Giant monsters

The 2013 release of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim brought the term “kaiju” into popularity for a brief moment and at least made it a household term among the denizens of geekdom. The film defines the term as the Japanese for “giant monster,” but this is wrong. The meaning most commonly cited is “strange beast,” and daikaiju refers specifically to the gargantuan size of the creatures. Ordinary interpretations of kaiju by audiences in North America and Europe carry with them the assumption that they represent a continuation of distinctly American giant monsters. In point of fact, it is the strangeness of these creatures of unusual size that marks them off from their cousins in Hollywood. Indeed, they are in many ways a product of a sensibility that recalls the tradition of Weird Fiction.