A Japanese View from America | Why America Loves Godzilla: From Hideki Matsui to Godzilla Minus Zero
By Tato Takahama
Pacific Research Institute
November 2, 2026
When Hideki Matsui was named manager of the Yomiuri Giants on October 23, the announcement brought back memories of the years when the former Yankees slugger was known to baseball fans in both Japan and the United States as “Godzilla.” Matsui moved to the Yankees in 2003 and became the Most Valuable Player of the 2009 World Series. His nickname was more than a colorful label. It reflected the larger-than-life presence of a Japanese player who had become familiar to American fans.
Godzilla himself is about to return to American theaters. Godzilla Minus Zero, the latest film from Japan’s Toho, opens in North America on November 6. Its Japanese release is scheduled for November 3, the anniversary of the 1954 opening of the original Godzilla. More than seven decades after his first appearance, the monster continues to attract audiences on both sides of the Pacific.
Godzilla has never been an ordinary movie monster. He can be terrifying, destructive and seemingly beyond human control. Yet he can also become a protector, even an unlikely friend. At times he is humanity’s enemy; at others, he is the force that stands between Earth and an even greater threat. That contradiction is part of his enduring appeal.
The international success of Godzilla Minus One, released in 2023, demonstrated that the character still has considerable power with American audiences. The film earned approximately $56.4 million in North America and more than $116 million worldwide. It also won the Academy Award for Visual Effects in 2024, the first Godzilla film to receive an Oscar.
American critics did not focus solely on the spectacle of a giant monster laying waste to cities. Several were struck by the human story set against the ruins of postwar Japan. The central character, Koichi Shikishima, is a former kamikaze pilot burdened by guilt over having survived the war. His struggle to rebuild his life and protect the family he has found gives the film an emotional center. Reviews in the Washington Post, Slate and Rolling Stone, among other publications, drew attention to the drama of loss, recovery and self-forgiveness. These were the interpretations of individual critics, not necessarily a reflection of how every American viewer understood the film. But they show that the story reached beyond the usual audience for monster movies.
American Godzilla fans also have strong opinions about the difference between the Japanese films produced by Toho and the Hollywood versions. In online discussions, some fans say the Japanese films feel more authentically Godzilla-like. They point to the atmosphere, the physical weight of the monster and the distinctive tradition of portraying him through a performer in a suit. Others enjoy the Hollywood films for their own scale and visual effects. The debate is not simply about which version is better. It reflects the different meanings audiences have attached to the character.
Those differences go back to the first film. Released in Japan in 1954, Godzilla appeared only nine years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That same year, the crew of the Japanese fishing vessel Daigo Fukuryu Maru, or Lucky Dragon No. 5, was exposed to radioactive fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll. Nuclear weapons and radiation were not distant abstractions for Japanese audiences. They were part of a recent and painful national experience.
The original film drew directly on that fear. Godzilla was awakened and transformed by nuclear testing, and his attacks brought images of destruction, radiation sickness and civilian suffering to the screen. The monster was not merely a creature to be defeated. He embodied the consequences of a power that human beings had unleashed but could not control.
The film that American audiences first saw in 1956 was substantially different. Godzilla, King of the Monsters! was not simply the Japanese original with English dialogue. It was re-edited, with new scenes featuring American actor Raymond Burr as reporter Steve Martin. The story was reorganized around Martin’s perspective, making him a witness to the events and giving American audiences a character through whom to follow the action.
In the process, much of the Japanese film’s historical and human context was reduced or removed. References that connected Godzilla to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Lucky Dragon incident and the immediate experience of nuclear radiation were cut or diminished. Scenes involving radiation measurements, contaminated food and the suffering of ordinary people were shortened or omitted. The children’s anti-nuclear song was deleted. The film also gave less attention to the personal relationships and moral conflict surrounding Dr. Serizawa, whose destructive weapon ultimately becomes central to the story.
The ending was changed in a particularly telling way. In the Japanese version, Dr. Yamane warns that Godzilla may not be the last such creature if hydrogen-bomb testing continues. His warning leaves the audience with the possibility that humanity will face the consequences of its own actions again. That warning was removed from the American version. Instead, Steve Martin offers a more reassuring conclusion, suggesting that the danger has passed and the world can return to peace.
The two films therefore left audiences with different impressions. Japanese viewers were confronted with a story rooted in the experience of war and the fear of nuclear destruction. The American version retained the basic premise of a monster created by nuclear testing, but softened much of the specific historical memory and ended on a more comforting note.
The distinction was examined by Terrence Rafferty in a 2004 New York Times essay, “The Monster That Morphed Into a Metaphor.” Rafferty contrasted the original Japanese film with the shortened and reworked American release, emphasizing how much of the original’s nuclear anxiety was lost in the process. The comparison remains important because it shows that Godzilla did not enter the United States with precisely the same meaning he had in Japan.
Over time, however, American audiences developed their own relationship with the monster. Godzilla became a fixture of popular culture, appearing not only in films but also in television, toys, games and other merchandise. Dalton Cooper’s 2021 master’s thesis at the University of North Texas, King of the Merchandise: How Showa Era Paratexts Forever Changed the Godzilla Franchise, examines how material surrounding the films helped reshape the character during the Showa era. Godzilla gradually changed from a destructive threat into a guardian and, at times, a friend of humanity. That transformation was reinforced by the way the character was marketed and encountered outside the theater.
Cooper surveyed 331 Godzilla fans. Of those respondents, 56.63 percent said their first encounter with Godzilla was through a Showa-era film, and 89 percent said they first saw the monster when they were ten years old or younger. The survey represents a fan community, not the American population as a whole. Still, the findings point to the importance of childhood memories in sustaining the franchise. For many fans, Godzilla is not simply a film character. He is part of the popular culture they grew up with and have carried into adulthood.
That history helps explain why Godzilla can be both a symbol of Japan and a familiar figure in American entertainment. His Japanese origins remain essential, but American audiences have added their own associations to him. The character has traveled across cultures without losing all the contradictions that made him compelling in the first place.
The latest film, Godzilla Minus Zero, brings some of those contradictions back into view. In his review for Slant Magazine, Eli Friedberg describes the tension between “Godzilla the historical symbol” and “Godzilla the action figure.” He sees a film caught between the weight of historical trauma and the pleasure of spectacular monster action. The destruction may be thrilling to watch, but the film also makes the human cost difficult to ignore. Shikishima’s distress at the deaths of civilians gives the spectacle a moral dimension: the destruction is not merely an impressive visual effect; people are suffering within it.
Dan Bayer, writing for Next Best Picture, draws attention to the film’s questions about duty and responsibility—to family, to the nation and to the next generation. He also considers the consequences of defense plans that fail and the burden placed on those who must live with their results. Not all critics agree that the film brings these themes together successfully. Their differing responses are worth noting. They show that the film is being discussed not only as a monster movie but also as a story about history, national responsibility and the human cost of violence.
This does not mean that American audiences have stopped enjoying Godzilla as entertainment. The battles, the scale and the spectacle remain central to the experience. But the success of Godzilla Minus One showed that a Japanese film could also bring the country’s postwar experience and the legacy of nuclear destruction directly to American viewers. In that sense, the history that was muted in the 1956 American release has found a new audience.
Godzilla began as a Japanese response to a particular historical moment. In the United States, he became something more: a monster, a pop-culture icon, a childhood memory and, at times, a guardian. These meanings do not cancel one another out. They have accumulated over more than seventy years, allowing audiences in different countries to see something of their own experience in the same creature.
Godzilla is a Japanese monster, but he is also a global one. Perhaps that is why, more than seventy years after his first appearance, audiences are still waiting for him to return.
References
- Terrence Rafferty, “The Monster That Morphed Into a Metaphor,” The New York Times, May 2, 2004.
- Dalton Cooper, King of the Merchandise: How Showa Era Paratexts Forever Changed the Godzilla Franchise, master’s thesis, University of North Texas, 2021.
- Lucas Trevor, review of Godzilla Minus One, The Washington Post, November 30, 2023.
- Dana Stevens, review of Godzilla Minus One, Slate, January 9, 2024.
- Christopher Cruz, review of Godzilla Minus One, Rolling Stone, November 30, 2023.
- Simon Abrams, review of Godzilla Minus One, RogerEbert.com, December 1, 2023.
- Katie Walsh, review of Godzilla Minus One, Los Angeles Times, November 30, 2023.
- Eli Friedberg, review of Godzilla Minus Zero, Slant Magazine, September 26, 2026.
- Dan Bayer, review of Godzilla Minus Zero, Next Best Picture, September 2026.
- Rotten Tomatoes, “Godzilla Minus Zero: First Reviews,” September 27, 2026.
Note: English translation was prepared by the author. Translation assistance tools may have been used.
2026 NOV | A Japanese View from America | PRI | ゴジラはなぜアメリカで愛されるのか――松井秀喜から『ゴジラ−0.0』へ