Reading Response

Tokyo is a city in the earthquake zone, and in this small city, it has been forced to suffer more damage and reconstruction than other cities. Whether it is earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, floods, volcanic eruptions, nuclear pollution, these have kept Tokyo’s citizens in constant fear. Tokyo’s historical vulnerability to natural and man-made catastrophic events is reflected in popular culture’s fantasy of regular destruction (Tsutsui,2010). Although Tokyo was devastated by World War II, Japan responded by suppressing memories of this violence and looking away from reality (Murakami,as cited in Oh No, There Goes Tokyo,Unknown). Thus, monsters such as Godzilla were created to express fear of catastrophe. However, such a symbol was quickly commercialized, Godzilla’s image changed from bad to good, and everything became a gimmick again. The filmmakers are simply trying to make the monster terrifying by concatenating the seriousness of the nuclear hazard and nuclear radiation is now glorified into something so good that people downplay the seriousness of it (Vivian,as cited in Oh No, There Goes Tokyo,1987).It seems that a new generation of people has gradually forgotten the fear of the disasters that have occurred, and the memories of these disasters are gradually fading.

Reference

Tsutsui W.M. (2010). Oh No, There Goes Tokyo: Recreational Apocalypse and the City in postwar Japanese Popular Culture. In Noir urbanisms: Dystopic images of the modern city (pp. 104-126). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

—— Nie Jingfeng 3035934975