As of this writing, the publication of the English edition of Godzilla Minus One the novel is scheduled to be published just around the corner, and I find myself compelled to finish reading the Japanese version and write. It’s well past time, and I started reading the little guy over a year ago. As silly as it may sound, though, once I saw that folks were posting bootleg English translations achieved through AI, for some reason, I lost interest in reviewing this book. I think that shows a bit of immaturity on my part. One of the things I enjoy about digging up books and manga and such in Japan is that I can share things that aren’t widely known to the fandom, but when people just stole the book and posted it online and even my friends were sharing it on social media, I just lost my motivation to read it. I guess my thinking, which wasn’t fully formed at the time, was something along these lines: Why should I go to the trouble of reading the book in Japanese and painstakingly documenting the differences when any English-speaking fan can just read the awkwardly translated AI version with far less difficulty and achieve the same thing in far less time? Indeed, there are already extensive explanations of differences between the novel version and the movie on sites like Wikizilla which reference the AI-translated novel—and glancing through that list, I can say… yep. Those are some of the most notable differences. With the release of the official English version coming soon (who the heck is the translator and why isn’t he or she listed on the Amazon page as of this writing??? Is… is it also AI translated???), even fans who won’t stoop to the unofficial AI version can enjoy the book (for three times the price of the Japanese book). Is there any particular reason to review the Japanese version of the novel at this point?
I think there is, though maybe for most fans, such a review doesn’t really matter much. Perhaps what I can provide is a review that is more useful for learners of Japanese. I can still include some commentary on the differences that stood out to me, and how the book enhances (or fails to enhance) the movie, but I think maybe the most significant and unique contribution I can make is specifically about the Japanese text itself. What I’ll do here, then, is briefly go over the synopsis, comment on the story and some differences that stuck out to me, provide a brief analysis of the Japanese used and who might benefit from reading this book, and leave it at that.
The story is the same as the movie. This book does not provide any massive changes; it doesn’t have additional monsters like the Godzilla: King of the Monsters novel by Greg Keyes. It isn’t told in first person by the main character like Stephen Molstad’s 1998 GODZILLA novelization, nor does it include additional monster abilities for Godzilla like Gilmour’s 1998 GODZILLA adaptation. This is the same story with Koichi Shikishima the runaway kamikaze pilot faking a plane malfunction and landing on Odo Island so he doesn’t have to kill himself. There, he meets an outpost of Japanese military, including plane mechanic Tachibana, who really doesn’t blame him too harshly for his cowardice. But when a ferocious dinosaurian monster appears and attacks the base and Shikishima fails his chance to shoot the creature with his plane, many good soldiers die, and Shikishima is blamed. Soon after, Japan loses the war, and Shikishima makes his way back to his hometown where he ends up taking care of a ragged and desperate Japanese woman named Noriko and her informally adopted daughter Akiko. As Shikishima takes a dangerous job minesweeping Tokyo bay, he begins making shaky friendships, and allows himself to care about Noriko and Akiko, even if he never feels worthy of anyone’s affection. But when the horrific monster from Odo Island appears again, now larger and more powerful than ever, it threatens everything Shikishima has built, as well as the entire country when it wrecks Ginza with astonishing power. As Shikishima works together with eccentric engineer Noda, wizened seaman Akitsu, dopey wannabe soldier Mizushima and others to put together a desperate, nigh-impossible attempt to kill Godzilla, the future of the world (and Shikishima’s meaning in life) hang in the balance.
As with most novels, this one adds additional details for readers that flesh out characters’ motivations, thoughts, and background notes. We get just a little more detail about the Odo Island natives, who barely get mentioned in the movie at all. Here, they are known to eat deep-sea fish dishes, which is something. There are notes on what Godzilla seems to think during his initial attack on Odo Island, and several have pointed out that the novel includes a brief note about where Noda and team obtained their recording of Godzilla’s roar that they use as a lure (it was those hapless reporters in Ginza). For me, one of the most interesting bits was an extended explanation of why and how Shikishima’s crew has mines in their minesweeping ship to toss into Godzilla’s mouth (in the movie, up until that point, we had only seen them shooting mines, not harvesting them). These and other, similar details probably aren’t enough to change your impression of the movie much if you read this book, I think, but it’s entertaining and easy to breeze through. And yes, the story is still fun and exciting on the page, though I think that the simplicity of the writing betrays that this book was NOT written by a novelist.
The novel was written by the director of the film, Takashi Yamazaki—and he has written novelizations of many of his other films, such as Juvenile (2000), Doraemon: Stand by Me 2 (2020), Returner (2002), as well as Yokaipedia (2022) as Ghostbook: Obakezukan Novelization, which I reviewed a few years ago. And I don’t want to say Yamazaki’s writing is bad—I enjoyed reading this book, and Obakezukan, but the thing is, he has a very simple way of writing that is straightforward and relatively unadorned. Both of his movie novelizations that I have read were easy reads, with lots of dialogue, and when action is on the page, it’s presented in short and easy-to-digest paragraphs. Of course they will have some unfamiliar vocabulary, but the passages were not difficult for me to parse due to complicated grammar or description. I think it’s easier to read than Shigeru Kayama’s novelization of the original 1954 Godzilla, which I haven’t finished but which I found a bit more challenging, and it’s certainly not as hard as some similarly themed novels I have read. Some time ago I read Library Wars (and reviewed chapter 1 here), which has a kind of alternate history/military story, and even though that was a “light novel,” the level of the language was far more difficult than Yamazaki’s work. Currently, I am reading Comrade Girls, Shoot the Enemy by Touma Aisaka, a WWII novel set in Russia focusing on the story of a team of female snipers. That novel, though a Honya Taisho Winner for 2022 (basically, it was chosen as a great novel for people who want to get back into reading—so presumably not extremely difficult), it’s far more challenging than Godzilla Minus One. Whereas over one weekend I easily read almost half of Godzilla Minus One while traveling around Kyushu, I recently spent all day reading around 40-50 pages from Comrade Girls at the local Cinnabon… and I have to struggle at times. With Comrade Girls, the descriptive passages are longer, there are sometimes long sections describing strategy or setting up the history of Germany vs. Russia in the war, it has more specialized vocabulary. Naturally, it helps that I am familiar with Godzilla and with the original film, but there’s no denying the Godzilla Minus One novel is far easier than Comrade Girls, so it might be a good choice for many language learners hoping to break into Japanese reading.
One, one other thing that can be fun for those familiar with Japanese is the names. Shikishima, for example, is an old-fashioned name for Japan, so knowing that gives the character a metaphorical resonance like if an American character were named John Yankee. Akiko’s name means something like “tomorrow child,” illustrating how she stands as a hope for Japan’s (and Shikishima’s) future. Tachibana was the last name of some of the main characters from Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001), a movie that had a huge impact on Godzilla Minus One. Noriko’s name means something like “ceremony child” or “law child”—alright, I don’t know why she was named that, but “nori” can also mean “seaweed,” and she falls into the water at one point, soooo… Alright, it’s easy to get carried away with names, but still, knowing the kanji or what the parts of their names can mean really can add an extra dimension to the meaning of the stories.
Note that I read the Kindle version of the novel, so I made use of the Kindle dictionary, which helped. I still find the Kindle Japanese-English dictionary more than a little problematic, as at least in my experience the dictionary lacks a lot of words, and I found myself copying and pasting frequently into my Midori Japanese-English dictionary app, and on rare occasions I screenshotted pages to double-check my understanding using Google-Translate. However, I think I just have a tendency to worry about understanding every last word and phrase when reading in Japanese—even when I understand a word, I want to know the kanji readings, and it’s this over-attention to small details that slows me down the most. Even with these ticks, I was able to read through the book quickly.
But… that’s only when I was actually reading the book, and I tended to put down Godzilla Minus One for months at a time. Again, I think the story is told acceptably well in the novelization, but even as I write that, I have to admit, it obviously didn’t pull me in, and the relative lack of extra detail may turn off some readers. Nevertheless, given Yamazaki’s relatively simple writing style, and the great drama and action that comes from the film, this novel is a no-brainer for anyone who is a massive fan of the movie and possesses upper-intermediate Japanese ability. Why not give it a shot? |
