THE KAIJU AS BEHOLDER: FINDING EMPATHY IN GODZILLA Joey Palluconi and Damian Schofield, State University of New York, Oswego, New York, USA Abstract Toho Studios created the first Godzilla film in Japan in 1954, the film was Japan’s first international movie success story, and the franchise went on to inspire multiple sequels and dozens of other radioactive Daikaiju films. The Godzilla creature was particularly successful and garnered a huge following around the world. This paper examines the history of this iconic monster and attempts to understand some of the reasons for Godzilla’s global popularity. This paper attempts to analyse and explain the multiple ways in which the audience has empathised with each of the different incarnations of Godzilla throughout the franchise’s history. This is undertaken with particular reference to the oft-seen parenting roles performed by Godzilla in many of the major franchise films. Keywords: Kaiju, Japan, Godzilla, cinema, Toho Studios INTRODUCTION The imagery is classic, a devastated city, fire spreading across a once perfect metropolis. All this happening in the shadow of a colossal creature beyond imagination. This popular image of monster cinema that graced so many late-night TV Screens was born out of a tragic event in Japan at the end of World War II. The Kaijū Eiga (often translated as “Monster Movie”) is one of the most easily recognizable genres of Japanese cinema. The term Kaijū in Japanese means “Strange Beast”, and Eiga means “Project Picture” (Glownia, 2013). The first, and most famous, Kaijū Eiga film was Gojira (Honda, 1954). This monster movie was later re-edited, renamed, and released as "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" in 1956 in the USA (Honda and Morse, 1956). The film Gojira (Honda, 1954) was crafted purely to place on screen a small fraction of the pain, loss and agony felt by the Japanese population after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Godzilla’s initial appearance is a dark and violent portrayal of nuclear devastation. The early Japanese Godzilla films equate the monster with the atomic bomb, symbolically repeating the trauma, establishing the archetype of Japanese horror that explicates the present (Noriega, 1987; Anisfield, 1995; Shapiro, 2013). For many film historians and fans of the franchise, the first film attains an iconic cultural weight that few of the subsequent Godzilla sequels come close to. It is easy to label Godzilla as simply a walking metaphor, a beast, a tsunami, an echo, and a reminder. However, that underestimates the purpose and potential of the creature throughout SCREEN THOUGHT, Vol. 5, No. 1 1