Episode 56: Shin Godzilla, GMK, and Japanese Nationalism

Staying on Shin Godzilla-related content, I give my opinion on the popular article “Shin Godzilla vs. GMK: The Battle Over Japanese Nationalism”. It’s not 1947 anymore, and Japan has shown the world how good of a country it can be. At the end of the day, the Japanese should make their own decisions about their constitution and if they should grow their military. East Asia is a very dangerous place right now, and the US and Japan have many things in common. I believe these two movies are not opposites – they are two sides of the same patriotic coin.

Link to the article: http://www.godzilla-movies.com/news/shin-godzilla-vs-gmk-the-battle-over-japanese-nationalism

MP3:

http://kaijuvisionradioepisodes.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/56-shin-godzilla-gmk-and-japanese-nationalism.mp3

Transcript:

Welcome back to Kaijuvision. I’m Brian Scherschel. I’m going to continue with Shin Godzilla-related content. As I’ve been interested in politics and history since I was 7 years old, this has always been my interest and my specialty. So as they say on YouTube, let’s get right into it.

In this episode I’m going to address an article called “Shin Godzilla and GMK: The Battle Over Japanese Nationalism”, which was written by Gman in 2017. It’s about how Shin Godzilla is supposedly nationalist propaganda, but in reality, this article itself reads like propaganda. Propaganda is information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular cause or point of view.

I’ll start by saying that I have a master’s in public administration with a concentration in comparative and international affairs from the best public administration school in the country. It’s ranked higher than the Kennedy School of Government. I have read a great deal about Japanese nationalism, and I’ve covered over 50 topics on Kaijuvision, so this is not really a new topic for me. I’ve never addressed an article like this on the show before, but I am now because the Godzilla and the kaiju community is really missing a lot of perspective on this topic in particular. Fans of Godzilla and kaiju deserve to hear updated information to be able to make good decisions. There are others in the community who have it right by disagreeing with the conventional wisdom. It’s not that hard to understand, it’s just that people have been getting outdated information for so long, and it’s time to move forward.

When I released my “Politics of Shin Godzilla” episode, I came up against only a little bit of push-back. The feedback was largely positive. Most of the negative responses were hilarious to me, calling me Fox News and a populist, among other things. They called Shin Godzilla Japanese militarist nationalist propaganda, and the “Triumph of the Will” of Godzilla movies, which is a comparison to the Nazi regime’s propaganda. I think the criticisms of Shin Godzilla have been so over the top. One person said I didn’t mention GMK from 2001 and pretended to have this sort of “gotcha” moment. I don’t think he listened to anything I said in the video either, but maybe he did. But when he mentioned that, he reminded me of this article about GMK and Shin Godzilla.

So getting into the article, right out of the gate, it sets up GMK and Shin Godzilla as opposing political forces. It says how GMK represents Japan’s pacifist ideals and Shin Godzilla represents right-wing nationalism. So here’s why this is a false setup from the outset: Both movies are patriotic. They’re two sides of the same coin. Patriotism is faith in one’s homeland: political, historical, cultural, ethnic, and patriotism is defensive, inward-thinking, and fulfilled. Nationalism is inseparable from the desire for power and promoting national identity, culture, language, race, religion