Japan and the world are facing a terrible crisis.
Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands are dead.
Many tens of thousands more are homeless, have lost everything.
Rebuilding will take decades, and much can never be restored.
Japan, no stranger to the evils of radiation, is facing yet another nuclear horror.
That horror could drift our way.
The world economy will be adversely affected.
Governments may fall, and our own is exhibiting its now-familiar dithering, feckless uncomprehending reaction.
I think on these things a lot, and follow the technical news with some care, and hope with absolute sincerity that the incredibly brave Japanese workers and their resourceful technical colleagues can cool those cores in time, and intensely and truly regret the pain of those beautiful people in that beautiful country I loved both times I have visited.
And yet . . .
And yet, as hard as I try . . .
And yet, as hard as I try, as much as I attempt to scrub my consciousness, as much as I would like to think of myself as a noble and pure-thinking adult, a man worthy of imparting wisdom and displaying an ethical example to his grandsons, as much as I try to push it out, out, out, I simply cannot prevent this one additional thought from creeping into what passes for my thinking:
I hope this doesn't wake up that damned Godzilla again.
I grew up thinking that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki inspired Godzilla, until I learned that napalm was invented not during Viet Nam to defoliate jungles but rather at the end if World War II for fire-bombing Tokyo and its many Japanese "paper" houses. Then it hit me: Godzilla attacks Tokyo, not Hiroshima or Nagasaki. ... But it would still be pretty cool if Godzilla made a comeback.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of film scholarship out there on the relationship between Japanese monster cinema -- and the variety of monsters is truly astounding -- and Japan's experience at the end of WW II.
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