Godzilla at 70: Time for Kaijū Studies

Abstract

This article contextualises the history of kaijū scholarship and looks particularly at the swell of publishing that has emerged in the last decade. It argues that the release of a series of new Godzilla films has led to a greater focus on the kaijū film, but that there is recurrence of critical themes that have persisted throughout scholarship on giant monster movies since the 1960s. This provides a literature review to understand how kaijū media has been critiqued, defined and challenged in response to the near three-quarter century history of kaijū cinema to consider if studies of the kaijū media provide the impetus to look at the kaijū as deserving of its own field of study. If zombie studies and vampire studies can occupy their own emerging fields of study, why not the kaijū? If the figure of the kaijū asks the biggest questions of our cultures, then do the giant monsters not deserve their own field? But, if this is an emerging field of study, the article poses, it needs to be more than kaijū film studies.