The Law of Shin Godzilla

A film which begins as a comedic campy monster-movie, and ends as a serious message about the hope and future of Japan. From found-footage to Fight On! (諦めるな)—what we see is supposedly a way of reconciling the political future of Japan with the calamitous effects of international disaster. But it is the representation of a standard japanese politic itself which functions as the critique, since the latter half of the film, depicting a sort of hallucinatory fantasy of effortless government function (and especially nationalistic, considering it only happens after the collapse of the traditional government in the face of an all encompassing disaster; allowing the most “honourable” character to take power below an ineffective placeholder prime minister) is definitely not relatable in any material sense to disasters reported in the Japanese media. So what we view as standard practice becomes comedic; only undemocratic procedures can function as serious response or serious narrative. The unidentified sea monster “evolving” into “Godzilla”—the Japanese nuclear myth—is consistent with the shifting of the film’s theming; it all becomes a frenzy and nationalistic fantasy as the people unite to fend off destructive foreign influence; going beyond traditional political regimes, uniting under a single notion of a Japanese spirit.

And what can be said for a film which has won so many awards in Japan; similar to in America, where the most well-regarded ceremony affirms mostly neoliberal values (as those awards are bought and paid for), the Japanese industry must seemingly promote nationalism. It would be a simple critique, to only say of a popular film that it alone reaffirms, or calls upon those signifiers, to construct an ideology. But this was not a film in isolation, for it is obviously still a response to the Fukushima disaster; and, a new reconfiguration of nationalism in modern Japan. The film both affirms those modern tendencies while also critiquing the old. It is not “anti-western”, American cooperation is seen as beneficial; it is not explicitly pro-military (in a sense, it is pro-military in a far more subtle way. The military is deployed not under the conditions of an external threat, but in order to deal with the internal disaster, the already present invasion—even as unable they are to). The results of nationalism thusly, in the previous era, were disasters, the very disasters which inspired Godzilla in the first place; seemingly Godzilla is both caused by these disasters and a cause of them. It acts as a force not only to embody the old, but also as the solution to the old, to defeat it also means to defeat that older form to allow for the new: the amilitaristic, international, techno-fascist future. It is defeated by the very technology enabled by disaster, the political will to solve the natural crisis only enabled by a collapse of traditional structures. A nationalism not limited by state bounds (the American ambassador—played by a Japanese actress—feeling sorrow for her “grandmother’s”—and in fact her own ancestral—”homeland”), but some kind of “spirit” always beyond approach.

Can this performance, then, even therefore constitute the older forms which we have become so familiar with? A country which encourages immigration, an anethnic fascism, in Japan. Is technofascism even an appropriate term to consolidate these political and cultural shifts...an undemocratic process does not  a nationalistic or fascistic one make. Yes we may joke about the “German Spirit” which fueled the Nazi ideology, but where is this American Spirit which should supposedely fuel the election of Donald Trump: on a pack of ciggarrettes?

The law is not reliant on these extant ideologies—Godzilla, the formative creature, acting as the law, is spectral; always being killed and revived for new iterations, new citations of the law. It performs the so-called “nationalism”, it constructs the reality of post-war Japan; a perpetual state, as remarked in the film. There is no prior spirit which acts on Godzilla; Godzilla is the very law from which the notion of a spirit arrives. In other cases, the law is no spirit, in other cases, the law is a “swamp”; in other cases, the law is history, the law is identity or cultural heritage—the law is not a stable, cannot be evenly applied across borders to invent a unilateral “trend” of fascism.