If You Love ‘Godzilla Minus One,’ Watch This Underrated Akira Kurosawa Movie

The Big Picture

• Akira Kurosawa’s
  I Live in Fear
  chronicles an era in which the people of Japan live in fear of a nuclear war.
• The movie stars Toshiro Mifune as an elderly man who wants to move his family out of the country for their safety.
• Much like
  Godzilla Minus One
  the underrated Kurosawa movie dives into the psychological response with a gripping character study.

Godzilla, the reptilian kaiju monster, has long since been a paradigm of the fears many Japanese held about the atomic bombs after World War II. The possibility that other parts of Japan could be impacted like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a cause for panic even after life seemingly went back to normal. But did it? Becoming the highest-grossing live-action Japanese movie ever released in domestic theaters, Godzilla Minus One revisits the horrors of what Godzilla truly represents, bringing about an awe-striking, character-driven story.

Alongside Oppenheimerwhich chronicled the origins of the atomic bombs, the 33rd Japanese-language installment of the Godzilla franchise was celebrated at the Academy Awards with Best Visual Effects. But Godzilla Minus One isn’t just the only thought-provoking film to deal head-on with the fallout of war. One of the earliest films to showcase the destructive, psychological impacts of the Second World War from a Japanese perspective is Akira Kurosawa‘s most underrated film called I Live in Fear (1955). The film surrounds a period in which the people of Japan are living with the fear of a nuclear war, creating the legendary auteur’s most truthful and emotional story of his career.

What Is the Story of ‘I Live in Fear’ About?

According to Akira Kurosawa’s memoir, Something Like an Autobiography, I Live in Fear was spawned from the director’s conversations about the H-bomb test accident of 1954 with his long-time film composer Fumio Hayasaka. Hayasaka had said to Kurosawa, “The world has come to such a state that we don’t really know what is in store for us tomorrow. I wouldn’t even know how to go on living – I’m that uncertain.” The film was made just a decade after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in March 1945, and yet the panic-stricken emotions presented to its audience feel as authentic and raw as they were during the immediate aftermath.

I Live in Fear explores the psychological effects of the nuclear bombing of the Second World War. At age thirty-five, the spell-bounding Toshiro Mifune plays an elderly foundry businessman, Kiichi Nakajima, who is struck by the sudden notion that he and his loved ones will be destroyed in a nuclear attack on Japan. Moving quickly and rashly, Nakajima’s fears drive him to make insane decisions that lead him to pursue the idea of moving his entire family to Brazil. He first takes out a huge sum of money to try to build an underground shelter. His plans soon turn south when his family finds out about his intentions and takes their concerns to the Tokyo Family court.

Nakajima’s three eldest children seek help from a dentist, Dr. Harada (Takashi Shimura), who is a volunteer worker for the court, to declare their father mentally incompetent. Dr. Harada takes time to listen to both perspectives. The family expresses their concern that Nakajima will blow all of his money and their inheritance on the move to Brazil — no one in the family wants to live in a different country over delusions. Harada tries to acknowledge Nakajima’s terror, questioning whether it is right to deem someone incompetent for just being more worried than the average citizen. However, when Nakajima’s reckless actions become more irrational, Dr. Harada and the panel rule in favor of the family, removing his ability to control financial decisions.

‘I Live in Fear’ Showcases the Social and Mental Devastation of the Bombs in Japan

Not taking no for an answer, Kiichi Nakajima gathers his family (three illegitimate children, two surviving mistresses, his wife, and the four children they have together) and begs them on hands and knees to move with him to a farm in Brazil. Unsuccessful in persuading them, the old man becomes more determined to protect his family from a nuclear attack, and his mental state soon deteriorates into chaos. One night, Nakajima makes one final effort to force his family to join him in Brazil. He decides to burn down the foundry so no one in the family will have a source of income tying them to Japan! On the dawn of the disaster, the family and the factory workers are beyond devastated. Nakajima’s terror of a nuclear holocaust transformed his sanity into selfish recklessness. He had no regard for the livelihood of his employees, and his self-centered plan angers the entire neighborhood. It is Nakajima’s son-in-law who makes the most moving speech about the reality of their situation, stating there are enough nuclear weapons in the world to kill everyone. Even if Nakajima moves to Brazil, it simply doesn’t matter. A nuclear bomb can be dropped anywhere on the plant at any time, and that’s the scariest truth.

The final moments of I Live In Fear drearily reveal the unfortunate fate of nuclear fear. Nakajima is sent to a psychiatric facility after burning the foundry. Dr. Harada visits the facility and voices his revelations to a psychologist. Kiichi Nakajima’s case made him wonder if people are not worrying enough about nuclear threats and have taken the issue too lightly. Later on, Dr. Harada’s pity intensifies when he witnesses how mentally unstable Nakajima has become. The elderly businessman is now numb to normalities and appears to be senile. The nuclear panic has triggered Nakajima to believe he is living on another planet, mistaking the sun for a burning Earth.

Akira Kurosawa directly wrestles with the demons of war in the rousing I Live In Fear. More so, Godzilla Minus One alludes to the mental decline of people’s fears against a power that can take away life within seconds. Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) also grapples with traumatizing depression after the slaughter of his team because of his mistake. His nightmares of Godzilla constantly harbor inside him throughout his life, which is a similar psychological path Kiichi Nakajima struggles with.

What makes Godzilla incredibly terrifying as a villain is that he stands as a metaphor of nuclear warfare. Following the bombing of Tokyo in Minus Onethe Japanese are left broken. Kōichi’s redemption journey in stopping Godzilla from being another tragedy is parallel to the desperation inside Nakajima’s character. To avoid a nuclear bomb attack is nearly impossible, and Nakajima’s family knows this fact all too well. Their resistance in moving to Brazil goes to show that we are all forced to live in a society where any manmade power, and threats like Godzilla, could wipe us out with just a single round of atomic breath.

Audiences aren’t confronted with an actual display of the effects of the nuclear bombing in I Live in Fear. The imagery of total annihilation is there in subtle ways to highlight how the fear of death can consume someone into insanity. It is one of few films to emotionally depict a society emerging from the shadows of nuclear warmirroring Kōichi’s memories of the past and anxieties of losing those closest to him at the hands of Godzilla. The underrated Kurosawa movie might not be his most groundbreaking work; however, I Live In Fear is a satisfying go-to, after Godzilla Minus One, for its reflective story of a transformative time the world will never recover from.

I Live in Fear is available to watch on the Criterion Channel in the U.S.

WATCH ON CRITERION CHANNEL