Seeing Japanese through the eyes of a giant lizard

"I never thought Godzilla was fearful," says Haruhiko Yoshizaki, who today runs a private science-fiction museum and grew up with a Godzilla that breathed sparks. "I've been thinking Godzilla is almost a lovable character."

For a pacifist nation that last week debated in the Diet a law regarding defense measures if attacked, Godzilla is also a figure to be lived through vicariously. "He is physically strong, but also sentimental," says Enomoto Noriaki, visiting the exhibit with his wife. "I like the fact he can go wherever he wants. He won't lose a fight."

When Japanese small-car exports dominated world markets in the early '80s, Godzilla, much to Japanese delight, pulverized the gleaming new skyscrapers of Tokyo's Shinjuku neighborhood. (It is a status symbol in Japan to be from an area Godzilla feels important enough to bust up.) Later came Info-tech Godzilla for the millennium. A post-9/11 Godzilla is currently being filmed.

"We wanted to look back on Japanese society ... show the changes in character of Godzilla ... and the empathy felt toward Godzilla and how people accepted Godzilla," Mr. Osugi says of the exhibit, which closed Sunday.

However, a 1998 high-tech Made-in-USA God-zilla was not so readily embraced. Hollywood's version seemed, to many Japanese, characterless, impressive only in brute force – an imposter Godzilla that satisfied a need for cheap thrills. The American lizard, in fact, reinforced some stereotypes here about the world superpower – summed up ironically by the ad campaign, "Size matters."

"The American Godzilla is just a large T-Rex," says Kono Naoki, an exhibitgoer. "There is nothing we like about him. We like a monster who is played by a human in a rubber suit."

By contrast, the home-grown, low-tech Japanese lizard is a confused figure, a tormented soul who can't get his bearings straight. Hey, he didn't ask to be here, one Japanese said. He's the unwitting product of atomic fusion, after all. He gets wrapped up in power lines and "acts out" from an orientation disfunction that naturally causes him to chew on buildings and chase rice farmers. Pity the beast!

The early Godzilla films, as the exhibit shows, contained plenty of anti-American messages. Godzilla usually ambles over and clobbers the large Gina department store in central Tokyo, which in those days was the American PX. Godzilla also takes on King Kong in the early '60s – a way to thumb the nose at American occupation.

Yet anti-American messages didn't last. In the mid-'60s, Godzilla took on a universal-protector role in saving Earth, again from the forces of King Ghidra. In 1968, he knocked down the United Nations. But a year later, a softer Godzilla was back, sporting a Barney-like child, the Son of Godzilla, famous for bouncing on Godzilla's tail.

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