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Speaker 3: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 4: A giant hairy creature, partape, part Matt.
Speaker 1: In Luckness, a twenty four mile long bottomless lake in
Speaker 1: the highlands of Scotland, if a creature known as the
Speaker 1: Luckness Monster.
Speaker 2: Monster tal Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 2: I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. This week longtime
Speaker 2: front of the show, doctor Justin Mullis joins us to
Speaker 2: talk about the cryptozoology DNA president in Godzilla and yeah,
Speaker 2: that's metaphorical, yet it's more on the nose than you
Speaker 2: might imagine. Now, Justin was just at g Fest, the
Speaker 2: Chicago based convention for all things Kaiju this very weekend
Speaker 2: giving a talk about this topic, and I'm grateful that
Speaker 2: he took the time to give some of that information
Speaker 2: to you, our audience here at Monster Talk. Justin Mallis
Speaker 2: now has his PhD in American Culture studies from Bowling
Speaker 2: Green State University in Ohio. He got his master's religious
Speaker 2: studies from the University of North Carolina and Charlotte, where
Speaker 2: his area focus was on the intersection of religion and
Speaker 2: pop culture. He teaches on diverse topics likely of interest
Speaker 2: to our listeners, including the role of dinosaurs and pop culture,
Speaker 2: religion and horror films, and cryptozoology and American culture.
Speaker 4: Let's get to that, monstert. Hey, welcome to Monster Talk,
Speaker 4: and welcome.
Speaker 2: Back to Monster Talk, doctor, doctor Justin Mullis.
Speaker 5: Thank you. It is happy. I'm happy to be back. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Last when we last talked, you were still working on
Speaker 4: that program. But you've gotten a degree using monsters.
Speaker 1: We're jealous.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So when I was I was last on here with
Speaker 3: you guys in twenty nineteen. Blake and I we had
Speaker 3: just met in real life at the Gods and Monsters
Speaker 3: conference earlier that year at Texas State, and he'd heard
Speaker 3: me give my presentation there about Thomas Jefferson and as
Speaker 3: possibly the first cryptozoologist in America. I feel like, considering
Speaker 3: the topic we're gonna be talking about today, I should
Speaker 3: clarify that first Cryptozologists in America.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: I had I had mentioned at the end, Yeah, that
Speaker 3: I was. I was trying to find a doctoral program.
Speaker 3: And so later in that same year, based on some
Speaker 3: advice from some you know, good friends and colleagues, especially
Speaker 3: I should give a shout out to Nick Clark. So
Speaker 3: I ended up applying and getting accepted to the American
Speaker 3: Culture Studies program at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where.
Speaker 5: I ended up going to do my pH d.
Speaker 3: With my focus being on looking at this idea of
Speaker 3: cryptozoology and American culture and specifically early American culture.
Speaker 5: They were very receptive to.
Speaker 3: That kind of work and that being an avenue that
Speaker 3: I could explore, and it turned out to be a
Speaker 3: great university to do that kind of work at because
Speaker 3: of that American Culture Studies program, and also, you know,
Speaker 3: they have a very well regarded and well renowned pop
Speaker 3: culture studies program here which is kind of connected at
Speaker 3: the hip to the American Culture Studies program. And one
Speaker 3: of the things that Bowling Green is famous for with
Speaker 3: that regard is they have the Ray and Pat Brown
Speaker 3: Pop Culture Library here, which is one of the largest
Speaker 3: archived collections of pop culture related to femera. So that
Speaker 3: was really useful for me as far as giving me
Speaker 3: access to a a lot of classical like science fiction
Speaker 3: and fantasy and pulp fiction text which tied in with
Speaker 3: a lot of my work and my scholarship. But they
Speaker 3: also have a lot of material related to Fortiana and
Speaker 3: the paranormal. As part of that collection. They've got like
Speaker 3: a complete run of every issue of Fate magazine, all
Speaker 3: kinds of books and and monographs. You know, some of
Speaker 3: the stuff I know I'd posted online, like on on
Speaker 3: my Facebook page and stuff because I would I would
Speaker 3: request something like at one point I requested a copy
Speaker 3: of Mark Hall, the famous cryptozoologists book on thunderbirds, and
Speaker 3: instead of getting the sort of standard copy, I got
Speaker 3: this early like DIY version that he had done that
Speaker 3: they happened to have in their collection.
Speaker 4: Wow. So that's so I was court archive.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Bowling Green's Library is also the home of the Invisible Inc.
Speaker 5: Collection.
Speaker 3: It's it's all, it's all books relating to the Pair
Speaker 3: and Normal and they've all been donated by somebody I
Speaker 3: believe you've had on the show before, which is Ohio
Speaker 3: Folkloris Chris Woodyard wow.
Speaker 5: Yes, wow.
Speaker 3: So all of all of her books that she's donated
Speaker 3: from her personal library and collection.
Speaker 5: Over the years are here.
Speaker 3: So both of those collections, between the Ray and Pat
Speaker 3: Brown and the Invisible Inc Collection are a fantastic resource
Speaker 3: for anybody who's wanting to do work relating to the
Speaker 3: paranormal and the Fortiana in an academic setting.
Speaker 5: So yeah, wow, Well.
Speaker 1: That's really exciting. So a lot has happened since we
Speaker 1: last spoke with you, and one of those things is
Speaker 1: that you've been working on a paper and that's why
Speaker 1: we brought you on today to talk about this. So
Speaker 1: could you briefly describe the main theme of your paper,
Speaker 1: From Cryptids to Kaiju and what inspired you to write
Speaker 1: it as well?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So this is this is the most recent piece
Speaker 3: of scholarship that I've had published. It came out earlier
Speaker 3: this year. It's in the journal the Interdisciplinary Science Review,
Speaker 3: and the other full title is from Cryptids to Kaiju
Speaker 3: Exploring Heterodox Paleoscience with Godzilla and this was this was
Speaker 3: part of a larger series of articles that the Interdisciplinary
Speaker 3: Science Review are doing under the editorial guidance of two scholars,
Speaker 3: Richard Fallon and Eddie Gumont, who I know and are good,
Speaker 3: great friends and colleagues, and they're interested in basically, yeah,
Speaker 3: as as part of my title there heterodox paleoscience or palaeontology,
Speaker 3: and so that includes things like cryptozoology and other stuff.
Speaker 3: So they had reached out to me about if I
Speaker 3: had wanted to contribute to this series that they were doing,
Speaker 3: and I said yes, I had an idea for this,
Speaker 3: which was it originally started off as I was wanting
Speaker 3: to write something about and it was kind of based
Speaker 3: on a blog post I had done at one point
Speaker 3: years ago about you know, the paleontology of Godzilla, right like,
Speaker 3: what is what actually is Godzilla from a paleontological kind
Speaker 3: of perspective, And then I sort of realized that article
Speaker 3: had been written several times over already, and then in
Speaker 3: the process of working on this, it kind of expanded
Speaker 3: into this different thing, which was really looking at the
Speaker 3: history of cryptozoology in Japan and then also talking about
Speaker 3: how that history then eventually manifests itself into the form
Speaker 3: of this global pop culture icon, which is Godzilla, who
Speaker 3: is you know, really having a moment right now also
Speaker 3: in sort of global popular culture.
Speaker 2: First of all, let me say something about your paper.
Speaker 2: I read a lot of academic papers. I am not
Speaker 2: an academic, even though I do aspire to be one
Speaker 2: in some ways.
Speaker 4: So this took well. Thanks.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that Karen and I try to do the
Speaker 2: research in an academic style, but you know, I just
Speaker 2: don't have the proper training I think that i'd like
Speaker 2: to have, so I may have absolutely accidentally absorbed some
Speaker 2: But this is a very accessible paper, and I think
Speaker 2: so for some of our readers who might sometimes be
Speaker 2: intimidated by reading journal articles, this one's different. So I
Speaker 2: hope they are able to find a copy of it.
Speaker 2: In this paper, you define cryptozoology, but what does it
Speaker 2: mean in this papers from this paper's reference? And how
Speaker 2: does it relate to heterodox paleoscience, which is something you
Speaker 2: talk about a lot.
Speaker 3: There's definitely related kind of issues, so I think within
Speaker 3: the kind of broader theme that Eddie and Richard kind
Speaker 3: of had in mind when they're talking about the idea
Speaker 3: of heterodox paleoscience or heterodox paleontology, they just mean anything
Speaker 3: that is not necessarily accepted by sort of the scientific mainstream.
Speaker 3: So so you know, in more kind of common parlance
Speaker 3: what you would call like pseudoscience, right, so paleontological pseudoscience.
Speaker 5: Now, you know.
Speaker 3: One of the things that and this was this is
Speaker 3: a conversation that I had had with both Eddie and
Speaker 3: Richard early on, is that all of us kind of
Speaker 3: have difficult feelings about the term pseudoscience. We think in
Speaker 3: some ways it's overly general. It doesn't really do a
Speaker 3: good job of telling you what is the issue with
Speaker 3: something other than say saying, well, it's not science. And
Speaker 3: it's like, well, we've kind of already established that it's
Speaker 3: not science. How is it not science? Why is it
Speaker 3: not science? How are you kind of defining that?
Speaker 5: And so.
Speaker 3: They really encouraged me, and I cite his work in
Speaker 3: my paper to kind of look at historian of science
Speaker 3: Michael D. Gordon's book on the Fringe, where Gordon attempts
Speaker 3: to kind of move beyond the idea of pseudoscience, and
Speaker 3: he breaks it down into several different categories. And the
Speaker 3: two that I found to be the most useful with
Speaker 3: regards to this project and with thinking about cryptozoology is
Speaker 3: so Gordon himself classifies cryptozoology as an example of what
Speaker 3: he calls a counter establishment science, meaning that it pushes
Speaker 3: a back against you know, the sort of general consensus
Speaker 3: understanding within that field. So with regardless of them like cryptozoology.
Speaker 3: The most simple example of that would be, you know,
Speaker 3: palaeontologists would tell you that all non avian dinosaurs died
Speaker 3: out sixty five million years ago, and then cryptologists would
Speaker 3: be like, no, you know, see the lacknest monster, see
Speaker 3: mochaleum momembe right, see whatever, right, there are examples of
Speaker 3: non avian dinosaurs that are still alive, and they'll say,
Speaker 3: you know, the establishment whatever that means, is blind to
Speaker 3: this fact. The other category that Gordon introduces that I
Speaker 3: also found to be very useful, and he doesn't put
Speaker 3: cryptozoology in this, but he acknowledges that all of these
Speaker 3: categories could probably be applied to multiple different areas is
Speaker 3: he talks about the idea of vestigial science, and so
Speaker 3: vestigial science refers to something where you have a discipline
Speaker 3: that has refused to stay up to date with the
Speaker 3: current scholarship. And I know this is something that also
Speaker 3: like Jebcard has written about before in regards to cryptozoology,
Speaker 3: which is this idea that you know, like cryptozoologist seem
Speaker 3: to still be functioning at the level of like nineteenth
Speaker 3: century naturalists, right, and they have not progressed into more
Speaker 3: modern ways of thinking about zoology, thinking about field biology
Speaker 3: and those kinds of things. And this is also again
Speaker 3: related to like why depictions of prehistoric animals like dinosaurs,
Speaker 3: like plesiosaurs in cryptozoology also tend to be very outdated themselves, right,
Speaker 3: Like the Latnus monster is this old model of a
Speaker 3: swan necked plesiosaur that is not considered in keeping with
Speaker 3: the most latest research in the field of paleontology. Mocalium
Speaker 3: ammbay is a swamp dwelling sauropod. You know, no serious
Speaker 3: paleontologists thinks that soropods were swamp dwelling animals.
Speaker 5: They were dry land animals. Right.
Speaker 3: So those are two concepts that I talk about and
Speaker 3: I use in the article with regards to thinking about this.
Speaker 3: But then the sort of larger thing is also I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about cryptozoology itself as an example of what I
Speaker 3: call the scientification of folklore, which is a concept that
Speaker 3: I'm getting from a pair of culture studies scholars Grimshawn Lester,
Speaker 3: who wrote a monograph back in the seventies called the
Speaker 3: Meaning of the Latinus Monster, and they introduced this idea
Speaker 3: that cryptozoology should be viewed as a kind of modern folklore.
Speaker 3: And what makes it unique or different from other kinds
Speaker 3: of folklore is that it has incorporated, or we might
Speaker 3: even say appropriated, the language of science as a means
Speaker 3: of increasing its apparent veracity. And so in that sense,
Speaker 3: it doesn't necessarily matter if the science is mainstream, if
Speaker 3: it's supported by the quote unquote establishment, or if it's
Speaker 3: even necessarily up to date. As long as it and
Speaker 3: I use this phrase as well, to borrow it from
Speaker 3: Sharon Hill, as long as it sounds sciencey, it's good
Speaker 3: enough for the general public, right And that's what's important here.
Speaker 3: So that's how I'm thinking about cryptozoology, and this article
Speaker 3: and a lot of my other work is as this
Speaker 3: kind of science inflected.
Speaker 1: Folklore, right well, very interesting stuff, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: get into something a bit more specific here if we
Speaker 1: could talk about the Godzilla franchise. So how does that
Speaker 1: serve as an example of cryptozoological fiction? And could you
Speaker 1: explain how Japanese folk wells such as the stories of
Speaker 1: the Kappa or the Tengu how have they influenced Godzilla's creation.
Speaker 3: Part of the main aspect of this article was me
Speaker 3: looking at like the history of cryptozoology in Japan, and
Speaker 3: so one of the things that I realized was that
Speaker 3: if you're thinking about cryptozoology as this honor of folklore
Speaker 3: that is sort of inflected by and using the language
Speaker 3: and kind of the concepts of science, then this is
Speaker 3: actually something that the Japanese have been doing for a
Speaker 3: very long time with their folklore, where it would it
Speaker 3: would go.
Speaker 5: Back at least to.
Speaker 3: Like the seventeenth century, right, And because you start finding
Speaker 3: what's going on is especially during like sort of the
Speaker 3: Tokugawa period sixteen hundred to eighteen sixty eight, which is
Speaker 3: this this stretch of time in Japan where Japan becomes
Speaker 3: sort of isolated from the Western world except for kind
Speaker 3: of limited exchange with the Dutch. This is also the
Speaker 3: period where they start working on the first sort of
Speaker 3: explorations into what we would call natural history. Right during
Speaker 3: this time period you start having these first explorations of
Speaker 3: natural history, and the monsters of Japanese folklore are not
Speaker 3: excluded from these explorations, they are actually incorporated into it.
Speaker 3: But what's interesting here is that rather than the academics
Speaker 3: who are looking at this kind of stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: dismissing these creatures because there's like a lack of you know,
Speaker 3: empirical evidence, their approach is to just kind of it
Speaker 3: seems to be just sort of assume that that evidence
Speaker 3: must exist. So I talk about, for example, this guy
Speaker 3: Koremoto Tanshun, right, who lived from seventeen fifty six to
Speaker 3: eighteen thirty four, and he was actually the personal physition
Speaker 3: of the Showgun. And he assembles this group of scholars
Speaker 3: to investigate a particular monster from Japanese folklore, which is
Speaker 3: the Kappa, which where people aren't familiar this kind of
Speaker 3: vampiric turtle duck looking creature. And so Tanschu and his
Speaker 3: team go out and they collect all of these eyewitness reports, right,
Speaker 3: hundreds and hundreds of eyewitness reports, and they they corelate them,
Speaker 3: and they come up with a profile for the Kappa,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, no different than like any other animal. Right,
Speaker 3: they have anatomical features, size, color, behavior, ecosystem, habitat everything.
Speaker 3: And they they create this sort of synthesis and they
Speaker 3: publish it as a book called Suko Koiyaku or a
Speaker 3: study of water tigers is what that would literally translate
Speaker 3: as water tiger being another name for the Kappa. And
Speaker 3: then subsequent to that, you have a pair of naturalists,
Speaker 3: these brothers, which are Sakamoto and Juntaku Conan, who create
Speaker 3: a kind of a series of illustrations based on this study,
Speaker 3: because as part of the study, Tantue and his team
Speaker 3: decide that there's not just one type of Kappa, there's
Speaker 3: like seven types of kappa, right, and and so you've
Speaker 3: got this set of iowoness accounts that have been turned
Speaker 3: into a sort of taxonomical description and then illustrations showing
Speaker 3: what these creatures look like, because of course they don't
Speaker 3: have any specimens to go along with it, to give
Speaker 3: people this idea of like, here's what these these creatures
Speaker 3: look like. And if any of this sounds familiar to anybody,
Speaker 3: it's because this is exactly what cryptozoologists still do today.
Speaker 5: Right. If you've read like the books.
Speaker 3: Of Lauren Coleman or Patrick Wynn, you know, like their
Speaker 3: field Guides to Lake Monsters or to Bigfoot, that's what
Speaker 3: those books are. They are collections of ies sightings that
Speaker 3: have been synthesized into a taxonomical description of a speculative
Speaker 3: creature with an accompanying illustration to show you what these
Speaker 3: creatures are supposed to look.
Speaker 4: Like like a real world monster manual, A real.
Speaker 3: World monster manual exactly. And that's exactly what these Japanese
Speaker 3: naturalists were doing all the way back in the seventeenth
Speaker 3: and eighteenth century as well. I think that this process
Speaker 3: was really important though, because it lended these creatures this
Speaker 3: extra degree of veracity, right, It made them feel more
Speaker 3: real to their readers, just the fact that they were
Speaker 3: being spoken of in this way and described in this
Speaker 3: way and talked about in this way. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a big part of what allowed them to endure
Speaker 3: in Japanese culture. So that, you know, the Kappa is
Speaker 3: still a very important figure in Japanese culture even today.
Speaker 3: And of course, as I mentioned in the paper that
Speaker 3: I don't have I didn't have the space to kind
Speaker 3: of go into specific examples, but you know, there are
Speaker 3: still sightings of Kappa in Japan to this day, right,
Speaker 3: you know, they are still treated as an actual cryptid, right,
Speaker 3: people still claim to have encounters with them as a result, right,
Speaker 3: which is not something that's necessarily true about every kind
Speaker 3: of monster or yokai in Japanese folklore, just as it's
Speaker 3: something that's not true about every kind of monster that
Speaker 3: exists in the folklore of any country. But it does
Speaker 3: seem to me that when you have that kind of veracity,
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff that's added into these legends, that
Speaker 3: that's what helps to perpetuate them and helps them to endure.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the things that has made cryptids,
Speaker 3: you know, in a way kind of like very sticky, right,
Speaker 3: they hang around even once you can sort of trace
Speaker 3: their origins to like a hoax or a misperception or something.
Speaker 3: It does matter because the idea that these things are
Speaker 3: real has been so firmly planted in the public consciousness.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting there's there's parallels in sort of Western
Speaker 2: folklore monsters in this there's monsters like you don't see
Speaker 2: people reporting dragons or mermaids very often, but it's not
Speaker 2: as zero.
Speaker 4: They still happen.
Speaker 2: It's just not as common like you know most Oh,
Speaker 2: of course dragon's ridiculous, but no, they still show up.
Speaker 2: Here's a question for you, and this is to contextualize
Speaker 2: things a bit. How does the Godzilla franchise sort of
Speaker 2: reflect these cultural political moods over the eras in the decades.
Speaker 2: And I mean that both in your premise here comparing
Speaker 2: the way cryptosuality translates into kaiju, but also because there
Speaker 2: is something in Japanese culture around this concept of eras
Speaker 2: that I've just sort of picked up on through things
Speaker 2: like Godzilla the movie series being tied to eras, but
Speaker 2: also I've seen it in anime in One Piece, which
Speaker 2: my family is slowly working their way through.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, they always talk about the Great Pirate Era.
Speaker 2: In this concept that there's these ages or eras or
Speaker 2: periods of time that sometimes they're short or long.
Speaker 4: Is that tied to royalty? Where does that come from?
Speaker 3: Obviously you have the the kind of historical eras which
Speaker 3: are usually tied to government or what's going on. So
Speaker 3: for example, I know I already mentioned the Tokagawa period,
Speaker 3: which is this period of time where the emperor still
Speaker 3: exists in Japan.
Speaker 5: But has been kind of uh uh you know.
Speaker 3: Pushed off to the side, and instead you have this
Speaker 3: this military ruling class which is which is headed up
Speaker 3: by the showgun instead, which is the first showgun was
Speaker 3: tokay Gawa is Sayu and so that's why it becomes
Speaker 3: the Tokagawa Era, and then like his descendants take over afterwards,
Speaker 3: and then you know, but then the Tokagawa Era transitions
Speaker 3: into you know, like the maj Era, which is a
Speaker 3: period of reform, which is a reference to then back
Speaker 3: to the emperor you know that's in power or the
Speaker 3: sort of the figurehead of the country at the time,
Speaker 3: which is then followed by the Taishow Period, which for
Speaker 3: again anime fans, that's when like Demon Slayer is set
Speaker 3: during the Taishow period, which is a sort of transitional
Speaker 3: era for Japan where they're starting to attempt to modernize
Speaker 3: or western eize. So then following that though, then you
Speaker 3: have the two big recent eras that you often hear
Speaker 3: Western Godzilla fans talk about as as a way of
Speaker 3: kind of demarketing the franchises. You have the Showa Era,
Speaker 3: which is basically you know, most of the twentieth century
Speaker 3: up until up until into the nineteen eighties, which is
Speaker 3: when the Showa Era ends, and then the Heyse Era
Speaker 3: and again and these refer to the particular emperor and
Speaker 3: it's by their last name and who they're being referred to.
Speaker 3: So the sort of original seventeen films in the Godzilla
Speaker 3: series that are made between nineteen fifty four and nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five are known as the Shoa Era films in
Speaker 3: both Japan and amongst American fans. And then the second
Speaker 3: series of films, which is from eighty four to ninety five,
Speaker 3: is what's known as the heyse Era, And there is
Speaker 3: a little fudging going on there because the show Era
Speaker 3: wasn't over in eighty four, so technically the first film
Speaker 3: from the heyse Era series is actually a Showa Era film,
Speaker 3: and sometimes that's reflected in Japanese language Godzilla books because
Speaker 3: for obvious reasons, they care a little bit more about
Speaker 3: this than we do about getting that exactly right. But
Speaker 3: usually even they because you know, they acknowledge that, you know,
Speaker 3: Return of Godzilla from nineteen eighty four or is the
Speaker 3: first film in that second series of movies, so it
Speaker 3: has to be included even if it was technically made
Speaker 3: and released during the show Era. But then the other
Speaker 3: thing that I think is interesting that I briefly reference
Speaker 3: in this paper is that the Japanese also do seem
Speaker 3: to have this thing with kind of marking certain periods
Speaker 3: in their history, where there are major trends in popular culture,
Speaker 3: which is something that I don't necessarily see other cultures
Speaker 3: doing or using. So I talk about, for example, that
Speaker 3: in the seventies, cryptozoology starts getting popularized in Japan, and
Speaker 3: this is as a result of something that the Japanese
Speaker 3: remember as what they call the occult boom, and so
Speaker 3: that's one of the things that you'll see. They talk
Speaker 3: about these moments where certain ideas are trending in popular culture,
Speaker 3: and they refer to them as boom. So earlier, in
Speaker 3: like the fifties and the sixties, there'd been a kaiju boom,
Speaker 3: and then there was a subsequent like Yokai boom, and
Speaker 3: then in the seventies you have what's known as the
Speaker 3: occult boom, which seems to have coincided with the prophecies
Speaker 3: of Nostra Damis getting translated into Japanese for the first time,
Speaker 3: and so then people get really interested in that kind
Speaker 3: of occult or mystical material, and you see those kinds
Speaker 3: of things trending through their popular culture. And then in
Speaker 3: the late seventies and into the eighties, you have actually
Speaker 3: a Ufo boom, which coincides with the release in Japan
Speaker 3: of Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third kind, and so
Speaker 3: they remember and they kind of demarkate these periods where
Speaker 3: certain things got really really popular and we're sort of.
Speaker 5: In the kind of general cultural zeitgeist.
Speaker 3: And you see that reflected then, to get to your
Speaker 3: answer your question, Blake, you see that reflected in the
Speaker 3: Godzilla series, right, one of the examples that I talk about.
Speaker 3: And so you have that initial cult boom in the seventies,
Speaker 3: and then there's a subsequent kind of a cult boom
Speaker 3: in Japan also in the early nineties, and these things
Speaker 3: do parallel global trends as well, because of course that
Speaker 3: was a period in American culture where the pair and
Speaker 3: normal started getting really popular again with things like.
Speaker 5: The X Files and whatnot.
Speaker 3: And I'm not entirely sure what the inciting incident was
Speaker 3: for the second like a cult boom in Japan. But
Speaker 3: one of the Godzilla movies that comes out in the
Speaker 3: early nineties is the movie Godzilla Versus King Gidora. And
Speaker 3: this film involves UFOs, it involves cryptozoology, it involves time travel,
Speaker 3: and the protagonist of the movie is actually a journalist
Speaker 3: who works for Moo magazine, which is basically the Japanese
Speaker 3: equivalent of the forty in time. Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, So all of that.
Speaker 3: Kind of stuff is being reflected in that particular film.
Speaker 1: Speaking of movies, in what ways has Godzilla influenced real
Speaker 1: world cryptozoology and how is crypt zoology in turn influenced
Speaker 1: new Godzilla films?
Speaker 3: All right, so I guess we want to go back
Speaker 3: to the very beginning, the original Godzilla from nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 3: So that movie was the brainchild of Toho Studios producer
Speaker 3: Tomo Yuki Tanaka. There's a lot that There's a lot
Speaker 3: that could be said about this, some of which is
Speaker 3: more speculative on my part that I talk about in
Speaker 3: the paper, and some of which is a little bit
Speaker 3: more direct, and I'll stick right now to the kind
Speaker 3: of really direct stuff. So Tomo Yuki Tanaka has this
Speaker 3: idea that he wants to do a big monster movie.
Speaker 3: He hires a well regarded and well known Japanese pulp
Speaker 3: fiction writer at the time, Shaghiru Kayama. Shaghiru Kayama, at
Speaker 3: this point in his career, is most famous for a
Speaker 3: pair of stories he's written, which you're titled The Revenge
Speaker 3: of Orran Pin Deck and the return of Orring Pin
Speaker 3: Deck probably, yeah, which should ring some bells for some people,
Speaker 3: because you know, the Oran Pin Deck is basically the
Speaker 3: Indonesian version of Bigfoot, right.
Speaker 4: And little Little Foot the kids are calling it, Yeah, well.
Speaker 5: It's small right yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So this this is what he's most famous for at
Speaker 3: the time, and none of Kayama's work has ever been
Speaker 3: translated into English until just late last year, so the
Speaker 3: University of Minnesota Press put out kayamas novelizations of both
Speaker 3: the original Godzilla and the sequel Godzilla Raids, again translated
Speaker 3: by Jeffrey Angles, who is also going to be at
Speaker 3: g Fest this year with me giving a talk and
Speaker 3: and so, and I've I've been talking to Angles since
Speaker 3: before the book came out and everything, and and he's
Speaker 3: he's confirmed for me that, yes, Kayama was obsessed with
Speaker 3: what we today would call cryptozoology. He was he was
Speaker 3: fascinated by this idea of undiscovered or mysterious creatures. And
Speaker 3: this is primarily the kinds of stories that he wrote
Speaker 3: about in pulp fiction magazines. And in fact, the reason
Speaker 3: why uh Tanaka probably hired Kayama had less to do
Speaker 3: with his orain pindex stories and more to do with
Speaker 3: the fact that he'd written a number of stories up
Speaker 3: to that point, such as one called the Gira Monster,
Speaker 3: which was about a dinosaur that was bulletproof attacking people
Speaker 3: on an island in the South Pacific. He wrote a
Speaker 3: story called Lizard Island, which was about a biologist that
Speaker 3: goes to an uncharted island in the South Pacific and
Speaker 3: discovers these giant lizards that they call demonosauruses. He had
Speaker 3: a story called the Monster Spectator, which if you look
Speaker 3: at the illustrations from the original Japanese POLP magazine that
Speaker 3: those appeared in the Monster and that story looks almost
Speaker 3: exactly like Godzilla.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Kayama was really really interested in this that he wrote
Speaker 3: a story. He also wrote a story which might actually
Speaker 3: be I'm trying to find out more information about this
Speaker 3: because I've been I've been curious about the idea of,
Speaker 3: you know, how the cela can't became the poster child
Speaker 3: for cryptozoology when I know, as you've talked about before
Speaker 3: on the show, it's actually a really bad case study
Speaker 3: for cryptozoology. And one of the things that I found
Speaker 3: interesting is that cela cants don't seem to actually turn
Speaker 3: up that often in crypto fiction. But lo and behold,
Speaker 3: Kayama wrote a story called The Monster a Cela Can't
Speaker 3: So you know, you know, part of part of this
Speaker 3: is obviously the issue of you know, getting getting this
Speaker 3: stuff translated into English or you know, getting a hold
Speaker 3: of copies of it and and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: But you know, these Godzilla novelizations have sold really well
Speaker 3: for the University of Minnesota Press, so I know, Jeffrey
Speaker 3: is you know, in talks with them about possibly getting
Speaker 3: more of kayama stuff translated over here. But so Kayama,
Speaker 3: being the one who writes the original Godzilla movie and
Speaker 3: Godzilla Raids again, injects a lot of that interest in
Speaker 3: cryptozoology into the original movie. And so this is why
Speaker 3: you end up with you know, I think the kind
Speaker 3: of rich, fringe scientific content that you do in this film,
Speaker 3: Like you know why one of the protagonists, you know,
Speaker 3: is doctor doctor Yamane is a paleontologist, you know, and
Speaker 3: that they they bother to have these scenes where you know,
Speaker 3: he's explaining kind of like you know, the sort of
Speaker 3: paleontological pseudoscience of Godzilla. And one of the really interesting
Speaker 3: things in that scene if you go back and you
Speaker 3: watch the movie is that part of the evidence that
Speaker 3: he cites for why, you know, the Japanese diet the government.
Speaker 3: He's making his presentation to the government, you know, should
Speaker 3: take these reports of this giant dinosaur monster being seen
Speaker 3: off the coast of Japan seriously. Is he mentions the
Speaker 3: recent discoveries of the footprints of a snowman in the Himalayas, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's citing the Yeti as evidence. And that's also really
Speaker 3: interesting because the film that Kayama and a. Shiro Honda,
Speaker 3: who is the director of the original Godzilla, would collaborate
Speaker 3: on right after the Original Godzilla had wrapped is a
Speaker 3: movie that in English is known as half Human. In Japan,
Speaker 3: it's Junjin yuki Otoko or beast Man of the Snows,
Speaker 3: and it's a Yei movie, and it's it's probably, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, the best or the second best, like nineteen
Speaker 3: fifties Yeti movie ever made, right up there with Hammers
Speaker 3: the Abominable Snowman. The problem is it's very well, it's
Speaker 3: gotten easier to see in recent years. Toho has never
Speaker 3: released that film on home video.
Speaker 5: Really not in Japan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not in Japan, certainly not in the States. There's
Speaker 3: there's complicated reasons for that. The the depiction of the
Speaker 3: people who live in proximity to the Yetti is not
Speaker 3: considered politically correct by modern Japanese standards. So that's a
Speaker 3: whole can of worms. So they've kind of buried this
Speaker 3: movie as a result. It's a very sort of like
Speaker 3: Disney Song of the South situation.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: Okay, but at some point somebody but they apparently they
Speaker 3: still show the movie occasionally at film screenings because a
Speaker 3: friend of mine, Nicholas Clark, who lives in in Japan,
Speaker 3: got to see it in a theater because they did
Speaker 3: a screening of it. They just won't release it on
Speaker 3: home video or on any kind of streaming platform or anything.
Speaker 3: But somebody at some point leaked a copy of the film,
Speaker 3: and so it's out there on the Internet, and people
Speaker 3: keep uploading it on like YouTube or vimo or archive
Speaker 3: dot org, and Tojo keeps having it pulled down, and
Speaker 3: people just keep posting it.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 2: It reminds me very much of a lot of the
Speaker 2: things like the uh, the Fantastic Four movie. Uh, you
Speaker 2: know that Roger Korman did where you used to only
Speaker 2: be able to get it at the back table at
Speaker 2: a convention on bootleg VHS third Generation, everybody looks like
Speaker 2: they're made out of plastic, you know, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's one of those it's one of those
Speaker 3: things where you know, it's it's a real shame because
Speaker 3: it's an amazing it's an amazing film if you can,
Speaker 3: if you can watch it, and I think, you know
Speaker 3: it it deserves a release, you know, you know, probably
Speaker 3: done with you know, the kind of proper care and consideration.
Speaker 3: If it's like, you know, we understand that some of
Speaker 3: the content and this is problematic by modern standards, but
Speaker 3: that just doesn't seem to be something that Toho's interested in.
Speaker 2: I've enjoyed a few things where they put a not
Speaker 2: a disclaimer but basically a contextual informational card at the
Speaker 2: start to sort of remind you, yeah, we know, we
Speaker 2: were aware it's important for reasons, but this is not
Speaker 2: you know, the content's not great now, but it also
Speaker 2: it's important to preserve this, you know, this history. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's interesting. I have actually not seen it, but I
Speaker 2: also have a bootleg, so it's it's on my to
Speaker 2: do this.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that is definitely how like cryptozoology directly impacted,
Speaker 3: like the original conception and development of Godzilla was that
Speaker 3: it all came through Shagiru Kayama, right and then and then.
Speaker 3: The other example would be the movie that I already mentioned,
Speaker 3: Godzilla Versus King Gadora, which involves direct cryptozoology. So in particular,
Speaker 3: in that case, they cite the nineteen seventy seven Zooey
Speaker 3: Maru incident, which I know you guys have done a
Speaker 3: show on in the past.
Speaker 2: So I won't the long ago pass like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was with Greg Cuban. Yeah wow, wow, that goes
Speaker 2: way back to like the first two Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, so yeah, I won't, I won't belabor that,
Speaker 3: but they do directly reference the Zooey Maru case in
Speaker 3: that movie. They show the photos at one point, And
Speaker 3: actually I noticed a couple of years ago when I
Speaker 3: was working on a different presentation for Gfest that when
Speaker 3: they show the Zooey Maru photos, if you're if you
Speaker 3: know your cryptozoology and you pay attention, they actually also
Speaker 3: show in the same scene Sir Peter Scott's famous painting
Speaker 3: of a pair of Nessies in Courtship and lockness.
Speaker 2: So wow, you kind of want to see their next
Speaker 2: intertwine to make a heart like you know, they swines
Speaker 2: all the time. But kid, I know we're running short
Speaker 2: on time, and we'll definitely have to have you back
Speaker 2: because there's some big concepts that I want to talk about.
Speaker 2: But let's, uh, if you don't mind, briefly, let's talk
Speaker 2: about a topic that I can't seem to let go of,
Speaker 2: which is the feedback loop between focal or fiction and
Speaker 2: air quote real world cryptozoology, because you do talk about
Speaker 2: that in this paper.
Speaker 3: A big part of my research into this is I
Speaker 3: have you know, I've become increasingly convinced that there is
Speaker 3: this kind of feedback loop that exists between speculative fiction
Speaker 3: and cryptozoology where people who are writing speculative fiction. Well,
Speaker 3: so it can go in any number of ways, and
Speaker 3: it is I mean, it's one.
Speaker 5: Of those things.
Speaker 3: It's really appropriate with Charles fort once said, right, you know,
Speaker 3: you can start a circle beginning anywhere.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, because it's either the case that you have people
Speaker 3: who are writing speculative fiction who are reading the works
Speaker 3: of cryptozoologists or other fringe researchers right again, pseudoscientists for
Speaker 3: lack of a better word, and then they are incorporating
Speaker 3: those ideas into their fiction, and then that material is
Speaker 3: getting read by both people in those communities, in those
Speaker 3: fourteen communities, and by the general public as well in
Speaker 3: many cases, and that's either reinforcing certain beliefs that they
Speaker 3: have or providing them with particular beliefs and ideas. Again,
Speaker 3: I actually think, you know previous episodes you guys just
Speaker 3: did with Joe Laycock and Eric Harrelson about the Exorcist Effect.
Speaker 3: I've read that book. I think Joe and Eric do
Speaker 3: an amazing job in the second chapter of that book
Speaker 3: of actually breaking down explaining how the mechanics of this
Speaker 3: feedback loop actually work. So I'm not going to try
Speaker 3: and you know, summarize summarize what they do there. People
Speaker 3: should really read that second chapter. But this, this feedback
Speaker 3: loop is real, and it exists where you know, these
Speaker 3: things are influencing each other, and they're influencing how people
Speaker 3: think about them and how these things are perceived and
Speaker 3: how they're understood in the real world. And I think,
Speaker 3: you know, you can make this case with cryptozoology just
Speaker 3: as well as you can make it with the kind
Speaker 3: of you know, demonic beliefs that Joe and Eric are
Speaker 3: talking about. The way that somebody like Jason Colovito has
Speaker 3: made this case with regards to like ancient alien proponents
Speaker 3: and the fiction of H. P.
Speaker 5: Lovecraft.
Speaker 3: Right there, there are multiple examples that you can cite.
Speaker 3: And what's fascinating about this is that, you know, you
Speaker 3: would think that something like Godzilla, right, you would go, well, okay, sure,
Speaker 3: you know, I might believe you that, you know, say,
Speaker 3: the popularity of you know, like bigfoot media or something
Speaker 3: would influence people to have more bigfoot sightings, or you know,
Speaker 3: the success of close Encounters of the third kind caused
Speaker 3: more people to interpret weird lights they'd seen in the
Speaker 3: sky as being UFOs. But certainly nobody is actually going
Speaker 3: out into the world and seeing Godzilla, right, And as
Speaker 3: I talk about it the end of my paper, this
Speaker 3: is not necessarily true. So in the Annals of Japanese Cryptozoology,
Speaker 3: there is a famous case which is what's known as
Speaker 3: Antarctic Godzilla, which took place on February thirteenth, nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: and there was a Japanese Antarctic research vessel called the
Speaker 3: Sooya and according to the captain Mitsuji Matsumoto, at about
Speaker 3: seven pm, him and a lot of his crew were
Speaker 3: you know, looking out into the Lutzoholm Bay off the
Speaker 3: coast of Antarctica, and they saw this large creature moving
Speaker 3: through the water, and they said it resembled a way
Speaker 3: but with a serrated fin on its back and a
Speaker 3: head like a cow, complete with protruding ears. And nobody
Speaker 3: had a camera on them at the time. And when
Speaker 3: the chief engineer apparently left the bridge to try and
Speaker 3: go grab one, by time he came back, the creature
Speaker 3: in question had vanished. But Matsumoto, you know, having seen this,
Speaker 3: was reminded of the movie Godzilla, and so he wrote
Speaker 3: down the name, you know, nan Kiyo ku Gojira Antarctic
Speaker 3: Godzilla in his log. And this has become, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of this famous case in the annals of Japanese cryptozoology.
Speaker 3: It's not very well known outside the annals of Japanese cryptozoology,
Speaker 3: which I find kind of surprising. It doesn't get mentioned
Speaker 3: in any sort of the standard reference literature or material
Speaker 3: or even stuff focusing like specifically on cryptid whales. But
Speaker 3: this is this is kind of a plastic case in
Speaker 3: Japan that people talk about. And what's also interesting about
Speaker 3: this and this kind of demonstrates and shows that that
Speaker 3: feedback loop and that influence is that because Matsumoto gave
Speaker 3: this this creature, which by all accounts sounds like some
Speaker 3: kind of odd whale or marine mammal, because he gave
Speaker 3: it this name. If you look at visual depictions of
Speaker 3: it over the years in Japanese cryptozoological literature, it goes
Speaker 3: from initially being this whale or marine mammal type creature
Speaker 3: to becoming increasingly reptilian, increasingly dinosaur like, increasingly resembling its
Speaker 3: cinematic namesake.
Speaker 4: But scaled up exactly for you know.
Speaker 3: For Godzilla, in a way to draw a parallel that's
Speaker 3: very similar to how you know, if you go back
Speaker 3: to the primary sources for Mothman, nobody was discribed insectoid humanoid.
Speaker 3: They were describing some kind of large bird.
Speaker 5: But because the.
Speaker 3: Media gave it the name, yes, many nowadays, the image
Speaker 3: that you'll find if you google Mothman is by and
Speaker 3: large this weird insectoid humanoid type creature. Because that's that's
Speaker 3: what's happened over time, and that's influenced the sightings and
Speaker 3: even the original witnesses.
Speaker 2: And in this week's episode, we we talked to our
Speaker 2: guest and as the favorite monster, the one we just recorded,
Speaker 2: and she she said mothman, but as she described it,
Speaker 2: it was like a giant moth And I absolutely did
Speaker 2: not want to correct her, because, hey, if that's how
Speaker 2: you're encountering it in the pop culture.
Speaker 4: World, that's how it's evolved.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's not you know, you can't force people
Speaker 2: back to the purity of the original story because these
Speaker 2: things change over time. I mean, as a nerd, I
Speaker 2: mean I want to say, but no, it's actually but
Speaker 2: the reality is these things more.
Speaker 3: Ye, it's part of that idea of folklore, right, because
Speaker 3: that's and that's you know why this idea of like
Speaker 3: Grimshaw and Lester is about the scientification of folklore is
Speaker 3: important because folklore, just like a living organism, wants to survive,
Speaker 3: and to survive it has to adapt, it has to evolve.
Speaker 5: And so if that.
Speaker 3: Means incorporating the language of science, the vocabulary of science,
Speaker 3: making its monsters sound less fantastic and more scientifically plausible
Speaker 3: in a in a you know, cryptozoological sense, which might
Speaker 3: mean you know that actual scientists, actual palaeontologists are groaning
Speaker 3: and rolling their eyes. But for the general public, they're going, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that sounds right, that sounds believable, that sounds science y.
Speaker 3: Then that's that's what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well justin we're gonna have to wrap things
Speaker 1: up for now. But you did mention Gphist, and we
Speaker 1: want to have you back on the show soon for
Speaker 1: a deep a dive into some of these other concepts.
Speaker 1: But could you tell our listeners a little bit about
Speaker 1: Gfest and what you're going to be doing there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Gfest is going to be the weekend of
Speaker 3: July twelfth to the fourteenth. It's in Chicago. If you
Speaker 3: if you go online and you google g Fest, you
Speaker 3: can find all of the information as far as the
Speaker 3: actual hotel that they're they're having it at this year.
Speaker 3: In fact, I could probably tell you that myself, but
Speaker 3: you know, I think it's at the Hyatt Regency o
Speaker 3: Hair is what I'm seeing, so I know they've they've
Speaker 3: moved it recently, so definitely double check the website. But
Speaker 3: it is a long running it's been going on since
Speaker 3: the nineties. Convention for fans of the Godzilla franchise, fans
Speaker 3: of Kaiju in general. So King Kong Gamera mathra all
Speaker 3: of that kind of stuff. You get guests come in
Speaker 3: from japan actors, suit actors, directors, special effects people who
Speaker 3: have worked on the film, and then you also get
Speaker 3: panels that are done by various scholars or authorities on
Speaker 3: these films and.
Speaker 5: Their their history, you know.
Speaker 3: So you know, as I already mentioned, I'm going to
Speaker 3: be there delivering a talk on Japanese cryptozoology and how
Speaker 3: it's shown up and influenced Japanese popular culture, so not
Speaker 3: just the Godzilla series, but other things as well, and
Speaker 3: I already mentioned like this year also one of the
Speaker 3: guests is going to be Jeffrey Angeles, who will be
Speaker 3: talking about the process of translating those books. And if
Speaker 3: you go online you can get a complete, I think
Speaker 3: listing of all the different panels. There's going to be,
Speaker 3: you know, some great stuff from some really knowledgeable and
Speaker 3: reputable people there. You know, I definitely should give a
Speaker 3: shout out to friends and colleagues like Kevin Darren and
Speaker 3: Kyle bird Like. Look for their names, look for their panels.
Speaker 3: Those are two guys who really know this material forward
Speaker 3: and backwards, and they always do really really interesting presentations
Speaker 3: at Gfest on it.
Speaker 1: So great.
Speaker 2: I won't be able to get this out quite in
Speaker 2: time for the regular feed, but I'll try to get
Speaker 2: this out in time so that least our patrons will
Speaker 2: have a chance to pick up on this. I'm just
Speaker 2: I don't think the timing will work based on the
Speaker 2: release schedule, but that's something we tried. This is really
Speaker 2: really good though. I really really appreciate you coming on
Speaker 2: to talk with us about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we obviously need to have you back and have
Speaker 2: a deeper dive where we can set aside a little longer.
Speaker 2: I want to point listeners to two things you mentioned
Speaker 2: Eddie and Richard and they do a podcast called The
Speaker 2: Impossible Archive, which I'll put a link to in the
Speaker 2: show notes.
Speaker 4: She should check that out.
Speaker 2: And also, you recently did an episode of The Lost
Speaker 2: Valley with friend of the show Key and Gil and
Speaker 2: talking about specifically uh Skull Island and you talk about
Speaker 2: cryptozoology and the monster verse there, and that was really
Speaker 2: a great conversation as well.
Speaker 4: So I'll put links to that in the show notes too.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the Yeah, we don't have we don't have time
Speaker 3: to go into it. But that's been another really interesting
Speaker 3: thing is that these recent American Godzilla movies, you know,
Speaker 3: have been have kind of been dancing around the subject
Speaker 3: of cryptozoology for a while. And then if anybody saw
Speaker 3: the Apple TV series that tied into these movies, Monarch
Speaker 3: Legacy of Monsters, they finally used the word.
Speaker 5: They sure did.
Speaker 1: They dropped the C word, right, It's just good.
Speaker 4: We loved it. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I remember the
Speaker 4: other one now, I'll bet you're vintion it. But anyway,
Speaker 4: that was a hoot. I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2: But again, justin thank you so much for coming to
Speaker 2: talk with us and for this work that you're doing,
Speaker 2: because you're practically making this stuff respectable and I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: But thank you, Thank you so much, Blake for the
Speaker 3: compliments regarding the accessibility of the paper. That's something I
Speaker 3: really strive for in my academic writing.
Speaker 4: So awesome.
Speaker 5: Monster.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 2: I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. You just heard
Speaker 2: an interview with doctor Justin Mullis about the connection between
Speaker 2: cryptozoology and Kaiju films in Japan. Do please check the
Speaker 2: show notes for links to some other interesting interviews. Justin's
Speaker 2: done with shows whose mission overlaps our own, especially if
Speaker 2: you're interested in a deep dive on King Kong and
Speaker 2: Skull Island. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Monster Talk.
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