Kaiju
Kaiju is a Japanese term that is commonly associated with media involving giant monsters. A subgenre of science-fiction, more precisely monster films, its widespread contemporary use is credited to tokusatsu director Eiji Tsuburaya and filmmaker Ishirō Honda, who popularized the kaiju film genre by creating the Godzilla franchise and its spin-offs. The term can also refer to the monsters themselves, which are usually depicted attacking major cities and battling either the military or other creatures.
The first "giant monster movie" is debatable. The 1921 animated short film The Pet features a giant monster attacking a city, and the 1925 silent feature film The Lost World famously features a dinosaur being brought to the streets of London, subsequently inspiring the creators to make the 1933 movie King Kong. The Japanese style of giant monster movies with suitmation starts as early as the 1930s with movies such as Wasei Kingu Kongu, The Great Buddha Arrival, and The King Kong That Appeared in Edo. The first Japanese "kaiju movie" to see international success is the 1954 feature Godzilla. When developing it, creators drew inspiration from the character of King Kong, both in its influential 1933 film and in the conception of a giant monster, establishing it as a pivotal precursor in the evolution of the genre. During their formative years, kaiju movies were generally neglected by Japanese critics, who regarded them as "juvenile gimmick", according to authors Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski.
Kaiju are often somewhat metaphorical in nature; Godzilla, for example, initially served as a metaphor for nuclear weapons, reflecting the fears of post-war Japan following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Lucky Dragon 5 incident. Other notable examples of kaiju include Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Gamera, and King Kong.
Etymology
The Japanese word kaijū originally referred to monsters and creatures from ancient Japanese legends; it earlier appeared in the Chinese Classic of Mountains and Seas. There are no traditional depictions of kaijū or kaijū-like creatures among the yōkai of Japanese folklore, although it is possible to find megafauna in their mythology. After sakoku ended and Japan was opened to foreign relations in the mid-19th century, the term kaijū came to be used to express concepts from paleontology and legendary creatures from around the world. For example, the extinct Ceratosaurus-like cryptid featured in The Monster of "Partridge Creek" by French writer Georges Dupuy was referred to as kaijū.It is worthy to note that in the Meiji era, Jules Verne's works were introduced to the Japanese public, achieving great success around 1890.
History
Early history
Genre elements were present at the end of Winsor McCay's 1921 animated short The Pet in which a mysterious giant animal starts destroying the city, until it is countered by a massive airstrike. It was based on a 1905 episode of McCay's comic strip series Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend.Prehistoric monster era (1920s–1940s)
The first feature films starring giant movie monsters made their debute during the interwar period. The period is defined by its use of prehistoric creatures that survived to modern times in undiscovered natural areas or through prolonged hibernation, such as natural cryopreservation in caves and icebergs, which then come into contact with troublesome humans and then begin their rampage.The 1925 film The Lost World, featured many dinosaurs, including a brontosaurus that breaks loose in London and destroys Tower Bridge. The film's layout was revolutionary and laid the foundation for future giant monster films. The film takes place on an unexplored mountain plateau like a deserted island teeming with prehistoric dinosaurs. The dinosaurs of The Lost World were animated by pioneering stop motion techniques by Willis H. O'Brien, who would some years later animate the giant gorilla-like creature breaking loose in New York City in the 1933 film King Kong. The enormous success of King Kong can be seen as the definitive breakthrough of giant monster movies. This influential achievement of King Kong paved the way for the emergence of the giant monster genre, serving as a blueprint for future kaiju productions. Its success reverberated in the film industry, leaving a lasting impact and solidifying the figure of the giant monster as an essential component in genre cinematography.
The 1942 Superman animated short The Arctic Giant features a cryopreserved Tyrannosaurus which thaws out and attacks Metropolis. It is one of pioneering productions to depict a Godzilla-esque character to attack a modern civilization.
First Japanese kaiju movies (1930s)
The Japanese style of making giant monster movies, where the monster is portrayed by actors in monster suits, so called "suitmation", appears in the early 1930s. Early examples includes the 1933 King King spoof Wasei Kingu Kongu, the 1934 feature The Great Buddha Arrival, and 1938 feature and The King Kong That Appeared in Edo. Although all three films became lost during World War II, stills of the films have survived, and are some of the earliest examples of kaiju movies in Japanese cinematic history. The 1934 film presumably influenced the production of the Ultraman franchise.Mutant and atomic monster era (1950s)
After World War II, the roots of giant movie monsters started to shift from giant prehistoric monsters to monsters stemming from animals which had been exposed to strong radiation and then mutated into gigantic monsters, a result of the fear of nuclear proliferation that spread around the world during the Cold War.One of the eary prolific examples is Ray Bradbury's short story published in the Saturday Evening Post, June 23, 1951, "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms", which came to serve as the basis for the film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, featuring a fictional dinosaur, called a Rhedosaurus, which is released from its frozen, hibernating state by an atomic bomb test within the Arctic Circle. The American movie was released in Japan in 1954 under the title The Atomic Kaiju Appears, marking the first use of the genre's name in a film title. It directly inspired Godzilla, released in 1954, and many more giant monster movies of similar nature, such as Them!, Tarantula, and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, etc.
Godzilla from 1954 is a rather unique example of the era, as it's not simply representing fear of nuclear proliferation, but also reflecting the experience that Japan faced upon the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Tomoyuki Tanaka, a producer for Toho Studios in Tokyo, needed a film to release after his previous project was halted. Seeing how well the Hollywood giant monster movie genre films King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms had done in Japanese box offices, and himself a fan of these films, he set out to make a new movie based on them and created Godzilla. Tanaka aimed to combine Hollywood giant monster movies with the re-emerged Japanese fears of atomic weapons that arose from the Daigo Fukuryū Maru fishing boat incident; and so he put a team together and created the concept of a giant radioactive creature emerging from the depths of the ocean, a creature that would become the monster Godzilla. Godzilla initially had commercial success in Japan, inspiring other kaiju movies.
Following the success of Godzilla's first appearance, Toho followed up the following year with a sequel, called Godzilla Raids Again, which introduced the concept of the "monster fight", in which two Kaiju fights one another. In the movie, Godzilla faces off with another kaiju monster called Anguirus, which is the first monster, aside Godzilla, to be introduced into the Godzilla franchise.
Space Age era (1960s-1970s)
During the 1960s, the Japanese studio Toho started to experiment with having kaiju from different movies fight one another, culminating in RKO Pictures later licensing King Kong to Toho, resulting in the co-productions King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes, both directed by Ishirō Honda.With the advent of the Space Race and Space Age, themes of giant monsters from outer space and alien invasions started to appear in kaiju movies. Examples include the Godzilla film Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, where the "space dragon" King Ghidorah is introduced for the first time, but also more obscure films such as The X from Outer Space. Giant monsters from outer space are traditionally associated with fictional aliens who bring them to Earth to conquer the planet or similar.
During the 1960s, a rival franchise to Godzilla would also be launched by Japanese studio Daiei Film, introducing the giant monster turtle Gamera, which have come to play a significant role in forming the genre along with the Godzilla franchise and the Ultra Series.
Terminology
''Kaiju''
The term kaijū translates literally as "strange beast". Kaiju can be antagonistic, protagonistic, or a neutral force of nature, but are more specifically preternatural creatures of divine power. They are not merely "big animals". Godzilla, for example, from its first appearance in the initial 1954 entry in the Godzilla franchise, has manifested all of these aspects. Other examples of kaiju include Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Anguirus, King Kong, Gamera, Megalon, The Cloverfield Monster, Gappa, Guilala, and Yonggary.As a noun, kaijū is an invariant, as both the singular and the plural expressions are identical: "a kaiju" and "several kaiju".