GODZILLA GRADUATES

Look out! Godzilla has entered the university! But fear not: He’s neither stomping in the library roof nor melting classroom walls with his destructive breath. Godzilla is about to become icon in academia, and this weekend, the University of Kansas hosts the first academic conference ever devoted to the creature.

The meeting marks the 50th anniversary of the first Godzilla film, “Gojira,” by Toho Studios, which first flashed on the silver screen in 1954. Since then, the radioactive reptile has gone on to become a monster hit. City College hosted a Frankenstein symposium about a month ago, but just try to name another university-level confab to discuss a character that snacks on power-plant emissions. Bet you can’t – although Columbia’s C.V. Starr East Asian Library has an exhibit up through December called, “Godzilla Conquers the Globe: Japanese Movie Monsters in International Film Art.”

“It’s the kind of thing you can only do after you get tenure,” said an associate professor of history at the University of Kansas, Bill Tsutsui. Mr. Tsutsui, 41, principally organized the conference, which is expected to draw anthropologists, film historians, Japan scholars, and pure-and-simple monster fans to the Midwest for two days of panels and three days of evening film presentations.

There’s even a film crew from Los Angeles coming to work on a documentary about Godzilla fans. Planners anticipate that about a third of attendees will be scholars and the rest of the crowd will be made up of fans.

Mr. Tsutsui’s research focuses primarily on Japanese business history, and he is currently at work on an environmental history of Japan from the 1930s to the ’50s. His interest in the “King of the Monsters” harkens back to watching Godzilla on Saturday afternoons while growing up in Bryan, Texas. “I’ve loved him ever since,” he said. Proof of said love: He wrote the book “Godzilla on my Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters” (Palgrave Macmillan).

The idea for the conference was generated about five years ago, when he and a colleague hosted a panel and film screening in Kansas and 400 people showed up. “We thought, ‘Boy, there’s really something in Godzilla.'”

The conference aims to elucidate how Godzilla ties together issues of cultural and historical significance – including nuclear war, environmentalism, Japanese-American relations. Of course, it’s also meant to be just plain fun.

The conference is part of a growing trend in academia to study popular culture – specifically, “what the masses are watching and are experiencing,” Mr. Tsutsui said. Increased attention to the quotidian has its critics. The managing editor of the New Criterion, Roger Kimball, recently published the book “The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art.” He cautioned that academic conferences on topics such as Godzilla “make parody absolutely impossible.”

Despite reluctance from certain corners, Godzilla appears to have gotten a toehold in the classroom. Mr. Tsutsui shows Godzilla footage in his modern Japanese history classes every semester.

“The original film really shows the vulnerability of Japan. It was weak after World War II. The film shows Japan at the mercy of forces beyond its control.” Exposed to an H-bomb test at the Bikini Atoll, the lizard manages to survive and heads ashore to attack Tokyo. Some scenes “are very reminiscent of the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945.”

The director of film and media studies at the University of Rochester, Joanne Bernardi, said Godzilla provides an optimal opportunity for cultural study. “‘Enjoyment’ and ‘serious study’ don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” she said.

“Godzilla marked Japan’s return to the international stage, before the 1964 Olympics, and before the postwar economic miracle,” observed a professor at Davidson College and an event participant, Barak Kushner.

The Godzilla franchise – a 28th film is on the way this December – has had other themes as well. Some films in the 1960s and 1970s reflected the tone of the times, said Mr. Tsutsui. One message, he said, was: “We shouldn’t be messing with the environment, because it will come back to get us.” In fact, he’s a good character in some films, and a bad one in others.

Later films in the1990s exhibit Japanese nationalism. For example, in “Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah,” in which Godzilla fights on the side of the Japanese during World War II and emerges from the jungle on a desert island and stomps on American marines.

There is a myth among some fans, that two endings were made to “King Kong vs. Godzilla” with King Kong winning in the American version and Godzilla winning in the Japanese one. Mr. Tsutsui says that is not true.

He also noted that due to dubbing and poor translation, American audiences have come to see Godzilla as a comic character, whereas the Japanese have seen Godzilla as a little more scary and serious.

“I hope to get some new perspectives on Godzilla. I believe Godzilla is more serious than we imagine. Most people think it’s just a guy in a rubber suit; there’s a whole lot more substance there, I think.”

At the conference, Christine Yano will discuss the notion of “the monstrous cute,” namely, how something can be both cute and terrifying at the same time.

“Godzilla was the first Japanese popular culture figure to really have a presence on the world stage,” said a professor at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, Paul Dunscomb. He said Japanese pop culture products such as Godzilla have raised awareness of Japan and given it a reservoir of “soft power” globally.

There are key differences between our Godzilla and Japan’s Gojira (its Japanese name) just as there are key differences between our McDonald’s and Japanese McDonalds, he said, adding parenthetically, “Try yourself a Nabe Burger if you need to be convinced.”

At the conference, the mayor of the city of Lawrence, Mike Rundle, will be on hand, and the mascot of the school’s basketball team will flip a switch to inflate a large Godzilla atop the movie theater.

Godzilla is coming to Gotham as well. On December 4, there will be a symposium at Columbia University, in addition to its exhibit.

Mr. Tsutsui said Godzilla has visited New York before. In one film in the 1970s, Godzilla comes and destroys the United Nations and goes home, he said. What about Godzilla in the heartland of America? “Unfortunately, he never came to Kansas,” Mr. Tsutsui said, “It’s too far inland.”