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The original "Gojira" (Godzilla) in 1954 has been regarded as an expression of the impotence and powerlessness felt by many Japanese after being forced to surre

The original "Gojira" (Godzilla) in 1954 has been regarded as an expression of the impotence and powerlessness felt by many Japanese after being forced to surrender to the Allies in WW2, and the subsequent American occupation. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10788996/Godzilla-why-the-Japanese-original-is-no-joke.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10788996/Godzilla-wh...

deleted 10y ago
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honkhonkpants 10y ago
Interesting perspective. Defeat was the consequence of having started the war in the first place. Nobody in America was sitting around in 1941 thinking up ways to vaporize Japanese people. As they say on the Internet: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
- krapp 10y ago
  It wouldn't surprise me if some Japanese viewed the atomic bombings as an unwarranted act of unprovoked aggression - and they may not be entirely unjustified if they do. From their point of view, it probably seemed as if the US had already won and just decided to spike the football.
  - Implicated 10y ago
    > From their point of view, it probably seemed as if the US had already won and just decided to spike the football. That wouldn't be far from the truth? If I remember, and it was reported correctly, the US govt deemed the nuclear bomb to be the lesser of two evils; the other being a long drawn out deescalation due to Japanese pride.
    - jbicha 10y ago
      Yes, that's what's taught in US schools, but there's significant controversy among historians over whether the Japanese may have been about to surrender in the late summer of 1945 anyway. It's mentioned in the (rather "left") book and Showtime series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Stone%27s_Untold_History_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Stone%27s_Untold_Histor... I don't think it's a stretch at all to believe that the US did not need to drop the second bomb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan
  - honkhonkpants 10y ago
    Yeah, unprovoked? That belies a lack of historical perspective. Japan killed tens of millions of Chinese and intended to occupy the entire western Pacific, killing or enslaving all the people who lived there. The entire nation, all of its labor and industry, was bent toward this goal. It was a nation of profound evil.
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      It's not like China didn't do that in its past either, probably as recently as qianlong. But they don't go around calling China a nation of profound evil at the time.
      - honkhonkpants 10y ago
        Right, the historical anomaly of Japan and Nazi Germany was they tried to kill everybody and take all of their land well after that kind of thing had passed out of style.
        seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        I don't think war and conquering has gone out of style so much as it has become way too costly to pursue. We haven't actually become more righteous.
    - krapp 10y ago
      >It was a nation of profound evil. That's one perspective. Another is that Japan was merely doing what it felt was necessary to protect itself from interference by aggressive Western Imperial powers, and weren't necessarily more "evil" than any other empire at the time. A third is that the country that dropped two atomic bombs on civilian cities and firebombed Tokyo to the ground was no less evil than the empire they were fighting. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with this, but "evil" seems more often than not to be matter of cultural relativism and propaganda. It wasn't long after World War 2 that the US was begging Japan for help in their other Asian conflicts and burning whole villages to the ground in the name of fighting the "profound evil" of communism.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

honkhonkpants 10y ago

Interesting perspective. Defeat was the consequence of having started the war in the first place. Nobody in America was sitting around in 1941 thinking up ways to vaporize Japanese people. As they say on the Internet: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

krapp 10y ago
It wouldn't surprise me if some Japanese viewed the atomic bombings as an unwarranted act of unprovoked aggression - and they may not be entirely unjustified if they do. From their point of view, it probably seemed as if the US had already won and just decided to spike the football.
- Implicated 10y ago
  > From their point of view, it probably seemed as if the US had already won and just decided to spike the football. That wouldn't be far from the truth? If I remember, and it was reported correctly, the US govt deemed the nuclear bomb to be the lesser of two evils; the other being a long drawn out deescalation due to Japanese pride.
  - jbicha 10y ago
    Yes, that's what's taught in US schools, but there's significant controversy among historians over whether the Japanese may have been about to surrender in the late summer of 1945 anyway. It's mentioned in the (rather "left") book and Showtime series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Stone%27s_Untold_History_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Stone%27s_Untold_Histor... I don't think it's a stretch at all to believe that the US did not need to drop the second bomb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  Yeah, unprovoked? That belies a lack of historical perspective. Japan killed tens of millions of Chinese and intended to occupy the entire western Pacific, killing or enslaving all the people who lived there. The entire nation, all of its labor and industry, was bent toward this goal. It was a nation of profound evil.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    It's not like China didn't do that in its past either, probably as recently as qianlong. But they don't go around calling China a nation of profound evil at the time.
    - honkhonkpants 10y ago
      Right, the historical anomaly of Japan and Nazi Germany was they tried to kill everybody and take all of their land well after that kind of thing had passed out of style.
      - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        I don't think war and conquering has gone out of style so much as it has become way too costly to pursue. We haven't actually become more righteous.
  - krapp 10y ago
    >It was a nation of profound evil. That's one perspective. Another is that Japan was merely doing what it felt was necessary to protect itself from interference by aggressive Western Imperial powers, and weren't necessarily more "evil" than any other empire at the time. A third is that the country that dropped two atomic bombs on civilian cities and firebombed Tokyo to the ground was no less evil than the empire they were fighting. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with this, but "evil" seems more often than not to be matter of cultural relativism and propaganda. It wasn't long after World War 2 that the US was begging Japan for help in their other Asian conflicts and burning whole villages to the ground in the name of fighting the "profound evil" of communism.