Where's Mothra When You Need Him?

When I was a kid growing up in Hawaii there were a bunch of Japanese TV stations on Oahu. I watched a ton of Japanese TV, shows like Kikaida and so many Godzilla (sometimes pronounced go-jira) movies, cartoons and TV shows that they've all blurred together over the years. I don't speak much Japanese, but what little I do know I picked up from after-school Japanese TV.

A lot of folks don't know that in Japan Godzilla started out as a metaphor for the United States. His film debut was in 1954, less than a decade after the end of WWII and the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For years the Japanese were afraid of further attacks, and Godzilla, created by a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific, personified that fear in the early movies.

In later Godzilla films (there were 28 of them in all), as times changed and America and Japan grew closer and time healed the old wounds of WWII, Godzilla would sometimes play the hero, defending Tokyo from other radioactive creatures like Mothra.

You're probably asking yourself what the hell Blue Steel is talking about.... Fair enough. He has no idea either.

• May 28, 2007

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