Other Shores: The Shigeru Kayama Novellas

Other Shores is a sub-series focusing on Godzilla’s appearances in non-film media.

Shigeru Kayama was a prolific genre writer at the height of his career when he was tasked with developing Tanaka Tomoyuki’s pitch for Gojira into a full story outline. He would do the same for its first sequel. More to the point, he would adapt both finished films into novellas that were published in 1955, long before home video made it easy to revisit the films themselves. These novellas have remained in print in Japan ever since, as part of Kayama’s enormous body of work that remains popular in the country to this day. However, In the english-speaking world, these novellas were only made available for the first time in October 2023, via translations by Jeffrey Angles for University of Minnesota Press. Therefore, We Call It Godzilla is proud to be one of the first series retrospectives in the west to feature this important part of Godzilla’s media history: the first two films, filtered through the lens of their original writer. 

Sources differ on exactly how close Kayama’s treatment for Gojira resembled the final project. Earlier works such as Guy Mariner Tucker’s Age of the Gods and August Ragone’s Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters (2007) describe Kayama’s pitch as a more generic story about a mad scientist attempting to control a tentacled sea monster, with the story being refined later to add the anti-nuclear sentiment and to turn the scientist into the principled Professor Yamane. In later and presumably better-sourced volumes such Steve Ryfle and Ed Godzizewski’s Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa as well as Jeffrey Angles’s essay accompanying his translations, Kayama is described as enthusiastically diving into the nuclear aspect of the story from the start, even suggesting much more direct references to the Lucky Dragon and specific political landscape than wound up in the final film. I’m quite curious as to how this discrepancy regarding information on Kayama’s role came about.

Regardless of how much of the anti-nuclear theme he originally brought to the table, it’s clear from reading his adaptation of Gojira that he was indeed passionate about that anti-nuclear aspects of the final story. The collected volume opens with an author’s note dated July 1955, containing passages that reinforce the internationalist bent of Godzilla: “If [nuclear war] were to happen, it wouldn’t just be big metropolises that would be destroyed. The entire Earth would likely be laid waste. To prevent something so frightening and tragic from coming to pass, people all over the world are pouring their energy into a new movement opposing the use of atomic and hydrogen bombs.” Kayama then describes what could be a mission statement for the Godzilla series itself: “As one small member of that movement, I have tried to do my part by writing [this combined] novel.” 

Throughout his adaptation of Gojira, Kayama is careful to retain the majority of the social commentary found in the film. In places, he adds to it. In this version of Professor Yamane’s presentation to the Diet Building, Yamane explicitly suggests that Godzilla’s peace and quiet was disturbed by the bomb, reinforcing the monster’s victimhood. And in Yamane’s earnest, pained argument with Shinkichi regarding the need to keep Godzilla alive, Kayama deepens the anti-fascist streak of the original when he has Yamane state that “‘We Japanese have caused a great deal of trouble to people throughout the world. Carrying out this research [on Godzilla’s survival abilities] is our one and only chance to make reparations for all that.’”

That scene is a highlight of the adaptation, and also one that those familiar with the original might be puzzled by, because it is nowhere to be found in the film. That’s right: in this version, it is Shinkichi - the orphaned Odo Islander, who is adopted into the Yamane family and spends most of the film as a background character - who is the protagonist. He is aged up so that he can be Emiko’s love interest (while Emiko is aged down slightly), he works at the salvage company for his boss Ogata, and he makes the dive with Serizawa at the end. Indeed, Shinkichi takes over most of Ogata’s plot functions, save for the latter’s heated discussion with Yamane in-between Godzilla’s two attacks on Tokyo. Kayama’s novella isn’t the only version of the story to push Shinkichi to the forefront. As noted in Nicholas Driscoll’s Toho Kingdom review covering a collection of Gojira manga from close to the film’s release, many contemporary adaptations centered Shinkichi as a means to appeal to the youthful demographic the adaptations were aimed at. Kayama’s novellas were no different, as they were in fact published as the first of a young adult line called Youth Library in Japan.

And in the case of the novella, Shinkichi’s prominence allows Kayama to make an improvement to the drama of the film: we have a main character who has directly suffered losses from the damage Godzilla caused early in the story. In the film, Shinkichi never gets to articulate his feelings toward the monster who killed his family and destroyed his village, except to curse Godzilla out as the creature swims away from a burning Tokyo. But here, we are privy to Shinkichi’s thoughts, his grief and his resentment toward Godzilla, and his pained frustration with the would-be father-in-law who insists that that the monster should be kept alive. This is the novella’s most successful addition: Yamane has someone with an equally personal investment to counter his views. Shinkichi is full of admiration and gratitude toward Professor Yamane, but feels resentment and disbelief that his paternal figure would argue for the life of a monster who orphaned him in the first place, as though Yamane wasn’t thinking about how Shinkichi would feel at all. Shinkichi calls Yamane on his sentiments, asking him how he’d feel if Emiko had been killed by Godzilla. The Professor acknowledges Shinkichi’s pain and tearfully responds that he’d “be in mourning, the same as you. However, as a paleontologist, I’m not likely to change my opinion.” When their exchange is interrupted, Yamane leaves Shinkichi with the thought that they should each follow the path their beliefs take regarding Godzilla, with no easy closure in sight. It’s earnest and gripping stuff, a good articulation of the story’s themes and its human drama alike.

Elsewhere, the adaptation’s differences from the film work less well. An added subplot, about a blackmailing con artist faking the existence of a “Tokyo Godzilla Society” that claims to control the monster and pins Professor Yamane as its leader, has no room to go anywhere. That said, the subplot does highlight the degree to which genre-hopping became textually embedded into the Godzilla series almost from the start. Kayama’s writing bounced freely from adventure, science-fiction, fantasy, mystery, and crime stories in a literary world where those categories were seen as less rigid than in the west. Certainly it makes sense of Raids Again’s sudden digression into a crime story, which the Tokyo Godzilla Society here feels of a piece with. Thus, we must give Kayama at least some of the credit for the series’ genre-bending, an aspect that would contribute massively to Godzilla’s longevity even as Kayama would swear off any further involvement with the character. (More on that below.)

Some of the more direct adaptational changes similarly flounder, including the novella’s depiction of the central romance. When we meet Kochi and Takarada as Emiko and Ogata in the film, their dalliance has been going on for a while. Theirs might not be a screen romance for the ages, but they feel like two people in a steady, mature relationship that provides an effective anchor for the “ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events” side of Gojira. Whereas the novella’s choice to have Shinkichi and Emiko only reunite at the story’s start (having been childhood friends), combined with their slightly younger ages, reduces their connection into a mutual crush that feels much less substantial. That lack of substance in turn lessens the characters’ interactions with Serizawa. Serizawa's realization that the love of his life prefers another soulmate needs that rival relationship to be strong in order for the development to have the most emotional impact, and the revised version here doesn't carry as much weight.

Similarly muffled is the impact of the ending. Despite Kayama’s emphasis on the character’s victimhood earlier in the novella, Godzilla never comes across as anything but a big angry monster in the prose itself. Without Godzilla as a sympathetic figure in the climax, the ending turns into the tragedy of Dr. Serizawa alone (well, and all the Tokyo Bay sea life that is killed within the Oxygen Destroyer’s effective range, but sadly, you rarely see them get talked about). Gojira comes across as slightly less rich a text if the monster’s death comes across as a more traditional victory, albeit one with great cost. 

The difference may be down to what is ultimately the novella’s biggest limitation. Kayama describes Godzilla well enough in the prose, and depicts his rampage with exciting verve. But on screen, we can see him, read his movements, and hear his roar, his footfalls, and Ifukube’s themes for that character. (Angles translates Kayama’s interpretation of the roar as “GRAWRRR,”; years after the film’s worldwide release, “SCREEONK” would become the most-used onomatopoeia by western fans. I interpreted the sound as “AAAONK” when I was a kid.) Godzilla is fundamentally a creature of the cinema, and the aspects that allowed him to become a character rather than a generic monster ultimately stem from the sight and sound of him. As much as the story in prose allows the reader to imagine it with a bigger budget and more advanced special effects than the film, the imagery has much more impact when you can see it flickering in black and white on the screen. It is this reason that, for all the advantages and genuine improvements that Kayama’s adaptation of Gojira offers, the novella could only ever have reached the distinction of being the second best version of the story. 

I’ll be honest: of the two novella adaptations, Godzilla Raids Again was the one I was more curious to read. Mostly, I was intrigued by what the story would look like on the page. Would the novelization reveal a more in-depth narrative than the rushed version put on screen, full of a similar level of depth and passion as Gojira? Alas, not really. Ironically, the greater faithfulness of Kayama’s adaptation to the film version of Godzilla Raids Again seems to have precluded the addition of much depth to the narrative, certainly within the small page count. There are some differences; in the prose version, Anguirus shares Godzilla’s atomic breath weapon, strengthening the implication that the hydrogen bomb gifted them this ability. Otherwise, the narrative is largely an adequate potboiler without too much inspiration, just like it was on the screen.

Adequate, but in Kayama’s hands, quite readable. Both Godzilla Raids Again and its companion demonstrate how Kayama won the popularity he did. Much of his work was for younger audiences, and Kayama uses a compact but evocative prose style that serves to convey as much information and excitement as possible. Consider this short paragraph from Raids Again, as Godzilla and Anguirus fight in Osaka: “In the blink of an eye, the strip of buildings near the two monsters was enveloped in a sea of flame—factories, buildings, everything. Still, the two continued fighting, moving ever closer to central Osaka in the process. Their struggle was so intense that all the power of science seemed useless in the face of their tremendous strength.” The passage is quick, vivid, and to-the-point without sacrificing substance, as the conclusion neatly conveys both the scale of the fight and the theme of the story in the same sentence. 

Kayama’s style does contain tics more common in Japanese literature, such as frequent use of onomatopoeias and more anthropomorphization than western readers may be used to, but his work here is an easy and charming read nonetheless, one that maintains the beating heart of the originals. Even in an era where the best versions of these stories are widely available to experience on disc or on streaming, Kayama’s combined adaptation remains an easy recommendation; in the years when Godzilla’s first adventures weren’t screening in Japan, the public there are lucky that the original writer was on hand to provide the next best thing, and that he was more than up to the task.

Shigeru Kayama refused to submit any more Godzilla treatments, because he feared that audiences’ affection for the monster was diluting the seriousness of the character’s theme - and as he admitted, he, too, was beginning to feel overly sympathetic toward Godzilla. (Keep an eye on this conceptual space.) But as it happens, he had already wrapped up his story contribution to another monster film for Toho: Honda’s second kaiju film and the next in the sequence, the abominable snowman-themed Half Human.

Return to the master We Call It Godzilla index here.