narratives of Tragedy: Postwar Scientific Discourse in Tōho SFX Films

ABSTRACT

Tōho SFX films (tokusatsu eiga), more popularly known as kaiju films, are a subgenre of Japanese films that flourished in the postwar era. Since many of the early films feature radioactive monsters, the genre is largely valued for reflecting the trauma and anxiety of nuclear bombs, testing, and effects of radiation in postwar society. Rather than focus on nuclear science, this study considers the continuation of scientific development from wartime to postwar by examining two neglected films that deal with the horrors of military science: Tōmei Ningen (Oda, 1954) and Densō Ningen (Fukuda, 1960). It argues that while the films reflect the social structures that saw the laundering of a more complicated scientific development that included wartime atrocities, they also offer instances of resistance to such prevailing ideologies. By moving away from a preoccupation with nuclear discourse and consequently from victimhood, this study aims to complicate the approach to Tōho SFX films as cultural responses to the trauma of the war experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Tōho SFX films
• kaiju films
• postwar culture
• postwar science

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ After the mid-1960s, the SFX films became less ‘serious’ in theme and narrative, and increasingly formulaic and family-friendly as the kaiju monsters began attaining celebrity-like popularity and the gloomy immediate postwar years wore off.

² I follow Vivian Sobchack’s (2004) argument that SF and horror cannot be isolated from one another and instead belong to two ends of a spectrum. The Tōho SFX series would fall somewhere around the middle, as they resemble Sobchack’s ‘monster’ category which contains elements of both interrogations of science and interrogations of moral anxiety.

³ Films that have direct reference to nuclear testing are Gojira, Bijo to Ekitai Ningen (The H-Man, Honda, 1958), Mosura (Mothra, Honda, 1961), and Mosura tai Gojira (Mothra vs Godzilla, Honda, 1964), while allusions to nuclear fear are most prominently featured in Radon (Rodan, Honda, 1954), Chikyū Bōeigun (The Mysterians, Honda, 1957), Matango (Matango, Honda, 1963), and Furankenshutain tai Chiteikaiju Baragon (Frankenstein Conquers the World, Honda, 1965).

⁴ The Henshin Ningen series proper is three films, Densō Ningen, Bijo to Ekitai Ningen (The H-Man, Honda, 1958), and Gasu Ningen Daiichi gō (The Human Vapor, Honda, 1960), while Tōmei Ningen is considered a precursor and Matango (Matango, Honda, 1963) a follow up to the series. I consider the five films together because they have the same premise (transforming humans) and share a similar setting and theme – their overall similarities equaling their dissimilarities to other Tōho SFX films.

⁵ Tanaka produced all the films in the Henshin Ningen series except Tōmei Ningen, which was produced by Takeo Kita, a production designer for many Tōho SFX films. Honda, a director for most of the early Tōho SFX films as already mentioned, directed three films of the Henshin Ningen series. Tōmei Ningen was directed by Motoyoshi Oda who also directed Gojira no Gyakushū (Godzilla Raids Again, Oda, 1955), while Densō Ningen was directed by Jun Fukuda, a director for Kaijyu-tō no Kessen Gojira no Musuko (Son of Godzilla, Fukuda, 1967) and several Godzilla-versus-Monster type films in the 1970s. Tsuburaya was a special effects director for all the films in the Henshin Ningen series and most of the Tōho SFX films until his death in 1970.

⁶ The most notable example is Yoshio Tsuchiya (1927–2017) who has a prominent role in all of the Henshin Ningen films – in Gasu Ningen Daiichi gō he plays the titular character.

⁷ Producer Tanaka (1983) has declared that ‘the theme was “the horrors of hydrogen bombs”. Mankind will be revenged by mankind, who built those bombs’ (53). All translations from Japanese sources are my own. For director Honda’s discussion for the inspiration of Godzilla, see Honda (1994, pp. 83–97).

⁸ For a detailed discussion of Atomic Utopia discourse in the United States, see Boyer, 1994: 107–130. For a detailed account of how this discourse was sustained in Japan, see Sherif, 2009: 30–45.

⁹ Torture included subjecting the victims to such things as frostbite, air pressure changes, electric shocks, hanging, and the injection of animal urine or blood to assess the tolerance of the human body. The scientists also created epidemics in local areas by contaminating water sources, leaving food laced with pathogens, or even injecting viruses into men, women and children under the guise of administering a ‘vaccine’. For a detailed account of the horrors of the factories of death see Tsuneishi, (1981: 92–104 and 141–207), Williams and Wallace, (1989: 13–80), and Harris, (2002: 53–150).

¹⁰ The ‘600 a year’ number from 1941 to 1945 in Ping Fan revealed in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials recorded the official casualties from BW experiments as numbering 3000 people, but this is a gross underestimation since data before 1941, casualty from other units, and victims from various epidemics were not accounted for (Harris, 2002: 86–88).

¹¹ This was with the exception of 12 members who were tried and sentenced at the Khabarovsk trials in 1949, which were dismissed in the West as Communist Propaganda (Williams & Wallace, 1989).

¹² These include such prestigious national universities as Tokyo University, Osaka University, and Kyoto University, and important organizations including Japan’s National Cancer Centre, Japan Medical Association, and Japan National Institute of Health (JNIH). According to Harris, from its inception in 1947 to 1983, every director of JNIH except for one had served in a BW unit (2002: 338). Some significant figures that were involved in Unit 731 and knew of its atrocities include former Tokyo governor Shunichi Suzuki (1910–2010) and Tsuneyoshi Takeda (1909–1992), former prince and president of the Japan Olympic Committee.

¹³ All dialogue from the films are my translations.

¹⁴ Exactly what effects were used to film certain scenes, an important aspect of Tōho SFX series for devoted fans, are detailed in Ōhashi, (1983: 107)