Fwd: Conf. -- In Godzilla's Footsteps

[Aaron Gerow]

>
>
> From: PDunscomb at aol.com
>
>
> Conference Report: In Godzilla?s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons
> on the Global Stage
>
>             Held in Lawrence, Kansas October 28-30, the conference 
> celebrated
> the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Toho Studios 1954 film 
> Gojira and
> examined Godzilla?s subsequent impact on Japan?s contributions to 
> global
> culture. The Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Kansas 
> sponsored
> the conference which was organized by William Tsutsui, Associate 
> Professor of
> History and Acting Director of the Center, and Michiko It?, East Asian
> Librarian of the Watson Library.
>
>             Godzilla is the first true Japanese Pop Culture figure to 
> achieve
> worldwide renown and paved the way for other Japanese cultural 
> products, from
> anime and manga, Hello Kitty, pokemon and yu-gi-oh, all the way to 
> Iron Chef
> and MXC. The conference featured plenary speakers and panels 
> addressing the
> significance of Godzilla and his cultural successors. In addition 
> there were
> related art and museum displays, theatrical productions as well as 
> packed free
> screenings of three of the Big Guy?s films; Gojira (1954), Godzilla 
> vs. the Smog
> Monster (1971) and Godzilla, Mothra, and King Gidorah: Giant Monsters 
> All Out
> Attack (2001).
>
> Takao Shibata, Consul General of Japan at Kansas City, opened the 
> conference
> by telling the conferees (as was said in Gojira 2000) ?there?s a little
> Godzilla in all of us.? He reminded the audience that Godzilla 
> represented
> just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Japan?s global cultural 
> impact. This
> was amply demonstrated by numerous speakers and panelists over the 
> course of
> two days of presentations.
>
>             Joanne Bernardi, University of Rochester, headed a special
> presentation on how Godzilla can be used as a teaching tool along with 
> Gerald
> Figal, Vanderbilt University, Dani Lotton-Barker, Southwest High 
> School,
> Lawrence, and Christine Yano, University of Hawaii.
>
> A review of Godzilla?s oeuvre and the genre of kaij? eiga or monster 
> films
> highlight ongoing concerns over the fragility of urban civilization. 
> Martin
> Boyden, University of Rochester, noted that the pervasive media 
> coverage of
> the monster?s rampage as portrayed in the original Gojira was well 
> situated
> within a tradition of apocalypse as media event. Joyce Boss, Wartburg 
> College,
> saw in Godzilla both a natural and unnatural disaster, a creature out 
> of
> ancient folklore and a product of the H-bomb, which the authorities 
> create but
> cannot control.
>
> The Godzilla of 1954 was freighted with substantial political and 
> ideological
> concerns of the day but as Mark Anderson, University of Minnesota, 
> noted
> Godzilla also spoke to wartime debates about how, or even if, Japan 
> could
> overcome the ?pathology? of modernity. Yoshikuni Igarashi, Vanderbilt
> University, noted a revivified nostalgia for the exotic Nan?y?, the 
> South Sea
> Islands which became Japanese colonial possessions after World War 
> One, as a
> significant trope in kaij? eiga, reaching a peak in the Mothra films 
> of the
> early 1960s.
>
>             Susan Napier, University of Texas at Austin, pointed out 
> the
> penetration of Godzilla into the global culture and the road he opened 
> for other
> Japanese pop culture products has allowed Japan to accumulate a 
> considerable
> reserve of what Joseph Nye referred to as ?soft power,? although as 
> Barak
> Kushner, Davidson College, noted while the Japanese government was 
> quite happy with the foreign exchange currency Godzilla remitted back 
> to Japan they were
> less than thrilled to have a fifty meter radioactive lizard as the 
> nation?s
> cultural ambassador.
>
>             Cultural products are fungible only to a point and the way 
> such
> culture is mediated makes wielding the soft power they generate 
> problematic.
> Gregory Pflugfelder, Columbia University, displayed movie posters from 
> around
> the world demonstrating how iron bound genre conventions within various
> countries often erased Godzilla?s Japanese origins. Eric Rath, 
> University of
> Kansas, and Kevin Wetmore, California State University Northridge, 
> noted that
> while Godzilla was a powerful political symbol, translating him into 
> the idiom
> of the Japanese classical theater, so-called super ky?gen, or onto the
> international theatrical stage is fraught with difficulties, not least 
> those
> of translation either into classical Japanese or English.
>
> Sayuri Shimizu, Michigan State University, noted that Godzilla?s 
> success in
> the US was made possible as much by the consumption patterns and 
> anxieties of
> high Cold War America as by his Japanese origins. Similarly, Yulia 
> Mikhailova,
> Hiroshima City University, notes that anxiety in post Soviet Russia 
> among
> Russian youth helped make them receptive to themes of anxiety and 
> uncertain
> identity present in anime and manga. Hirofumi Katsuno, University of 
> Hawaii,
> notes that it was a combination of liminal geography, youthful 
> nostalgia and
> canny marketing that help to explain the phenomenal popularity of the 
> 1970s
> suitmation (ala Ultraman) series Kikaida in Hawaii.
>
> While Japan?s pop culture exports have contributed to what Douglas 
> McGray
> calls ?Japan?s Gross National Cool,? and helped establish a distinct
> Japanese brand of export, Anne Allison, Duke University, notes that the
> attributes of this product have undergone considerable change. From the
> monstrous Godzilla we have morphed into the friendly pokemon. However
> Christine Yano, University of Hawaii, points out that this strategy is 
> not
> without its pitfalls. Even the tabula rassa cuteness of Hello Kitty can
> come to seem monstrous when the Japanese cultural brand appears little 
> more
> than an invitation to consumption.
>
>             Theodore Bestor, Harvard University, noted this 
> commodification
> of culture in his conference summation. No one in 1954 envisaged the 
> creation
> of a global pop culture franchise when Gojira debuted in 1954, but 
> certainly
> such ideas were and are in the minds of the creators of Hello Kitty, 
> pokemon,
> yu-gi-oh, and various types of computer game software. Indeed the local
> specificity of these products, the fact that they are identifiably 
> Japanese,
> is key to their success on the global cultural market.
>
> Ted Bestor concluded the conference by noting that the Godzilla of 
> 1954 arose
> out of a specific set of fears, anxieties and traumatic memories. He 
> wondered
> fifty years hence what cultural products might we be examining born 
> out of
> the fears, anxieties and traumatic memories of our own day?
>
>             The conference papers are being prepared for publication by
> Palgrave in the fall of 2005.
>
> Paul Dunscomb
> Assistant Professor
> East Asian History
> Department of History & Geography
> University of Alaska Anchorage