The Japanese film “Godzilla Minus One” is more than just another Godzilla film. Sure, it’s got all the familiar action — the scenes of crushing terror, the drama of a monster from the sea destroying everything within reach of its powerful jaw and claws — but it also contains a message that might be missed amid the realistic portrayals of urban destruction after the American fire-bombing of Tokyo and the Japanese surrender.
Not a single American appeared in the film other than one historic image of World War II conquering general Douglas MacArthur.
Aside from Japan saying America is wary of upsetting the Soviet Union by sending its ships and planes after the monster, the Yanks are hardly mentioned. The Japanese people, however, are shown aboard old warships, wearing familiar war-time uniforms, and heroically challenging the monster in dangerous high seas.
It becomes clear that the people of Japan are battling the monster on its own. There’s no sign of either their own government or of the American occupation force that ruled the proud nation from the time of Japan’s defeat in August 1945 to the signing of the treaty at San Francisco nearly seven years later.
These brave men have resolved to conquer the monster not only free of the strictures of their rigid bureaucracy, beholden as it was to the Americans, but also unfettered by MacArthur’s Supreme Command of Allied Powers. No Americans are shown saying a word about Godzilla, much less confronting the........