My favorite line and favorite scene:
“My war is not yet over.”
I wanted to give him a hug of sympathy.

Good word bushido. In so many words this movie is a betrayal of bushido and hence woke.

I’m no Japanese historian, but I do know that Japan has traditionally been an honor-based culture. The samurai had a code of honor called “bushido” that taught that these members of the elite had to behave honorably at all times. A samurai was bound by honor to kill himself (or herself, if you were a woman in a samurai family) in order to avoid a dishonorable fate or atone for a dishonorable action. Suicide may be frowned upon in the West, but traditional Japanese culture was not Judeo-Christian. The kamikaze pilots of WWII were an extension of that honor culture.

What you’re suggesting, that the film implies that kamikaze suicide pilots weren’t honorable, would be like the Japanese equivalent of toppling statues of American war heroes because they fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. The American South was also an honor culture, and even though they supposedly fought on the “wrong” side, that doesn’t mean they didn’t fight bravely for the sake of their homeland.

But I’m not entirely certain if what you’re saying is what the film intended to say. The pilot does feel shame for bailing out on false pretenses instead of doing his duty and does what he can to atone for it by helping survivors, sweeping for mines and doing everything he can to fight Godzilla. Does he regain his honor or does he spend the rest of his life in shame?

As I said the subtext for the original Godzilla was Hiroshima. Godzilla was originally meant as an excoriation of the US for the monstrous Hiroshima bombing, and an ongoing symbol of shame for the US (and by implication a symbol of nationalistic pride for Japan). Godzilla Minus One takes Godzilla back to first principles, and one step before, hence the title. What precluded Hiroshima (minus one) is the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, exemplified by Kamikaze pilots.

BUT…we are “taught” in the movie Kamikaze pilots were wrong and by that inference Japan bears the ultimate responsibility for Hiroshima (and the menace of Godzilla), as if two wrongs make a right. Worse, as if one wrong justified an egregiously monstrous wrong; as if there were a moral equivalence between Kamikaze fighter pilots attacking a military base and the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Godzilla Minus One is a retcon of Godzilla as a symbol of US shame & Japanese pride to an immoral false equivalence. It’s a propaganda piece that sanitizes the horror of Hiroshima.

Whoever you think the bad guys and the good guys are is irrelevant. Your perspective doesn’t matter. You don’t matter. From Japan’s perspective there can’t be anything more woke and their perspective is what matters because it’s Godzilla…or it WAS Godzilla up until this movie. Mic drop.

My dad and his husband always argue. I wish they could be like you guys 🙁

My wife was so on the fence about seeing this, but she was really glad she did.