Much like Incident At Loch Ness and Rubber, Big Man Japan was brought to my attention by cult movie websites—probably the most receptive audience to these sorts of genre pastiches/parodies as they made their way through the film festival circuit. The mid-to-late-two-thousands was a period rife with self-reflexive takes on older genres and styles, and those movies and their particular quirks would even find some mainstream attention. But not only does Big Man Japan evoke that very particular period in film, it also seems to be chronicling a very particular period in the history of its titular country as well. Giant monster parodies are nothing new, and neither are parodies of the giant hero subgenre—but director and star Hitoshi Matsumoto’s comedic offering here is less about kaiju, and more about using kaiju film (as a very Japanese style of entertainment) as a vehicle to satirize an entire nation’s collective apathy. The world it presents is one where a once-strong symbol of heroism and national pride has degraded into a mediocre television show, carrying on traditions out of a halfhearted sense of obligation, and culminating in an absurd demonstration of just how little impact it actually has on a global stage. Don’t get me wrong, it’s also a very silly movie containing some of the goofiest giant monsters around, but the satirical intent of it is also made abundantly clear.
Most of the movie is a “documentary” chronicling the life of Masaru Daisato, who currently fills the role of Big Japan (once taken up by both his father and grandfather, the latter of whom was a beloved celebrity in his time), growing to giant sizes using electricity in order to protect the country from monsters. Sato, as he is called, lives an otherwise unassuming life, quietly carrying out his duties despite being underpaid (he lives in a small, ramshackle house in the suburbs and doesn’t own a car) and not just underappreciated, but readily mocked and lambasted by pretty much everyone. No other character in the movie respects him in any way—not his wife (who doesn’t even seem to be in a rush to divorce him, despite only seeing him every six months and being in a relationship with another man), not his daughter, not the manager who often convinces him to temporarily tattoo advertisements on his giant body, and definitely not the general public, who either deride the televised showings of his battles as lame, graffiti his property, or throw rocks through his window. The government Ministry of Monster Prevention that employs him also seems to have seen better days, with the facilities that Sato uses to power up becoming fewer and less maintained, and most of the scant few employees just going through the motions and fully recognizing that parts of the process (including a traditional Shinto blessing preceding the electrical charging) are superfluous. Even the guy making the documentary shows very little respect for Sato, filming him even when he tells him not to, and asking them to redo the Shinto ceremony so he can get better footage. This is a pretty pathetic existence, is what I’m getting at.
Sato is the ultimate put-upon loser, but one who meekly accepts his lot in life while also trying to convince others that it’s not as bad as it looks (such as telling the interviewer that he gets to see his daughter more often than he actually does.) The entire process of powering up, when it is filmed, is entirely without dignity: it involves him standing in an oversized pair of underwear with electric cables clamped to his nipples. One of the few times we see him stick up for himself is when his manager, who regularly shows off her expensive cars and dogs, attempts to convince him to tattoo an ad on his thighs (a disagreement that stems from a previous situation where he was told he couldn’t cover up the ad on his chest, hindering his ability to fight a monster), but even then he doesn’t come off as particularly assertive. He seems to mostly be motivated by carrying on the family legacy, which he thinks is important even if it is diminished—he doesn’t come off as particularly demanding of fame or wealth otherwise, as he says he would like a relatively modest pay raise, although he also apparently fantasizes about his grandfather’s access to respect and geishas in his day. Still, while these things were clearly foisted upon him, you also get the sense that some of his problems are self-inflicted, a side effect of him clinging onto a role whose purpose and prominence are long past their glory days.
Evidently, part of the problem is that monster appearances have become fewer and far between since Sato’s grandfather’s heyday, and despite Sato being mostly successful in dispelling the giant menaces, that’s only because the monsters themselves are perhaps even more pathetic than he is. Presented in all the glory of mid-two-thousands CG, these creatures (with names like “Strangling Monster” and “Stink Monster”) are preceded by an illustrated profile card with a degraded-sounding recording of someone describing their particular traits, making them seem like ancient entities like yokai, and are designed as laughably grotesque things, often with human faces (the exception being the Evil Stare Monster, with the body of a plucked bird and an extending eye that it swings like a mace and is also located near its crotch.) Most of the monsters are “played” by various Japanese celebrities circa 2007, so it should be noted that part of the comedy of their appearance is kind of lost on us outside that context. The thing is, despite their giant sizes and disgusting abilities, most of them are more nuisances than actual dangers to society (the battle scenes never depict any humans scuttling around them, making the cities seem eerily empty), and for the most part Sato just has to whack them with his club once to send them back to monster heaven, and sometimes they pretty much end up defeating themselves (the Leaping Monster slipping, or the Evil Stare Monster accidentally throwing its eye into a darkened warehouse and falling asleep.) These are not really giant monster battles at all, and the sheer non-excitement of them is played up—no wonder the ratings are down, and Sato’s time slot keeps being moved to later and later at night. The spectacle of someone protecting Japan from larger-than-life threats has proven to be less than enticing.
Big Japan’s ratings only begin to grow when, after defeating one monster, he is sucker-punched by a far more intimidating oni-like red monster (with disturbingly disproportionate limbs), who proceeds to beat Sato to a pulp, which in turn leads to him running away. It’s never said outright, but it’s made pretty clear that this new monster is from North Korea, giving this conflict a twinge of modern geopolitical undercurrent. Sato attempts to go on with his life—while actively avoiding dealing with the red monster again, trying and failing to hide his fear—but the idea that the Japanese people find it more entertaining to watch him get wailed on by a foreign monster still clearly shakes his life, and things only deteriorate further. His dementia-ridden grandfather, the only person he cares about (as we learn, Sato’s own father was abusive and accidentally died by overcharging himself with electricity, so his grandfather was the one who actually raised him), has a tendency of going giant-sized and wandering the city absentmindedly; and he then finds himself in increasingly absurd situations that make the public turn on him even more, such as failing to prevent two monsters from mating live on television (the one time he attempts to persuade the monsters to leave rather than fight them) and accidentally dropping and killing a baby monster (when it bites his nipple.) No matter what happens, though, Sato chooses to avoid acknowledging his issues and to just go on as normal, although he begins to drink more and more as the movie goes on. Ultimately, the government forces him to confront the red monster by breaking into his house at night and electrifying him, leading to the finale.
The finale is when all the social commentary coalesces into perhaps one of the most ludicrous swerves I’ve seen in a movie. After once again being beaten senseless by the red monster and running like a coward—despite the short-lived assistance of his giant grandfather, leading to some of the meanest jokes in the movie—he and his opponent grapple in front of the US embassy, leading to…a complete change in film style, going from CG to traditional miniatures and rubber suits, and the sudden appearance of a nuclear family of Ultraman-style American superheroes (they even include some brief scenes of actors playing the generic human supporting cast in an Ultraman show.) The American heroes proceed to wipe the floor with the red monster (who was fairly scary in CG, but in costume form looks like a poorly-made mascot) while Sato sits in a corner and watches, and despite the bombast of their entrance (and of some of their special techniques, such as kicking their baby like a football), the “fight” ultimately looks like a bunch of people in costumes awkwardly pushing and kicking each other around for minutes on end, without even proper sound effects to give it impact. When the Americans use their finishing energy beam, they invite Sato to help them, and he quickly realizes that his contribution means nothing, but he has to participate anyway. The movie ends with the whole group flying away (with visible strings), and then bringing Sato over for dinner, where they proceed to argue about their performance over the movie’s credits. Even in something already wacky, this deus ex machina shift is extreme, but they also find many ways to maximize the comedy while also making the meaning pretty blatant: Japan is rendered a powerless spectator, given only superficial participation in events controlled by other countries, who also come off as both crude and passive-aggressive
(It’s actually fairly interesting when you consider that Shin Godzilla, made nine years later,is also about Japan’s self-determination and relationship with other countries, but its ending is almost pointedly the complete opposite.)
The ambivalence of Big Man Japan is what really makes it stand out as a comedy—you could describe it as a superhero spoof, where a lame protagonist takes on ridiculous opponents, or even as a story of a man who cares too much in a society that doesn’t care at all, but those barely scratch the surface. Sato is such a specific, somewhat sympathetic portrayal of a loser trapped in a lackluster existence, and the way he doesn’t fit modern society has such a specific bent to it (especially when you take in all the clear commentary about Japan itself), that they take something that could work fine as an absurdist parody and make it something with an idiosyncratic view of its own home. Considering that the absurdist parody is probably what people outside of Japan were expecting just based on images and trailers, they thankfully got something with more to it.
REVIEW ALL MONSTERS 