Japanese filmmaker Ishirō Honda at the National Museum of Nature and Science, in Tokyo, during the filming of Frankenstein Conquers the World.

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The original Godzilla was written and directed by Ishiro Honda, a Japanese director now recognized for his iconic work in the Kaiju genre. He was born in 1911 and started off a career in film from an early age. However, with the beginning of World War II he was conscripted into the Japanese army, serving both in Manchuria and China.

On a train ride returning home after World War Two, her passed near Hiroshima. Seeing the aftermath of the atomic bomb firsthand stuck in his mind. After this he became enthralled with the idea or war and it’s aftermath.

The earlier projects he worked on such as Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949) and directed Farewell Rabaul (1954) focused on the aftermath and tragedy of war.

The original Godzilla movie was the first of its kind. The movie was adapted from a screenplay written by Shigeru Kayama, a writer known for his work in the horror and mystery genre. The movie’s writers, Ishiro Honda and Takeo Murata, adapted Kayama’s original idea into the final script used in the film.

Honda’s main change to the original script was the characterization of Godzilla. Originally Godzilla was like other horror creatures in literature and films that came before it (King Kong, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Jira Monster, etc.) who played the role of an animalistic creature. While Honda’s Godzilla still maintains animalistic features and instincts it stood apart through its personification of Godzilla into the embodiment of cultural fear.

Future directors in the Godzilla franchise like Godzilla -1.0’s Takashi Yamazaki claimed that in modern adaptations having a more animalistic and horror-like depiction of Godzilla was important to the characterization of the creature to maintain it’s iconic narrative impact.

Honda’s Godzilla can be summed up as a nuclear monster only motivated by destruction. In the 1954 Godzilla the creature was created from American nuclear testing on Odo Island off Japan. Godzilla’s creation is seen as a direct contradiction to any natural laws and the previously established social expectations set by World War One. Godzilla utilizes this anxiety, forcing its conflict into the center of a national struggle to emphasize the socially divided present and create a creature inspired by those cultural fears.

References

• Tiara, Taichi, ed. 1954, Godzilla, Directed by Ishiro Honda. Tokyo, Japan: Toho.
• Ryfle, Steve, “Godzilla’s Footprint,” The Virginia Quarterly Review 81, no. 1 (2005): 44–63, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26441723.
• Natalie Editorial Department, 2023, “Ryunosuke Kamiki and Takashi Yamazaki Are Surprised by the Overwhelming Amount of Heat to Hollywood with ‘Godzilla-1.0,’” Natalie, November 12, 2023, https://natalie.mu/eiga/news/548823.