Atragon (1963) has long been one of the most celebrated sci-fi adventure films from the Showa era outside of the Godzilla series. With its breakthrough effects and rollicking story (adapted by longtime kaiju-scribe Shin’ichi Sekizawa), the movie has garnered many fans, and the titular undersea weapon (known as the Gotengo in the Japanese version, the Atragon in the English) became an iconic warship design in Japanese fantasy, influencing countless later science fiction epics. If you ever see a flying battleship with a drill nose, it was probably inspired by the Gotengo/Atragon here—and, by extension, the original book series from Shunro Oshikawa. Oshikawa, a Jules Verne figure from the far east, wrote a variety of adventure tales for boys—most notably the Undersea Warship series, upon which Atragon was loosely based. These six books are largely unknown in the West, and while many of Atragon’s more-remembered elements (such as the undersea nation and sea serpent) come from an illustrated tale by renowned artist Shigeru Komatsuzaki (who also designed much of the space-tech from 1957's The Mysterians), the books remain critical elements in the history of Japanese sci-fi/fantasy culture rarely reported on much in the West. However, in 2022 the English-speaking world was finally graced with an English translation of the first Undersea Warship title by the profoundly prolific Shelley Marshall of JPop Books. For Toho sci-fi fans, the relatively short translation provides a peek into murky pop-culture history with island-hopping military adventure and nationalistic thrills of the shallowest sort. While the translation has some pretty big issues, and the tale itself relies far too heavily on the thinnest of narrative contrivances (as well as a shocking dearth in appearances by the titular super-submarine), there is still something of value to be had for anyone interested in the fantastic literature of Japan here.
The story, roughly sketched out, follows the world-traveling Yanagawa as he takes on escort duty for his good friend, businessman Hamajima. Hamajima’s wife, Harue, and son, Hideo are returning to Japan from Naples by ship, and Yanagawa acts as their guard on the way. Unfortunately, their transport—the Crescent Moon—is sunk by pirates, with Harue lost, and Yanagawa (with Hideo in tow) somehow manages to secure a life raft and float their way to a mysterious island. There, they meet Captain Sakuragi, a military genius, who is working with his team to construct a fantastic submarine far more advanced than any other upon the seas—the Lightning. Yanagawa, Hideo, a dog named “Lightning” (yes, same name as the ship), the energetic Seaman Takemura, and others on the island embark on a series of adventures culminating in a sudden disaster and a quest to save Japan’s future.
The story above takes its sweet time to really get going, and nearly every twist and turn relies on incredible coincidence at its core. Yanagawa, by some wild coincidence, meets his dear friend Hamajima in Naples. By some wild coincidence, Yanagawa is traveling out on the same ship back to Japan that Harue and Hideo are taking. After their ship is sunk, Yanagawa and Hideo coincidentally stumble upon the secret island where a Japanese team is making the astonishing warship from the title—and Yanagawa had JUST read about Yanagawa in the paper. These coincidences get even more flagrant towards the end. Most of the action of the book concerns Yanagawa at sea, then fighting wild animals on the island. The Lightning really only has one scene in which it gets to strut its stuff, and that only at the very end of the story. Despite the sci-fi adventure promised, most of the tale functions as a mild jungle adventure, which may bore many fans looking for something more fantastic.
There are touches of fantasy, of course. The Lightning retains its drill and adds on an ability to fire rapid-launching, fish-shaped torpedoes—seventy-eight per minute, a veritable missile-mini-gun. In addition, we also get a twelve-wheeled “adventure car” that looks like “a wooden cow” (presumably a reference to a kind of wheelbarrow) and sports a cage in the middle, as well as four circular saws and eight automatic axes to clear away trees and brush that might get in the way. If anything, the “adventure car” (which they use to plant a monument in the middle of nowhere claiming ownership of the island, so as to circumvent Westerners from stealing their land!) gets a bigger role and is generally cooler than the much-touted Lightning!
One of the most prominent features of Sekizawa’s script for Atragon was how that movie dealt with the perils of overeager Japanese patriotism. In the movie, Captain Jinguji (taking Sakuragi’s role) is on a mad mission to win WWII after the Japanese have already lost. He is holed up on his own secret island, building the Gotengo/Atragon as a super-weapon to defeat the Allied powers and bring glory to Japan—a task that destroys his relationship with his daughter, and threatens the future of the world as he initially refuses to use the ship to take on the Mu. Jinguji’s jingoistic patriotism is revealed for the destructive worldview that it is, and eventually Jinguji must face the need to overcome his single-minded mission for a greater good. This theme, of patriotism run amok, might have been partially a way for Sekizawa to deal with the original novel’s ringing nationalism. The Lightning is just as much a symbol of the power of Japan as the Gotengo/Atragon was meant to be, and the characters repeatedly invoke their devotion to their nation. They test out the ship on Empire Day, get truly excited about singing the national anthem and yelling “banzai” for the Emperor, they extol the idea of holding their country above all else, and the Rising Sun flag is placed above all other nations’ in one scene. Heck, when Hamajima eventually discovers his son Hideo is still alive, he proclaims “I am thankful (…) to be able to offer Hideo, who we had once mourned, to the nation.” Geez, man, aren’t you just thankful to have your own son back in your life? There is none of the circumspection from the film version, and the pre-war perspective can be a bit of a jolt for us 21st century citizens.
While the overbearing country-worship does get old, and the Lightning barely appears in action, we at least get a lot of animal attacks and jungle hijinks. The animal kingdom seems to have arrayed itself against our main characters as lions and gorillas (both separately and in groups TOGETHER) repeatedly attack our heroes with bloodthirsty glee. We also get sharks and surprisingly aggressive birds, as well as extreme inclement weather, and that old classic of serialized jungle action: quicksand. Author Oshikawa seems mostly ignorant of how lions and gorillas actually act (it seems male lions in his world travel in groups, and gorillas are manically violent), but if you go in with a mood for stupid action and fun, the nature-gone-wild elements are certainly entertaining... and most kid-lit adventures from the time likely weren’t overly conscious of scientific accuracy anywhere in the world (I’m looking at you, Tom Swift). Plus, I can’t really expect a story with a drill-bit submarine and a multi-wheeled lumber-clearing battle-auto to feature true-to-life wild beasties.
Then there is perhaps the biggest issue with this book… The writing. The translation by Shelley Marshall is not the best and has a fair share of awkward sentences and grammatical errors. Sometimes I wondered if there were outright translation gaffs, though frequently, I think she simply chose awkward translations that might have been overly literal. For a while I was highlighting a great number of errors and tortured sentences—wrong word choices (“Belgium” instead of “Belgian” for example) or run-on sentences (“From letters we received from Japan earlier this month, Captain Matsushima, my wife’s brother who was captain of the Imperial Warship Takao, had fallen ill while waiting orders, of course, not seriously ill”). Marshall oddly does not include any biographical matter about herself in her book, and I began to wonder if she might be using machine translation as a crutch to churn out her books—she seems to run her own publication house at Jpop Books and she has around twenty (!!!) novels translated over the last ten years or so. (Those who poke around might find another translation of Undersea Warship available on Amazon that is blatantly AI-translated.) It’s impossible to identify absolute proof of AI translation, though when I shared my concerns with an acquaintance who works as a translator, he said this book appears to be the work of AI. I poked around myself at some issues in the text, and what I found wasn’t encouraging. As mentioned earlier in this review, Marshall translated the name of ship as Lightning and the name of the dog as Lightning as well—but they are two different words in the original. The ship is called Denkoutei (lightning ship) and the dog is named Inazuma (lightning, lightning bolt)—given that they are two different words in Japanese, it would seem like a good idea to translate them differently in English. Further, when I was investigating these two translations from the original text, I found she apparently missed a sentence in the introduction of Lightning the dog wherein Hideo throws the good boy a beef steak. I ran said passage through AI translation website DeepL, and it skipped the steak incident as well! Another dubious passage I checked had similar results. At any rate, I think it would behoove Marshall to slow down a little bit and edit her own books more carefully, if this publication can be taken as evidence—though I suspect what really needs doing is a professional translator to completely do-over the entire text.
The Undersea Warship fulfils a much-needed gap in Japanese fantastic fiction translated into English, even if the book itself is a little boring, annoyingly patriotic, and the translation has its share of critical flaws. Toho enthusiasts should be biting at the bit to get the other five books in the series translated as well (though descriptions I found online from the Science Fiction Encyclopedia make it sound like they mostly feature the Lightning ship fighting various countries around the world). There are so many untranslated science fiction and kaiju novels in Japan that English readers would eat up, so even though I think the quality we have here should be better, I still hope for many more translations to come. |
