WIT Life #270: Godzilla!
Film, Translating/Interpreting, WIT Life 
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WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the first Godzilla movie, and last week the newest version was released. The cast features familiar names like (a wooly-haired and wild-eyed) Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche and Ken Watanabe. It has our favorite kaiju (monster) taking on a pair of MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms), the new kaiju on the block. They are ancient parasites that come from the same era and ecosystem as Godzilla, and feed off of radiation like him. In addition to destroying American cities, the male and female MUTO terrorizing the U.S. are looking to mate.
Cranston and Binoche play an engineer couple who lived in Japan with their young son in 1999, working together at the Janjira nuclear plant where something went wrong. She perished during this accident, and the movie is set in the present day when he is determined to find out what exactly happened, as he doesn’t believe that it was a natural disaster as is being claimed. Watanabe’s character is the moral compass of the movie, a scientist who knows all about Godzilla and his kind. He adds comments about mankind’s arrogance, believing that Godzilla is nature’s way of restoring balance.
I am not familiar with the other Godzilla flicks and not a fan of action movies in general, but several nail biting sequences managed to hold my attention (as did Cranston’s brief ventures into Nihongo). However, what I found more interesting than the film was a book called Godzilla on My Mind by Bill Tsutsui, a dean and professor at Southern Methodist University who I had the honor of interpreting for two years ago. His work was an enjoyable read for even a Godzilla novice such as myself, and it provides great background on the evolution of Godzilla over a half century. Happy viewing/reading!
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