Monster Islands: Godzilla Movies As Teaching Tools of Human History
Nearly everything I wanted to learn about anthropology was influenced by the giant monster movies of Japan.
Why do giant monsters i n the 1960s special effects films of Japan nearly always seem to come from make-believe islands situated in the South Pacific? From the time of my childhood in the 1970s, this connecting thread was something of a puzzle to me. But I wasn’t the only inquisitive daikaiju (“giant monster”) geek to ever get his brow furrowed over this oft’ recycled motif.
In a 1992 essay that begins his own inquiry into the matter, Japanese cultural critic Nagayama Yasuo also pondered the significance of this recurring theme in the motion pictures of his homeland when he asked: “Why do monsters always come from the South–specifically the South Pacific–in Toho monster films?”
Sollgel Island, a fictional volcanic islet featured in Son of Godzilla (1967), is home to both the giant spider Spiega and Kamacuras, a mammoth praying mantis.
Mothra, a hill-sized silkworm moth in the eponymous 1961 film in which she starred, comes from the similarly fictional Infant Island. And the suitably named Monster Island of Destroy All Monsters (1968) is yet another fascinating fantasy isle surrounded by the waters of the South Pacific.
“Why do monsters always come from the South–specifically the South Pacific–in Toho monster films?”
In a related essay, published in the 2006 book In Godzilla Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, Vanderbilt University professor Yoshikuni Igarashi also ponders the significance of the South Pacific Islands in the daikaiju films of the 1960s. During his exploration, Igarashi points out that the make-believe “Faro” Island serves as the fictional home of King Kong in the lowbrow masterpiece King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962).
For reasons that will soon be made clear, it’s worth noting here that the Wikipedia page for Godzilla fandom also includes the aforementioned home of the Japanese version of Kong in its own list of the imaginary South Seas isles in Toho monster films. And, as with the previously mentioned source, the spelling of the island’s name is unfortunately misspelled.
As such, it’s probably because of the common misspelling that an opportunity that helps us better understand the significance of the South Seas islands in the giant monster films of Japan may have been lost.
What’s more, due to our general lack of knowledge with regard to the South Pacific, it’s with a history of mostly concocted South Seas settings that the island used in King Kong vs. Godzilla has also been believed by daikaiju or giant monster aficionados to be made up. But it isn’t a fictional place at all.
In fact, like two more exotic locales from old-school daikaiju movies that will be explored in this essay, Fauro is a real “monster island.”
Film School
In King Kong vs. Godzilla, a gray-haired scientist shares with an ambitious publishing magnate the details of his recent discoveries on the jungle-covered shores of Fauro. It was while exploring on the island that he learned of strange red berries that grow only there and nowhere else.
The scientist learned from the natives of Fauro that the berries hold powerful sleep-inducing properties. The strange fruit was used by the tribal people to make kava, a narcotic beverage used in their ritual offerings made to placate the wrath of a giant monkey god.
“Just before returning home I touched down at Bougainville, here in the Solomons. And about sixty miles south from there was a small island called Fauro Island. There, gentlemen, is where I found the red berries and the strange god.”
Before he reveals the island’s location, the old scientist mentions Fauro’s connection to the South Pacific’s also very real Solomon Islands. He then walks over to a large South Seas map hanging a few feet away and then, using his eyeglasses as a pointer, shows Fauro’s exact location and says: “Just before returning home I touched down at Bougainville, here in the Solomons. And about sixty miles south from there was a small island called Fauro Island. There, gentlemen, is where I found the red berries and the strange god.”
Okay, folks, not to crack anybody over their knuckles with a ruler or anything, but that’s a really cool kind of factoid that no geek (or Vanderbilt professor) worth his pocket protector should miss!
But, then again, our educational systems in America should probably shoulder most of the blame.
When have our school’s curriculums ever made it part of their mission to fill some of the empty spaces in our sponge-like minds with factoids related to the Solomons or any other island in the South Pacific for that matter? As far as American history goes, it’s not as if a great many of this nation’s World War II battles were actually waged in this part of the world — or as if a young John F. Kennedy nearly perished in the fighting there!
After the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, America’s zealous effort to stop the spread of Japan’s rapidly expanding empire took place on and above the beaches and jungles of these little-known isles. Following Japan’s surrender in 1945, and before the country’s surviving soldiers were sent back to their homeland, large numbers were held in Allied detention camps on the shores of Fauro. So it wasn’t by happenstance that, nearly two decades later, a Japanese screenwriter would make Fauro the remote island home of King Kong in a campy Godzilla flick.
Island Hopping
The area of the earth that is made up of the seemingly endless waters of the Pacific Ocean, the world’s largest sea, and a near-countless number of islands that rise up and freckle the back of its southernmost portions is known as Oceania. In recent years, this region has also come to be known as Pasifika by many of the people who live there. And due to the incredibly wide variety of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural distinctions found among the people of this region, Oceania or Pasifika has been divided into the three closely connected territories: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
In America, the people of Polynesia, particularly those from the islands of Hawaii, Tahiti, and Samoa, are generally well known. This became especially true when Hawaii became America’s 50th state in 1959. Afterward, Polynesian-themed tiki bars and restaurants opened in cities across the country, a canned fruit punch was given the island’s name, and a long-running 1960s TV police drama was filmed on location there.
Despite being the most well-known of the Pacific Ocean’s three territorial regions, home to an estimated 1.9 million people, Polynesia (meaning “many islands”) accounts for only about 20% of the people living in this water-covered province. Micronesia (meaning “little islands”), is comprised of a combination of both Polynesian and Melanesian peoples and holds a much smaller population, estimated at around 650,000.
Practically unknown to a majority of Americans are the people of Melanesia, who make up nearly 80% of all Pacific Island peoples. Current estimates place this population today at somewhere around 6.4 million inhabitants, nearly 5 million of which are located in Papua New Guinea alone.
The term Melanesia was coined in 1832 by Jules Dumont d’Urville, and comes from the Greek words melas, meaning “black” and nesos meaning “island”. United under this grouping are the people of the Bismark Archipelago, including the politically divided island of Papua New Guinea (free West Papua!), New Britain and New Ireland, the folks of Maluku, and those of East Timor, Flobamora, the Torres Strait Islands, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides), New Caledonia (Kanaki) and Fiji.
To ethnology geeks, Melanesia is known as the most linguistically diverse region on earth. While having a population of fewer than eight million people, the region holds an amazing one- fourth of all of the earth’s spoken languages — nearly 1,000 tongues, about 800 of which are spoken in New Guinea alone. But the sheer size of the world’s second-largest island after Greenland does much to explain why PNG holds such a large number of languages: its length runs roughly the distance from London to Moscow or San Francisco to St. Louis.
Okay, folks, not to crack anybody over their knuckles with a ruler or anything, but that’s a really cool kind of factoid that no geek (or Vanderbilt professor) worth his pocket protector should miss!
But, then again, our educational systems in America should probably shoulder most of the blame.
