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| Tea time during Mothra v. Godzilla |
Maybe one of the best "suit actors" of all time, Haruo Nakajima embodied Godzilla for 23 years. Nakajima played in 12 Godzilla movies, beginning with the original 1954 Godzilla. The post war monster movie captured the terror of the atomic age, from a culture which sorrowfully experienced the devastation of nuclear weapons. "Godzilla is a creature of the Americans. Godzilla's breath is nuclear radiation. He showed our audiences that atomic bombs are frightening," said Nakajima.
In the same year of the first Godzilla, the Gutai art group formed in Japan: founded by Jiro Yoshihara. The movement sought to uncover beauty from destruction and decay. Through damage and destruction the inner beauty of life is exposed. What a haunting theme for art in a country that experienced the new age of atomic destruction.
But there is also a sense of hope and optimism in the art of Gutai. In the Gutai Menefesto, published in 1956, Yoshihara wrote:
The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all,
and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces,
could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge,
having recaptured its original life?...
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| Jiro Yoshihara |
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