[Netflix] "Rodan" (1956) - Highlights as a Kaiju Movie for Seniors

<Overview>

Rodan is one of the "Toho Big Three Kaiju," alongside the well-known "Godzilla" (1954) and "Mothra" (1961).

The 1956 film depicting its origin can be seen on Netflix.

https://www.netflix.com/jp/title/70104656

Although it is a kaiju that appears frequently, surprisingly, this is the only film where Rodan is the main character.

It is the first color film in the kaiju genre.

The giant bird "Rodan," which took flight from a coal mine in Aso, Kumamoto, destroys various parts of Kyushu.

A team of scientists and the Self-Defense Forces head out to exterminate it, a format that became familiar thereafter. (Akihiko Hirata's role as a scientist is a perfect fit.)

Although it is a film from over 60 years ago, it has been remastered and the picture is beautiful.

<Evaluation>

A film from before I was born. In my childhood in the 1960s, I watched kaiju movies to death, but I hadn't seen this one. I found it on Netflix and watched it for the first time.

Because the image is beautiful due to the remastering, I was able to enjoy it without much stress. (It's charming that the images are so clear that you can see the piano wires in the special effects scenes.)

Since it is one of the representative works of kaiju cinema, it has been thoroughly researched, and there is nothing for someone like me to say anew.

However, watching it as a senior in my 60s, there were interesting points and discoveries unique to being an older person.

I would like to list the highlights from a senior's perspective, which are not emphasized much in online information such as Wikis.

The youth of our parents—customs of the Showa 30s (1955-1964)

This is a movie from around the time my generation, now in our 60s, was born.

This means it depicts the customs of the time when we were "being made," and when our parents were dating and having sex.

Our parents, the generation born in the early Showa era, are now in their 80s and 90s, a generation that is gradually disappearing from this world.

In the mild romantic scenes between Kenji Sahara and Yumi Shirakawa in the film, I think of the youth of those parents. (And, it feels a bit awkward.)

Regardless, their fashion in the film, as well as the scenery of cars and houses, evoke my earliest memories.

The bird in the cage kept inside the house becomes an important motif in the film, and things like that birdcage are already nostalgic.

The scenery of coal mines and slag heaps

The setting for the first half of the movie is a coal mine in Aso.

The scenery of the coal mine is nostalgic.

The appearance of the inside of the coal mine, including in Western films, appears frequently in dramas and movies thereafter, so young people might have seen it too.

However, I think it is unique to a film of that era to depict the backyard, including the administration building, the engineers' laboratory, and the workers' housing.

The coal industry would soon become the representative of sunset industries, but in this film, there is not a hint of decline. Everyone is full of confidence.

1956, the year this film was released, was a milestone year when the Economic White Paper stated, "It is no longer the postwar period." The economy continued to boom due to special procurements from the Korean War, and the economic scale had returned to pre-war levels.

Coal was still the main source of energy, and it was around the liberalization of oil imports in 1962 that it shifted to oil.

This film is also valuable in that it depicts the era between that "energy revolution."

Even so, when I think of coal mines in Kyushu, places like Chikuho in Fukuoka Prefecture come to mind.

The first thing I thought when I started watching the movie was, "Was there really a coal mine in Aso?"

Actually, there were no coal mines in Aso. Therefore, it was filmed on location at the Shikamachi Coal Mine in Nagasaki Prefecture.

What I found irresistibly nostalgic was the "bota-yama" (slag heap).

A bota-yama is a mountain formed by piling up waste rock from coal mining. They were a staple of coal mines, and I saw them myself during my childhood.

The "Meganulon" (a giant dragonfly larva, Rodan's prey) that appears at the beginning of the movie escapes to the slag heap, and the police and others climb the heap in pursuit.

I thought that scene was one of the highlights. It's something that could only have been filmed in that era.

In other scenes as well, the word "bota" appears naturally, such as when someone says, "The slag is falling!" Even in the 1960s, it was a common word that I, as a child, knew.

Even if it wasn't a slag heap, until the 1960s, scenes of coal piled up in ports and around town were a common sight. I feel like we called those "bota-yama" too. That's what I remembered.

Why doesn't it attack "Kitakyushu"?

After taking off from Aso, Rodan destroys the bustling districts of Sasebo and Fukuoka.

Eiji Tsuburaya's all-out destruction scene is the biggest highlight of this film, and it is said that most of the budget was spent on those special effects. (He probably wanted to destroy places all over the world, but this was likely the limit of the budget.)

Rodan is later reported to have caused damage in the "Yawata district," but there is no footage of it.

Those born in the 1960s might wonder, "Huh?"

Why were the cities attacked by the monster Sasebo and Fukuoka?

While Fukuoka City has the largest population in Kyushu now, before the war, it was Nagasaki City. And after the war, although the population of Fukuoka City increased, the population of Sasebo City was larger than that of Nagasaki City, and if you combined Sasebo and Nagasaki, they were larger than Fukuoka City.

So, it's understandable that Sasebo City was attacked.

But wasn't Kitakyushu the largest city in Kyushu? Some might think that if you're going to destroy something, it should be the Yawata Steel Works in Kitakyushu.

However, at the time the movie was released, Kitakyushu City did not yet exist. It was formed by the merger of five cities, including Kokura and Yawata, in 1963.

It was in the late 1960s that Kitakyushu City was counted as one of the "seven major cities of Japan" as a city of one million people, and the Yawata Steel Works was treated anew as a symbol of Japan's modern industrialization.

Incidentally, the "seven major cities of Japan" that were in textbooks at the time were the cities with populations of over one million: "Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, and Kitakyushu."

It was during the energy revolution mentioned earlier, from the 1960s onwards, that Kitakyushu City was born and the Yawata Steel Works was once again in the spotlight.

If it were the 1960s, Rodan would likely have attacked the steel works in Yawata, Kitakyushu City, or the bustling streets of Kokura rather than Sasebo or Fukuoka.

It was from the end of the 1970s through the 1980s that Kitakyushu City declined and Fukuoka City overtook it again due to the structural shift from secondary to tertiary industries.

Therefore, coming full circle, it now seems only natural that Fukuoka City would be the target (young people today might not know anything about the glorious era of Kitakyushu City).

Global Warming

At the beginning of the movie, I was surprised that "global warming" is suddenly brought up at the coal mine office.

"It's hot, isn't it? It's what they call global warming. They say the ice at the North and South Poles is melting."

They are having a conversation like that.

This is 1956.

I was surprised because I had thought the talk of global warming started in the 1980s.

In fact, in the 1970s, there was talk of "global cooling."

Even in the Wikipedia entry for "Global Warming," it states that until the U.S. Senate addressed the issue in 1988, "the theory of cooling was widespread among the general public as well."

It is interesting that this was being discussed in the 1950s, and at a coal mining site, which is considered one of the causes of global warming (coal is said to have high CO2 emissions when burned).

The conversation in this movie does not explain why the warming is happening.

Perhaps it was recognized as one of the abnormal weather phenomena even back then?

It seems the purpose was to impress upon the audience the feeling that "catastrophes are occurring," along with the mention of "flying saucers" in the film.

"Flying saucer" is the translation for the term that emerged from the 1947 Kenneth Arnold incident, but it must have still been a new term at the time of this movie.

Furthermore, the reason for Rodan's appearance is only vaguely attributed to things like "the effects of nuclear testing" and "geothermal heat from Mount Aso," and is ultimately never made clear.

The subtle "Self-Defense Forces"

Although the Self-Defense Forces were born in the year of Godzilla (1954) after passing through the National Police Reserve and the National Safety Force, it seems they were not yet fully recognized in the year this film was released (1956), as they are still referred to by their old name,

"Call the National Safety Force quickly"

as they are called by their former name.

Their chain of command is also unclear.

However, their performance is well-depicted, and the scene where they pursue Rodan high into the sky with fighter jets, accompanied by Akira Ifukube's thrilling music, is one of the film's highlights.

That said, the Self-Defense Forces alone cannot defeat the monster. This follows the same pattern as later kaiju films.

Incidentally, "Okinawa" before its reversion also makes a brief appearance.

The mystery of the final scene

Even so, I had been wondering from the very beginning why the setting was Aso.

Was it really necessary to choose Aso as the setting, even to the point of creating a fictional coal mine?

Because of the location in Aso, the mention of "the effects of hydrogen bomb testing" doesn't quite resonate. Due to this ambiguity in its origin, Rodan was unable to acquire the (anti-nuclear) message that Godzilla had.

As for whether it makes good use of the Aso landscape, the first half is mainly inside a coal mine, so it's irrelevant, and the second half is also underwhelming. Not many tourist spots are shown.

Although Aso had been a famous tourist destination (a national park) since before the war, it doesn't seem to have been that topical at the time. It wasn't until the 1960s, after the "Yamanami Highway" was built, that it became a staple for school trips.

But the mystery was solved in the final scene.

Ah, so this was the scene they wanted to film, I realized.

It's like Wagner's "Götterdämmerung".

I understood that Mount Aso must have been chosen as the setting by working backward from this final scene.

However, when reading explanations on sites like Wiki, it says that this scene was captured by accident as an "incident" on set.

There was no plan to film such a scene, but Eiji Tsuburaya was so moved, saying "I'll never be able to film footage like this again," that it was ultimately included.

However, if that's the case, the question of why Aso was chosen as the setting remains unresolved.

Furthermore, the ending that was originally intended, as written on sites like Wiki, is something I just can't seem to accept.

I won't go into detail here as it would be a spoiler, but in the end, I really don't understand what people in the past were thinking.