Kaiju.

That is the word we have used for them, a word that has transcended its language of origin and become a part of the world's lexicon. Kaiju. It simply used to mean "strange beast", but now it has a meaning that has both broadened and become more specific- monster. That term in itself carries strong connotations- of aberration, of hostility to Man. It is for a reason we call the second half of the 20th century the Age of Monsters, not the Age of Animals or the Age of Beasts.

Yet, I would argue that "kaiju", as we know them, do not exist. To lump these incredibly varied creatures into one category is to mislead; and in my view, to demonize. We call them monsters because we make them monsters within our fragile and self-centered worldview, or because we do not wish to see our own hand in their actions.

Many kaiju are merely animals, adapted to specialized ecosystems that may no longer exist, and like all other animals, they have no evil intentions upon the human race. Their seeming assaults on our little world are cut from the same cloth as a racoon knocking over trashcans in the quest for food, or carpenter ants eating the foundations of a house- they simply do what nature intended them to do, and we are either unfortunate or foolish enough to be in their way.

It is as the old adage goes- the deer does not cross the road, the road crosses the forest.

Even the kaiju of potentially extraterrestrial origin, such as Hedorah or Dogora, are only aberrations in that they are misplaced specimens. Having evolved to fill a niche in their own environments, when they come to another ecosystem they break down the order of things, like a ball bearing finding itself in a jet engine. They are no more monsters than rats in the Galapagos or rabbits in Australia.

Then we have the kaiju that did not evolve to be the way they are, the ones that seem to be the aberrations worthy of the term "monster", who evidently possess the hostility. What better example than the very first one to make itself known to our world, the one that left a quarter million corpses in Tokyo? I still remember the sight of it, a silhouette dwarfed by the walls of flame it had created. Burned, twisted, agonized.

Yet I would still not call it a monster.

In the case of Gojira, and other more dangerous kaiju as Gigan or Bagan, the true aberration is in the human factor. Without our reckless testing of nuclear weaponry, without our need to weaponize everything we discover, these creatures would have never come into conflict with our world. If they be monsters, then it is only because they reflect our own cruelty back to us.

Perhaps no other kaiju so poignantly illustrates the divide between reality and what we deem real than the most famous one of all. One so far above his kindred that we call him their king. He has gone by many names over history- Kur, The Dragon of Saint George, Leviathan. Since he emerged from the waters of Munin Island and made the world hear his cry, however, he has been known by one.

Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

Many would say that his title is well-earned. In the past half-century he has bested no fewer than thirty kaiju, many of whom had rendered the might of our armies useless. He is called a monster among monsters, the thing that even boogeymen fear. To this very day millions, if not billions, live in fear of his power and his ferocity, deeming him a terror to mankind.

His hostility to the human race has been displayed time and time again, and unlike others he cannot be deterred in the slightest. For decades on end he has systematically targeted almost every single aspect of our infrastructure, with his emergence in the fifties and his return in the eighties heralding tremendous economic crises. Were he a natural disaster, which many nations do indeed label him as, he would be easily be one of the most damaging in history, with a price tag worth the wealth of entire nations.

For this alone, he has been labeled one of the greatest threats to mankind. World-changing advances in technology have been developed in our attempts to keep him at bay, if not to kill him outright. Indeed, I would not be terribly surprised if, hidden deep in the secret vaults of all nations, are annually-updated doomsday scenarios detailing the day he decides to rid himself of the human race, and we are forced to fight for the survival of our species.

Surely then, could he not truly be described as a monster?

No.

I do not see a monster when I look at him. I see the balancing force nature has produced, Humanity's Counterweight. A restorative power, not a herald of destruction. It is only in contrast to our own disruption of the world that he can be seen as a menace.

One only needs to look at the targets of his wrath. Petroleum extraction, lumber, coal mining, whaling, commercial fishing, and many types of chemical manufacturing. All of these were incredibly damaging to the ecology before he killed them, despoiling the land and threatening countless species. Left unchecked, we would have wreaked more damage to the world -and ourselves- than Godzilla ever did.

The willful ignorance is readily apparent throughout history. We blamed him for the collapse of the oil industry, yet paid no heed to the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We bemoaned how shipping became harder and harder thanks to his prowling in the oceans, yet did not connect it to the sharp decrease in whale beachings.

In this light, to call him a monster is to be obtuse. Monsters meant to be fought against, subdued or slain. Godzilla is not something that can or should be slain- rather, we must learn to live with him, for if we can learn to do that, then we can learn to live with nature itself.

It could be argued that we were learning this lesson. I still remember the excitement I shared with my fellow biologists as we noted the changes in the environment with each passing year. Species once thought extinct returning. Cleaner air, cleaner water, fewer catastrophic storms. Hardly the mark a monster would leave on the world.

Indeed, if the studies of the late great Miki Saegusa mean anything, then in Godzilla's own eyes we were the monsters. I find it hard to disagree with that verdict. We are an invasive species that had enabled other invasive species, causing a mass extinction before we even formed civilization, and were in the middle of another, greater one. We have created pollutants that had never previously existed on this planet, and our maddening arms race threatened to scour the world of anything bigger than a rat.

We are the aberration instead of him, and thus a return to the natural state of things seems terrifying, even evil, to us. For Godzilla, this world was his long before our ancestors learned to walk. Our indignation at his so-called intrusion is no different from that of one who barges into a house and calls its owner a trespasser.

It is like the adage I quoted earlier, with the deer and the road. We say that an Age of Monsters had fallen upon Man, where in actuality an Age of Man has fallen upon the world.

It is for that reason that I say the Age of Monsters did not end with Second Impact. The age of kaiju, yes -the remains of many have been found and identified, and there has not been a single sighting in the four years since that great disaster- but not the Age of Monsters. We still live, even if our population has been cut in half, our advancements set back.

Some even say that Godzilla himself perished with the other kaiju, though no remains have been found. Many of them say this is reason to rejoice, for we are finally free of his overbearing presence.

As for me?

I have had the great pleasure of seeing him in the flesh, to study him up-close for years at a time. I have seen him emerge from the hellish fires of nuclear weaponry, seen him rise from the sea to save the planet from the only creature I may ever call an abomination, and I have seen him regard me lazily from his lagoon as I rowed by with a camera.

Through it all, I have been fascinated by his eyes. There is something in them, you see. Something old, unfathomably old, yet inviolable against the unceasing tide of time. It is the memory of those eyes that drive me to ask you this:

If we could survive Second Impact, why couldn't he?

Dr. Kyohei Yamane
Author's Note for Monsters and Man: A History of Kaiju in the 20th Century (2004)