Source: The Guardian (UK)I was doing my usual search of the Internet this morning, when I stumbled upon this letter, submitted by Hitomi Muto, the granddaughter of famed Japanese special effects master Eiji Tsuburaya, to The Guardian (UK) website. I won't publish the whole letter here, but this is how it begins:
I am a granddaughter of Eiji Tsuburaya, who was in charge of the special effects in Godzilla. It was fascinating to see your article about the film by Peter Bradshaw (A monster of a movie, April 18).
It was a good occasion for me to think again of the theme behind Godzilla at my age of 35. In the wandering period after the fatal defeat in the war, what did Japanese people see in Godzilla? And what did my grandfather want to say?
First, it reminded us of our sense of awe about nature. The Japanese worshipped kami (gods), seen as the sacred power within nature. This comes from the notion in Japanese culture that defines the proper place for the human being as being in the lap of nature, defined in terms of the divine or sacred.
Second, we saw fear for the destruction of nature in Godzilla. It seems that the film was one of the alarms against the artificial destruction of nature at that time. We had pollution victims throughout the nation. Some of them are still suffering diseases from this now.
Read the rest of the letter HERE
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