Abstract
On its face, the story of Godzilla’s origins, as related in the first film, Gojira seems straightforward. Dr Yamane’s theory—which ends up functioning as the standard party line—is that Godzilla is a mutation born of the H-bomb tests. We may well ask, however, a mutation of what? In the earlier scenes on Ōdo Island, Godzilla is spoken of as a destructive monster of ancient legend; clearly, his reputation precedes him.1 What, then, is the relationship between the Godzilla which had just been created, or animated, within the post–atomic era and the Godzilla of Ōdo Island folklore?
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Notes
Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “Hybridity: So What?: The Anti-Hybridity Backlash and the Riddles of Recognition,” Theory, Culture & Society 18:2–3 (2001), pp. 219–245. Online text accessed through EBSCO.
Susan Napier, “Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira,” Journal of Japanese Studies 19:2 (Summer 1993), p. 349. Online text accessed through JSTOR.
Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World ( New York: North Point Press, 1998 ), p. 7.
See Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology ( New York: Schocken Books, 1956 )
Paul Radin, and Robert D. Pelton, The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980 ).
See Richard M. Dorson, The Legends ofJapan (Rutland, VT, and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1962 ).
See, for example, Michael Dylan Foster, “The Metamorphosis of the Kappa: Transformation of Folklore to Folldorism in Japan,” Asian Folklore Studies 57: 1 (1998), pp. 1–24
Noriko Reider, “Transformation of the Oni,” Asian Folklore Studies 62: 1 (2003), pp. 133–157.
Steve Ryfle, Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of the “Big G” ( Toronto: ECW Press, 1998 ), p. 56.
Marilyn Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, japan ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 ), p. 14.
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© 2006 William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito
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Boss, J.E. (2006). Hybridity and Negotiated Identity in Japanese Popular Culture. In: Tsutsui, W.M., Ito, M. (eds) In Godzilla’s® Footsteps. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403984401_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403984401_8
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