10.13125/2039-6597/4228
application/pdf
2039-6597
4228
20
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-26942
Yorimitsu Hashimoto
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Between
Folklore
Spectacular Tentacular: Transmedial Tentacles and Their Hegemonic Struggles in Cthulhu and Godzilla
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
10
Essay
2020-11-30
2020-07-27
2020-11-30
2020-12-07
58-88
1
Yorimitsu Hashimoto
2020/11/30
10.13125/2039-6597/4228
58
Osaka University
2039-6597
20
Folklore
en
88
urn:nbn:it:unica-26942
Spectacular Tentacular: Transmedial Tentacles and Their Hegemonic Struggles in Cthulhu and Godzilla
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/4228/4553
10
               Spectacular Tentacular:
               Transmedial Tentacles
                and Their Hegemonic
                     Struggles
              in Cthulhu and Godzilla

                         Yorimitsu Hashimoto

Abstract
      Tentacular cephalopods appear regularly in film. Inspired by Hugo and
Hokusai, stories of ferocious octopus attacking primates were invented. This
fantasy of the Kraken was incorporated into monster movies in the 1950s with
the cult of Cthulhu. Lovecraft describes a vision of the resurrection of
prehistoric cephalopod monsters and reinterprets fragments from worldwide
mythology. With the film King Kong (1933) as their distant origin, Godzilla
(1954) and It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) describe returns of monsters as
recorded in ancient times. The Japanese film King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) is
interesting to consider in this context. Here, in a scenario possibly inspired by
Japanese folklore, a huge octopus attacks King Kong, in a struggle that can be
interpreted as a battle for initiative in the world of Cthulhu. Cthulhan pseudo-
mythology is widely appropriated in later monster movies, although the
racism is a stumbling block. In the movie Kong: Skull Island (2017), the monkey
god returns like Cthulhu, but bites off the attacking cephalopod's tentacles.
This evokes impressive scenes from both King Kong vs. Godzilla and Oldboy
(2003). Here, Kong, seeming to extract Cthulhan racism, incorporates the
powers of Cthulhu's intense tentacles and pseudo-mythological method.
Keywords
     Movie, Adaptation, Natural History, Folklore
Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)
ISSN 2039-6597
DOI: 10.13125/2039-6597/4228
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular




           Spectacular Tentacular:
       Transmedial Tentacles and their
            Hegemonic Struggles
          in Cthulhu and Godzilla

                            Yorimitsu Hashimoto


                                   Introduction
      Octopuses often appear in films. Every time filming technology
advances, from the birth of silent film, to the advent of talkies, stop
motion animation and special effects, up to computer graphics, a
tentacle-slinging monster arises from the deep sea or outer space to be
filmed. This ongoing panorama can be called the spectacular tentacular.
These tentacles, as they grope around, react instantly to their enemy or
prey by attacking or withdrawing, as if driven by a will of their own.
The octopus is often used as a symbol of greed, exhibiting a movement
in which multiplication and expansion become their own objects. In
particular, the octopus often appears in caricatures as a symbol of
capitalism and imperialism. In these drawings, the face of the octopus
in these caricatures expresses the entity that is accused of responsibility
for the acts represented, such as a certain country or a large corporation,
depicted as the source of all kinds of evil. The faces given to these
enemies are generally forms of alter ego and represent unconscious
anxiety or desire. Likewise, in monster movies, a huge tentacled entity
lies at the bottom of the deep sea or emerges from out of dark skies and
comes and toys with tiny people on land and on board ships. This
formulaic narrative about the octopus can be interpreted to represent a
counterattack by the unconscious (Hackett 2018).


58
                                   Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



     In films and film posters, unlike the aforementioned drawings, the
tentacles, with their unpredictable movements, have more importance
than the face, which may not appear in a wide shot. The eyes or mouth
may be seen in close-up, but in movies, which literally feature
movement, the emphasis falls on the stirring tentacles. It is striking that
unlike the caricatures of the octopus that peaked in the early 20th
century, in late 20th century cinema, the tentacles receive the most
attention. This may be related to the realisation that capitalism is not
governed by any single individual or group, and no one is ultimately in
charge of it. Study of the octopus tells us that although its tentacles obey
top–down commands from the brain, their abundance of neurons allows
them to move around freely (Godfrey-Smith 2016). The octopus thus
resembles a modern corporation, and it is not surprising that the image
of the octopus and its tentacles spread around the world just when
modernity was covering the globe.
     The global transmedial process through which the octopus became
an icon is brilliantly described by Roger Caillois (1973)1. He reports that
although many representations of octopuses show them neither as fierce
nor as dangerous, much less as vampires, the octopus nevertheless
became synonymous with sensuality and greed according to
representations in Europe throughout the 19th century. The same
development took place in Japan, where the octopus was
anthropomorphised and loved as a foodstuff and as a goofy character.
The transformation of the octopus was nothing short of a ‘triumph of
myth’ as Caillois puts it. He concludes that the European-originated
imagination ‘has rallied stubborn Japan and seems to have aligned its
daydreams with world mythology’ (translation mine) (Caillois 1973,
148). This standardisation was not a unilateral European action,
however, but rather the product of the cultural exchange with the East
and Japan in particular. The representation of the octopus that spread

     1
      As for the representation of the octopus, interesting cultural history
books were written in English by Williams and Schweid. However, any study
comparable with that of Caillois has not been published yet, probably because
no English translation is available.


                                                                               59
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



from Europe undeniably influenced the traditional Japanese
representation. At the same time, however, European representations of
the octopus were also somewhat transformed by contact with the East
Asian images. Incidentally, this transformation occurred simultaneously
with the critical reception and revision of the Cthulhu Mythos.

     1. Transmedial Tentacles from Cthulhu to Nuclear
                     Monster Movies
      The classic movie It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) tells the story
of a giant octopus that attacks a coastal megacity. A hydrogen bomb test
awakens this monster from the bottom of Mindanao. (It is no
coincidence that this was the site of a fierce battle between the United
States and Japan in World War II.) The monster first attacks a ship and
then, after destroying the Golden Gate Bridge, enters the San Francisco
harbour. As in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Ray Harryhausen
filmed a model octopus in stop motion. To save time and labour, the
octopus was given six legs, not eight. For the same reason, only a single
tentacle is depicted protruding from the water to kidnap a person.
Interestingly, Caillois cites an article from the San Francisco Chronicle (9
November 1954) to describe a scenario for the upcoming production of
Le Monstre Sous la Mer. Although probably without having seen the film,
Caillois describes it as nothing but a ‘new King Kong’, saying that a
Japanese version of the film ‘could have or may have had’ depicted the
devastation of Tokyo (Caillois 1973: 144–145). In fact, It Came from
Beneath the Sea is quite closely related to King Kong, as well as to Godzilla.
      The idea of a hydrogen bomb test that awakens a prehistoric
monster is inherited from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. There, giant
creatures that once roamed the ancient earth form territories in the
concrete jungle, asserting their dominance of the eco-system. This
conception appears in Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912) and its films
down to King Kong (1933). In this group of stories, the tower, often seen
as a symbol of human order, is destroyed like the Tower of Babel. King
Kong scales the Empire State Building, and the Rhedosaurus destroys



60
                                    Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



the lighthouse. The giant octopus also brings down the Golden Gate
Bridge and the clock tower of the Ferry Building, which symbolises the
ordering of space and time according to the human scale.
      It is well known that The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms influenced
Godzilla (1954). Interestingly, Eiji Tsuburaya, the director of special
effects for Godzilla, had been planning a movie where an octopus
attacked a whale ship and a city after he had heard about a giant octopus
living in the South Seas (Hanada 2006: 75). However, producer
Tomoyuki Tanaka wisely chose the dinosaur-like Godzilla instead of an
octopus.
      The hidden influence of Godzilla on It Came from Beneath the Sea
shows an appropriation of historical legend and myth. The Rhedosaurus
in the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a prehistoric dinosaur that has
survived in an unpopulated area and has no direct relationship to myth
and legend. In this story, the Beast was sleeping in the Arctic ice, which
matches H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, but the Beast is not given in
detail. On the other hand, Godzilla is the subject of rumour before its
appearance, as an old local fisherman says that this must be the
legendary sea monster called Godzilla. (There was no tale of a dinosaur-
like monster in Japan before the film.) Obviously appropriating the King
Kong legend and assigning it to an island in the Pacific, folklore is
fabricated to fit the film's purpose.
      In It Came from Beneath the Sea, a scientist tells an audience that giant
octopus attacks are not wild stories but historical facts. She tells of
monsters, possibly based on the Kraken legend, that ravaged ships at
sea and coastal towns of northern Europe over 30 years in the 13th
century. An old picture that she shows half-believing soldiers and
reporters shows, she says, a monster awakening and attacking a ship
after the explosion of Vesuvius a resulting change in the flow of the
ocean. The image is in fact called ‘The Kraken Seen by the Eye of
Imagination’ and is taken from John Gibson's Monsters of the Sea (1887)
(Fig. 1). Pliny, who records an octopus taking fish from a house, died at
Vesuvius while trying to learn about the eruption. This episode might
have inspired the screenwriter to give this explanation.



                                                                                61
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



     The American writer H. P. Lovecraft developed pseudo-historic
horror entertainment featuring this type of monster. In his stories
fragmentary and imaginary records appear to be pieced together to
show that great monsters called Cthulhu, worshipped in myth and
legend, could return to our world. The following epigram in the ur-text
for this approach, ‘Call of Cthulhu’ (1928), summarises his
methodology.

         Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a
      survival… a survival of a hugely remote period when…
      consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long
      since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity… forms of
      which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and
      called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds…
      (Lovecraft 2002: 139)

     This is a quotation from The Centaur by the British novelist
Algernon Blackwood. Following Blackwood's method, this seminal
Lovecraft story tells of a Cthulhu cult that believes in the future
resurrection of an ancient ‘pulpy, tentacled head surmounted by a
grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings’ (ibid.: 141). Needless
to say, Lovecraft's mythology is a mere figment of his imagination,
inspired by studies of folklore. However, he did seem to believe in and
to have extracted a key element of previous scholarship, according to
which myths and legends contain a small sliver of truth, handed down
from prehistoric experiences. It is not surprising, therefore, that
Lovecraft mentions J. G. Frazer's Golden Bough (1890), Margaret Murray's
Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) and the more esoteric William Scott-
Elliot's The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904) in this
work (ibid.: 142).

      2. Intertwined Tentacles from the East and West
     Just as Lovecraft's cephalopodic Cthulhu was inspired by the lore
of the Kraken, the methodology of folklore studies originally derives



62
                                    Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



from natural history. It defines a geology of the imagination, without
drawing a strict distinction between imaginary monsters and real
animals, taken from a myriad of records and illustrations. This method
has been carried over into modern representational research, including
Caillois's study of the formation of myths on the octopus. He showed
that false representations spread globally in spite of denials by scientific
research and concludes that myth triumphs over science, following la
logique de l'imaginaire, as indicated in the excellent subtitle of his book.
There, Caillois explains that the Kraken of Norse lore was originally a
huge island-like sea beast. It was not until the writings of Erik
Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, in the 18th century that the Kraken was
created in the form we know today (Caillois 1973: 43). Pontoppidan's
work was translated into English under the title The Natural History of
Norway (1755), where a Leviathan-like Kraken was read as a cephalopod,
attacking ships and pulling sailors to the bottom of the sea. However, it
was not until the 19th century that this version became standard. As
Caillois also notes, the modern myth of the greedy great octopus is based
on the account in the French naturalist Pierre Denys de Montfort's
Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques (1801–1802) (ibid.:
48). The famous iconography of the Kraken's attack on a sailing ship off
of the coast of Angola in West Africa is derived from the illustrations in
De Montfort's book. Illustrations based on De Montfort were published
in volume 25 of the British popular book, The Naturalist's Library, (1860)
(Fig. 2). The so-called ancient document that a scientist presents in the
movie It Came from Beneath the Sea is nothing more than a by-product of
this imaginary illustration.
      In addition to the highly influential illustrations in his work, De
Montfort includes testimonies of similar attacks occurring in oceans
around the world. However, due to the development of biology as a
science, eyewitness testimony was no longer considered evidence for the
discovery of a new species discovery since the mid-19th century. The
turning point here was a controversy regarding the mysterious sea
monster. In 1848, the crew of HMS Daedalus testified to witnessing a
great sea serpent off the coast of South Africa, creating a sensation due
to the realistic illustration that was published in the Illustrated London


                                                                                63
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



News, based on the crew's reports, but comparative anatomist Richard
Owen bluntly rejected the witnesses, asserting that a creature like this
was impossible from the anatomical viewpoint. This event may have
cast a shadow on similar eyewitness accounts from the French corvette
Alecton, which encountered a giant squid off of the Canary Islands in
1861. It became necessary to collect more than testimony, such as
specimens or at least historical documents recording novel creatures.
This transition in natural history can be seen in the work of Henry Lee,
a naturalist of marine life who worked for the Brighton aquarium. Lee's
Octopus or, the ‘Devil-fish’ of Fiction and of Fact (1875) is an encyclopaedic
notebook incorporating an accumulation of historical and mythical
records with sober scientific observations. With regard to the Kraken
illustration in De Montfort's work, Lee made the careful statement that
the existence of this creature was suggested by a part of a specimen that
had been described and similar reports of giant cuttlefish from the East.
One of his friend allegedly told him ‘that he saw in a shop in China a
picture of a cuttlefish embracing a junk, apparently of about 300 tons[sic]
burthen, and helping itself to the sailors, as one picks gooseberries off a
bush’ (Lee 1875: 106). However, no such legend and/or drawings of an
octopus of this nature were found in China. Even in Japan, illustrations
of giant octopus-like creatures attacking ships are extremely rare. It is,
therefore, highly likely that Lee's friend saw the illustration (Fig. 2) in
the Naturalist's Library (1860) and misinterpreted the bellow-like-shaped
sail of the ship as indicating a Chinese junk.
            In the Octopus, Henry Lee quotes a passage from Laurence
Oliphant's Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan, in the
Years 1857, '58, '59 (1860) as an example of a similarly exaggerated giant
octopus believed to have been seen in Japan (ibid.). Here, Oliphant, in
the capital of Japan, went to a play where a large octopus attacked a
woman swimming by the shore. However, Lee did not recognise its
authenticity. Following Owen, the great sea serpent debunker, he
regarded this Japanese drama to be the product of a fantasy, as along
with the testimony of European divers who reported wrestling with
octopuses in deep water. Owen acknowledged the existence of a hitherto
unknown giant squid that washed up on shore and reported in the 1870s


64
                                  Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



but explicitly denied the existence of Kraken. Interestingly, Owen also
described a case from Japan. He published a small carved figure made
in Japan of a half-naked woman wrestling with a giant octopus and
holding its tentacles and mouth (Owen 1881: 166–7) (Fig. 3). Owen
dismissed this as an entirely invented tale, along with the story of a
ferocious blood-sucking octopus that attacked fishermen on the rocks in
Victor Hugo's Les Travailleurs de la Mer (1866). It is clear that Owen was
right: this lustrous octopus was the product of human, or more precisely,
male, erotic imagination.
      The Japanese play, the carving and Hokusai's well-known image of
the ‘Octopuses and the Shell Diver’ (1814) are based on the same folk
tale of a brave male samurai diving to the depths to retrieve a treasure
of jewels that were stolen from the king of the sea. Around the 18th
century, an erotic parody version was developed that featured a female
diver instead of a samurai, and Hokusai made this story into a seminal
work that had such a strong impact that previous works were nearly
forgotten (Suzuki 2008). Hokusai's octopus, like his Great Wave, had a
wide and profound impact on writers and artists2. Since Hokusai, erotic
tentacles have been seen in representations of the Kraken and giant
octopuses, perhaps because such representations were free from film
censorship. For example, in Ray Harryhausen's last special effects work,
seen in Clash of the Titans (1981), the Kraken appears, even though the
movie is set in ancient Greece. This huge Kraken, like a merman with
four tentacle-like supple arms, tries to devour Andromeda as she is
sacrificed.
      Hokusai's depiction of tentacles has stimulated the imagination of
countless artists, but no later eyewitnesses have given a similar account.
On the other hand, after Hugo's novel Les Travailleurs de la Mer (1866)
and Gustave Doré's illustration of a huge octopus clinging to a
fisherman on the rocky shores of Brittany, many hard-hat divers have
reported stories of violent tentacles that attacked them, although this
type of diving had been common since the 1830s. The earliest reliable

     2
       See Carbone 2013. I am grateful to Massimo Fusillo for teaching this
interesting book. See also Bru 2014.


                                                                              65
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



record of an octopus assault is in the diary (1839) of the British surgeon
Thomas Beale. Interestingly, Beale was attacked by a giant octopus near
one of the Ogasawara Islands, south of Japan, also known as a habitat of
the giant squid (Hashimoto 2017: 38). Beale's prosaic anecdote, however,
did not gain the influence of those of Hugo and Doré.
      Like Doré, Hokusai also drew a huge belligerent octopus attacking
a fisherman in his Hokusai Gakyo (1818). However, it was not until after
Hugo's influential novel that this painting began to be replicated, in
Gould's Mythical Monsters (1886) and elsewhere. It should be mentioned
here that among the Japanese representations of the octopus are netsuke,
a type of miniature sculpture that Owen and Lee mentioned in their
works. Netsuke have been enthusiastically collected and exhibited all
across Europe and America since the late 19th century. A central motif
in netsuke is a monkey fighting with an octopus. Netsuke of this type,
purchased during the latter half of the 19th century, is still held in the
British Museum (Museum number: F.289, Acquisition date, 1897) (Fig.
4) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Accession Number: 91.1.962,
Bequest of Edward C. Moore, 1891) (Fig. 5). The figures may be based
on a legend of Dragon King of the Sea, who sends a jellyfish to retrieve
the liver of a monkey as a specific medicine for his illness (Tsuchiya 2014:
159)3. In the story, originally drawn from the story of ‘The Monkey and
the Crocodile’ in the ancient Indian epic Panchatantra, the jellyfish was
deceived by the wit of the monkey and failed. This jellyfish was
described as having lost his bones as part of a punishment. However,
this would not explain why the octopus was preferred to the jellyfish in
netsuke. One plausible reason for this is the folk tale known as the
monkey's octopus fishing, one of the earliest versions of which can be
found in Kokodo's Shinsetsu Hyaku Monogatari [New One Hundred
Supernatural Tales] (1767). According to an acquaintance of the author,
a monkey was used as a bait to lure an octopus onto the rocks of the
shore of a small island off the coast of Hiroshima. When a huge octopus

      3
       Caillois misunderstands the story as being about an octopus (Caillois
1973: 135). As far as my research was concerned, an octopus version has not
been found.


66
                                   Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



appeared and tried to capture the monkey with its tentacles, a large
group of monkeys suddenly appeared and pulled the octopus to shore
like fishermen and ate it. This strange story spread all across Japan like
a folk tale, and a variation appeared where a man who helps a drowning
monkey from an octopus receives a reward for this. Many netsuke
combining an octopus and a monkey seem to have been inspired by this
story in the late 19th century.
      The growing number of accounts from many sources about violent
octopuses or squid is likely related to the fear evoked by this netsuke and
Hugo's novel. Owen considered these reports to be artists' falsifications,
but Lee, following Owen's work, held that the octopus could be
dangerous for bathers and divers. In Sea Monsters Unmasked (1883), Lee
reported two cases: ‘an Indian woman’ who was caught by an octopus
and drowned in Oregon and a story he heard from a friend in 1875 that
a native man, with an octopus clamped to his face, was drowned in the
Hervey Islands in the South Pacific (Lee 1883: 25–6). The tales of the
hard-hat divers, however, could mostly be sourced to only two divers'
experiences, those of Isaac Smale, working at the bottom of the Moyne
River in Australia in 1879, and H. Palmer, who dove near Cape Town,
South Africa, in 1905 (Pitt-Kethley 1905: 59–61). True or not, their reports
and related stories, accompanied with realistic illustrations, circulated
across the world to such an extent that some of the articles were
translated into Japanese, and other divers reported similar experiences.
      Less well-founded descriptions from natural history have given
rise to experiences that spread and reinforced the myth. This process can
be seen in an adventure story by Louis de Rougemont, which became a
sensation in 1898, with even Hemingway admitting its broadly
appealing adventure traits in ‘Weird, Wild Adventures of Some of Our
Modern Amateur Impostors’ (1923). De Rougemont contributed his
experiences to Wide World Magazine, which was full of illustrations. In
his memoir, he reported having been a castaway on an island in the
South Sea and having long reigned as king before returning to London.
As could have been predicted, all of these episodes, including one of a
local swimmer who was drowned by a huge octopus (De Rougemont
1898: 455) (Fig. 6), were fiction, cut-and-paste work from travelogues


                                                                               67
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



and magazines. Since its publication, disputes had been prevalent
regarding its authenticity, especially in the Daily Chronicle. Some
criticised the octopus incident as being ‘almost identical with one
current in the old Penny Magazine’, whereas others cited, of all things,
the Kraken in De Montfort and said that this creature was the size of an
infant by comparison (Burton 2000: 22). Interestingly, De Rougemont's
adventure story was known in Japan, where the self-proclaimed
adventurer Otomatsu Kodama, whether inspired by De Rougemont or
not, claimed that he had wrestled with an octopus as tall as himself on
the rocky shores of Celebes Island (Kodama 1910: 80–83) (Fig. 7).
      It may be necessary to add that illustrations based on a Japanese
naturalist's poorly grounded description also strengthened the Kraken
myth in Europe. In Sea Monsters Unmasked (1883), Henry Lee denied the
existence of a great sea serpent but thought that a Kraken-like monster
was probably only an embellishment of the giant squid, based on
sightings or specimens. To support this, Lee referred to two drawings
taken from a Japanese book of natural history. One presented a
fisherman on a boat cutting off the stretching tentacle of a giant octopus.
The other depicted an extremely long and thick tentacle hanging from
the eaves of a fish shop and reaching to the ground. Lee admitted that
the drawings might not be exaggerated but concluded that it was
uncertain whether the fisherman was telling the truth, and the existence
of the tentacle would not rule out the possibility of a longer length of the
appendage of a giant squid (Lee 1883: 28–9). However, these pictures
also strengthened the Kraken myth, and the illustrator John Tenniel for
instance, adapted them for use in a caricature published in Punch
(Hashimoto 2017: 41–2).
      Interestingly, Kimura's natural history played a similar role in
Japan to that of his contemporary De Montfort's book. In Nihon Sankai
Meisan Zue [Land and Sea Products in Japan] (1799), Kokyo Kimura
described a huge, fierce octopus that not only fed on cattle and horses
but also fishermen, capturing them by overturning their boats 4 . Its

      Subsequent natural history works, such as Ranzan Ono's Honzo Komoku
      4

Keimo [Dictated Compendium of Materia Medica] (1803) described the giant


68
                                       Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



tentacles supposedly sucked blood out of a person so quickly that losing
consciousness would be instantaneous. According to Kimura, fishermen
would pretend to sleep lying in a boat until the octopus would stretch
its tentacles and drag him into the deep, and he would cut it off at that
moment. This method is far from realistic and may be founded on the
strange story of the monkeys who goes octopus fishing using a decoy.
The iconography and discourse of the greedy giant octopus, which had
never been previously seen in Japan, began with Kimura. The impact of
this was, however, limited compared with that of De Montfort. One of
the few examples is Syunkan Sozu Shima Monotogatari [The Story of Priest
Shunkan's Banishment to an Island] (1808), written by Bakin, a popular
writer, and illustrated by Toyohiro (Fig. 8). There are very few such
cases, and it is extremely unlikely that the aforementioned friend of
Oliphant would have seen it in China.
      One reason for this is that the Japanese government prohibited
civilian voyages on the open sea, and few novels depicted oceangoing
at that time. The one exception to this is Bakin. He also wrote the novel
Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki [Tales of the Crescent Moon] (1811), in which the
castaway hero builds a kingdom in the South Seas after being rescued
from a shipwrecked ship by a sea monster (Fig. 9). Hokusai, who did the
illustrations, seems to have drawn images from books imported from
the Netherlands, the only European country then permitted to trade
with Japan. According to the art historian Tsuji, the main source was
likely a pike-perch illustration in Francis Willughby's Historia Piscium
(1686) (Fig. 10), and the pattern of the monster was adapted from an
image of a rhinoceros in John Jonston's Historiae Naturalis de Insectis
(1653) (Tsuji 2005: 13–4). Possibly because of its popular seafood
tradition, images of sea monsters are rarely seen in Japanese isles.


ferocious octopus in light of Kimura's description. As Caillois points out,
Alcide D'Orbigny requested Stanis Julian to translate Ono's article. In Histoire
Naturelle, Générale et Particulière des Céphalopodes Acétabuifères Viants, et Fossiles
(1839), D'Orbigny cited the article and pointed out the similarities with ancient
Greek and Roman anecdotes although Ono's article seems to have received
little attention. See Caillois 1973: 131.


                                                                                   69
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



Hokusai, therefore, may have sought out foreign images of the uncanny
for inspiration. Kimura's description of the greedy octopus could have
been influenced by cultural exchange with Europe, although no
plausible book or image has yet been found so far. In any case, the image
in Kimura's book is likely one of the earliest images of a colossal vampire
octopus in Japan. Kimura's description and illustration were passed
down and appeared in a series called ‘Dainippon Bussan Zue’
[Illustration of Land and Sea Products in Japan] (1877) (Fig. 11). This
indirectly indicates that there were no other expressions of an octopus
attacking a ship at that time in Japan.

  3. Self-eating Tentacles After the Hegemonic Struggle
      In Europe, mock documentary-like novels using a dramatic
monologue style and describing the assault of a giant cephalopod
became more widespread in the latter half of the 19th century, although
or even because Owen and Lee dismissed the personal testimonies that
had been published as biologically invalid. In popular literature, such as
Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, there is a very high affinity to natural
history and folklore. The testimony of a giant cephalopod witnessed by
the crew of the French corvette Alecton in 1861 was, for instance,
mentioned in Jules Verne's Vingt Mille Lieues sous les Mers (1870), in
which a giant sea monster's assault and the accompanying illustrations
spread and strengthened the myth of the Kraken. Interestingly, the
fictional submarine Nautilus is used to explain reports of marine
accidents that are suspected of having been the result of the attack of a
monster: its searchlights could be mistaken for a monster's eyes.
Although science denies the existence of a marine monster that assaults
ships, the accomplishments of science are themselves attacked by
Kraken-like cephalopods. The scientific refutation of the Kraken's
existence gave birth to a new Kraken fantasy, with H. G. Wells's War of
the Worlds (1898) being a perfect example. The octopus-shaped Martians
are described as vampires who, without wasting energy on digestion,
inject fresh blood into their veins, living in a giant tripod spacecraft
made by their higher intelligence, undoubtedly machine versions of the


70
                                     Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



Kraken. Thus, it is no wonder that the tripods are depicted as attacking
a ferry with multiple tentacle-like arms protruding from the sea and
seizing the passengers in the movie War of the Worlds (2005) even though
Wells did not have a corresponding scene in his original novel.
      Similarly, past reports, such as the mystery of the Mary Celeste,
were reinterpreted. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was recalled
that this ship was drifting in 1872 with no one on board, due to a huge
carnivorous cephalopod such as the Kraken. In 1904, the British author
J. L. Hornibrook first connected the Kraken fantasy with the abandoned
ship mystery and imagined that the following might have occurred
(Begg 2014: 102).

         Suddenly a huge octopus rises from the deep and rearing one of
     its terrible arms aloft encircles the helmsman. His yells bring every
     soul on board rushing on deck. One by one they are caught by the
     waving, wriggling arms and swept overboard. Then, freighted with
     its living load, the monster slowly sinks into the deep again, leaving
     no traces of its attack. (Hornibrook 1904: 672).

     William Hope Hodgson, a writer adored by Lovecraft, described
numerous similar maritime horror stories. One typical example is ‘The
Thing in the Weeds’ (1912), which describes how a giant tentacled
monster captures the crew of a ship, and the abandoned ship drifts in
the Sargasso Sea. Lovecraft's ‘Call of Cthulhu’ adopted Hodgson's
pseudo-memoir style, quoting supposed newspaper articles about a
sailor attacked by Cthulhu. The name of the ship Alert might be a distant
echo of the Alecton.
     Ironically, this metaphor of the Kraken was occasionally used to
describe Oriental masterminds embodying the yellow peril, although
the carnivorous cephalopod fantasy was amplified by exchanges with




                                                                                 71
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



Japan. Sax Rohmer's first instalment of the Fu-Manchu series describes
the British Isles threated by a Kraken-like Chinese villain5.

         [W]e who knew the reality of the danger knew that a veritable
      octopus had fastened upon England—a yellow octopus whose
      head was that of Dr Fu-Manchu, whose tentacles were dacoity,
      thuggee, modes of death, secret and swift, which in the darkness
      plucked men from life and left no clue behind. (Rohmer 1913: 250)

      Probably due to an association with the stereotypical bald head
wearing a queue, the image of the yellow peril as an oriental octopus
was inherited by the moving pictures. In the American silent movie The
Trail of the Octopus (1919), for instance, a Chinese secret society is
depicted using an octopus, and an impressive allegorical scene appears:
a huge cephalopod strangling a Caucasian man and woman with its
tentacles. The prototype for this may be Phil May's ‘Mongolian Octopus:
His Grip on Australia’ (1886), published in the Bulletin, the Australian
counterpart of the Punch. In this anti-Chinese immigration cartoon, a
Chinese-faced octopus is spreading its tentacles, labelled gambling and
drugs, across Caucasian men and women. Following and strengthening
this connotation, this archetypal oriental villain tries to sink his enemy
into a pit with a ferocious, huge octopus in the American drama The
Drums of Fu-Manchu (1940). This association culminated in Frank
Capra's propaganda movie Know Your Enemy: Japan (1945), in which the
Disney company provided an animated explanation of Japanese
imperialism. Intelligently representing the Japanese slogan Hakko Ichiu
[Eight Corners of the World under One Roof] by a giant, Japanese-faced,
eight-armed octopus, Japan is depicted as using a knife in each tentacle
to expand its territory. It is necessary to add that the image of the
Oriental octopus was widely seen in yellow peril propaganda, but this
was not as widespread as the many representations of the Kraken.


      5
        In America, octopus as a symbol of monopoly was appropriated to
intensify Anti-Asian xenophobia. As for the process on how class conflict was
racialised and sexualised, see Tchen 2014: 1–5; 14–15; 349–353.


72
                                    Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



Drawing a devil fish as the enemy itself was not limited to Asia.
Following Hokusai and Hugo, caricatures featuring tentacled monsters
mushroomed and spread across the world, beginning at the turn of the
19th century to the 1940s, in which nearly all European powers, many
American monopolies and immigrants of every nation were demonised
without any reference to or connotation of Orientalism (Hashimoto
2015).
       One movie about a giant squid won the Oscar for Best Visual
Effects but had nothing to do with the Orient. This movie, Reap the Wild
Wind (1942), is set in the Caribbean Sea around the 19th century, where
two hard-hat divers are attacked by an octopus as they try to salvage
gold nuggets from a sunken ship. This scene is a transmedial adaptation
of old, worn-out stories published in Victorian popular illustrated
magazines. The movie presents pirates who intentionally wreck and
sink a ship. Working with an unscrupulous lawyer, the captain illegally
receives an insurance pay-out but then suffers from the stings of
conscience. In order to compensate for his sin, he dives to the bottom of
the sea to take back the gold and helps his companion diver by
sacrificing himself to the tentacles of a monster, possibly as a metaphor
of his unconscious guilt or his reconciliation with life. Incidentally, at the
beginning of the movie, one tentacle briefly appears and tries to drag a
monkey into the deep, making the characters and the audience aware of
the danger of the giant squid. Perhaps coincidentally, this repeats the
monkey from Japanese folklore and netsuke. In 1948, Wake of the Red
Witch was produced, a similar movie featuring another pirate suffering
from guilt and finally following the fate of a sunken ship. This movie is
set in the South Pacific, and in it, a cephalopod attacks local divers,
although they are not hard-hat divers. In spite of its differences from
Reap the Wild Wind, Wake of the Red Witch is also a transmedial adaptation
of a prototype from elsewhere. The cephalopod stretching its tentacles
out to reach local fishermen in the South Pacific is reminiscent of the
anecdote reported by Henry Lee and a tale narrated by De Rougemont.
It is not strange, therefore, to note that the shipping company's president
in this movie rules the island as a king and witnesses a tentacle attack
that is exactly like the one in De Rougemont's memoir.


                                                                                73
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



      The gigantic belligerent octopus that Eiji Tsuburaya wished to
make into a movie is highly likely to be based on images that have been
exchanged and exaggerated across the world since the 19th century and
before. After the success of Godzilla, Tsuburaya finally obtained the
opportunity to film a massive octopus rampage. That is Kingu Kongu tai
Gojira [King Kong vs. Godzilla] (1962). Perhaps competing with the
models of tentacles from the monster in the Academy award-winning
Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and It Came from Beneath the Sea, Tsuburaya
filmed not only a monster model but also a real octopus. Placing his
myth on an isolated island that worshipped King Kong as a god,
Tsuburaya also adopted two Japanese folk tales: one, where a monkey
outwitted the eight-legged Mollusca and the other, where Shojo, an
orangutan-like hairy monster appears in a fishing village and becomes
heavily intoxicated by drinking alcohol. In this movie, a carnivorous
giant octopus comes ashore on an island in the South Pacific, and its
tentacles grasp a hut, searching for a young mother and child. Then King
Kong, the god of the island, appears from the mountain and beats the
octopus. Then, he finds a red liquid in the hut, gulps it down and falls
asleep. Following previous transmedial representations of octopuses,
such as those in Victorian magazines, Japanese netsuke and American
movies, the foreign yet familiar scenes of King Kong's struggle with a
gigantic octopus made a significant impression and acceptance outside
of Japan. Trying to make another hit, the movie company Toho made a
number of similar movies featuring cephalopods but had no success at
first. Furankenshutain tai Baragon [Frankenstein Conquers the World]
(1965) might be considered noteworthy because it repeated the fight of
the same monkey with an octopus, although King Kong was replaced,
possibly due to copyright issues, with Frankenstein. This giant furry
Kong-like (contrary to its name) monster wanders by a lake in the
mountains, and a huge octopus strikes out and drags him into the water.
Although the octopus only lives in the sea, the movie makers might have
considered it necessary to show it fighting even if it was in an
improbable setting.
      The simian struggle with a cephalopod, a variant of spectacular
tentacular, was passed down to the makers of Kong: Skull Island (2017).


74
                                  Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



Interestingly, this reboot has a greater affinity with the classic Godzilla
than with the King Kong of 1933, portraying Kong as Godzilla-like
malignant god and appropriating ‘The Call of Cthulhu’. Piecing together
murals and oral tradition in an indigenous village, this film presents a
future resurrection of the gods and their hegemonic battles, a typical
spectacular tentacular scene. One of the feuding enemies is a giant
octopus, which sticks out its tentacles from the sea and drags Kong into
the water. This scene neatly combines, inherits and updates the Kraken-
like cephalopod of American movies and the King Kong of Japanese
films. Just as the violent octopus fantasy was amplified as it passed
between Japan and Europe, the tentacled monster movies were also
made, which were inspired and appropriated in both Japan and the
United States. This could indicate a battle for which movie could most
impressively represent and employ the nerve-racking tentacles during
the age defined by anxiety about the propagation of the nuclear bomb
and modern capitalism. This battle for initiative might have been
compromised by the skilful shooting presented in Kong. This
reconciliation is suggested in the movie, where two World War II fighter
pilots, one from America and one from Japan, who happen to land on
Skull Island, fight first but then live peacefully, adoring the great Kong.
The Japanese pilot dies quickly, and the American uses his sword to
fight the monsters on the island, which, with the construction of an
evacuation boat using a modified American P-51 Mustang and the
engine of the Japanese Zero fighter, is a clear indication of Kong's hybrid
nature.
     Of particular note is the twist given to the apparent homage to the
Japanese appropriation of King Kong. Unlike the 1962 movie, Kong
here, after defeating the tentacled monster, eats the torn but still moving
tentacles. In the Japanese folk lore, monkeys gather to battle the octopus
to obtain food, but the actual scene of eating is generally not depicted.
This scene should be compared with the South Korean movie Oldboy
(2003), which features a man who is suddenly kidnapped and then
released after 15 years' solitary imprisonment and learns a shocking
truth. The movie was favourably received in America and was remade
in 2013 by Spike Lee, although the octopus only appears in an aquarium


                                                                              75
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



in a Chinese restaurant. The title and setting of the Korean Oldboy are
based on a Japanese 1998 manga, but the movie changes the motive for
the imprisonment and adds an inspiring scene where an octopus is
eaten. Here, the man eats raw octopus at a sushi bar, thrusting its legs
into his mouth after being released from confinement into the city.
Whole raw octopus is not eaten in Japan or Korea, and this scene might
be an exaggeration of the san-nakji, a smaller slice of raw octopus. The
scene where Kong eats the octopus has been considered to be a distant
echo of san-nakji6.
     However, the importance of this scene is not in any reflection of the
eating habits of Korea or Japan. In Oldboy, the main character orders
something alive from a female cook. This woman is actually, unknown
to him, his daughter, and this encounter eventually leads to incest
between the two. The octopus's autophagy should be mentioned here. It
is well known that the octopus eats its own legs when trapped or under
stress. Autophagy and incest both cross taboos, and when the daughter
offers raw octopus to her father, this may be a good indication of the
upcoming incest. For this reason, the man, after he learns the truth, cuts
out his tongue, in contrast to Oedipus's self-blinding, to prevent himself
from tasting food. Kong's eating of the tentacles, therefore, could be
interpreted from a mythological perspective. Here, Kong is resurrected
like Cthulhu, and Cthulhu-like cephalopods may be seen as a kind of
parenticide. As with the parricide or cannibalism imagined by Freud in
Totem and Taboo (1913), Kong could acquire part of Cthulhu's strength
by devouring their moving tentacles.
     The Kraken continues to be represented in film, such as in Pirates of
the Caribbean. However, as with Captain Jack Sparrow's pirate ship,
which is represented as a multinational and multicultural society,




     I am grateful to Park Soo-jung for teaching me about information on
      6

Korean social networks and journalism.


76
                                    Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



racism is carefully removed from the recent Kraken or Cthulhu stories7.
Two examples of this will suffice. One is Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer
Vacation (2018). Here, Van Helsing, obsessed with the extermination of a
monster, awakens the Kraken to attack monstrous passengers on cruise
ships. After all the trouble he goes to, however, the Kraken is not
awakened, and Van Helsing's great-granddaughter marries Dracula. In
another example, Aquaman (2018) does not depict an authentic Atlantean
royal descendant but instead a half-Atlantean and half-human that
awakens and controls the Kraken.
     Therefore, the Godzilla series also comes to represent Godzilla as a
once and future god, as with the Cthulhu cult. In Shin Godzilla (2016), a
new-born Godzilla appears with a long tail sticking out of the sea like a
tentacle. Not only is this an homage but also suggests that Godzilla is
part of the Cthulhu mythos. In the American movie Godzilla: King of the
Monsters (2019), Godzilla and other monsters are shown as recorded in
myths and murals around the world, as with the epigram to ‘Call of
Cthulhu’. Of course, the symbolism of Godzilla as a metaphor for the
atom bomb or nuclear power cannot be ignored. In Shin Godzilla, the
monster is filmed in a way that evokes a nuclear power plant in
meltdown. In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), by contrast, Dr
Serizawa, who lost his father to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima,
sacrifices his own life to detonate a nuclear bomb to revive Godzilla. This
suggests that for audiences to enjoy the new Godzilla, it is necessary to
forget the old negative association that Godzilla has as a symbol of the
atomic bomb. It should not be overlooked that highlighting Godzilla's
divine power and existence as a version of the Cthulhu myth is in the
interest of both America and Japan to remove this vexing question of
nuclear power and the atom bomb and humanity's limits.
     The presence of a Chinese female scientist in Godzilla: King of the
Monsters is interesting in relation to the Cthulhu myth. This character


     7
        It can be compared with American author Victor LaValle's novel The
Ballad of Black Tom (2016), a brilliant adaptation of Lovecraft's other Cthulhu
tale, ‘The Horror at Red Hook’ (1925) being infamous for its racism.



                                                                                77
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



collects and identifies images from myths of monsters from across the
globe. As the direct descendant of a female scientist in It Came from
Beneath the Sea, she calls dragons sacred beings that represent wisdom
and power and are not, as in the West, simply to be slain. One of the
several images she shows at this point is Kunisada's Shirakikumaru
(1861) (Fig. 12). This wood block print should be compared with the
illustration (Fig. 1) from It Came from Beneath the Sea. The island-like sea
monster that carries the shipwrecked hero is, in fact, exactly the same as
that in the original description of the Kraken that Olaus Magnus wrote
down. This sea beast is nothing more than an appropriation of Hokusai's
drawing, based on the pike-perch (Figs. 9 and 10). These two
illustrations and movies are the most eloquent examples of the Kraken
fantasy, as it has merged with the Cthulhu cult and has been part of a
sophisticated exchange between East and West.

                                   Conclusions
     The appearance of monsters with tentacles in movies inherits and
develops the Kraken fantasy, which has been present since the 19th
century. The story and iconography of giant cephalopods like the
Kraken attacking ships and bathers developed throughout the 19th
century, with versions of stories interacting with each other in Europe
and Japan through the natural history records of De Montfort and
Kimura. The eyewitness reports and strange stories of octopus attacks
on primates spread under the influence of Hugo and Hokusai. Attacks
on divers, a variation on this, were inherited by movies, for instance in
the form of astronauts being attacked by unknown creatures in the
darkness of space. It is an interesting coincidence that the Kraken fantasy
flourished during the latter half of the 19th century, when the
unconsciousness was being articulated and discovered.
     The Kraken fantasy was strengthened and disseminated through
Lovecraft's imagination of prehistoric cephalopod-like gods. The
Kraken was favoured in horror literature as an explanation for drifting
ships such as the Mary Celeste, and the story of these myths and
reinterpretations of history were spread around the world thanks to


78
                                   Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



Lovecraft's ‘Call of Cthulhu’. Inspired by folklore, Lovecraft sought to
reconstruct prehistoric monsters from fragments of myths and legends
scattered all over the world, taking them to suggest the return of these
gods. His method was appropriated by monster movies made on both
sides of the Pacific in the 1950s. In Godzilla and It Came from Beneath the
Sea, monsters are not the primitive gods worshipped by primitive
people, as in King Kong (1933). They are drawn from fictional lore and
records and feared as unknown supernatural powers. Japan's King Kong
vs. Godzilla is a remarkable movie, in that the Cthulhu-like gods meet
and fight. In the movie, Eiji Tsuburaya, who had planned a Kraken-like
monster movie before Godzilla was created, finally filmed his octopus
idea. The scene where the octopus attacks King Kong is based on
folklore of monkeys fishing for octopus, as presented in carved
miniature.
     These heterogeneous movies took versions of Lovecraft's ‘Call of
Cthulhu’, which describes a half-supernatural and half-human hybrid
as a squalid monster. In this movie, Kong: Skull Island, it is suggestive
that the monkey god, attacked by a cephalopod, eats its own tentacles.
This is not merely an homage to East Asian films like King Kong vs.
Godzilla and Oldboy. Kong, resurrected like Cthulhu, takes the flesh and
power of the cephalopod Cthulhu. This is parallel to a scene in Godzilla:
King of the Monsters in which Godzilla defeats King Ghidorah with its
tentacle-like snake heads. Incidentally, in 2020, the film Godzilla vs. Kong
was produced in America. A circle of Kraken fantasies exchanged
between East and West, where giant cephalopods attacked primates,
and a monster movie based on the Cthulhu cult, was closed here. It is
true that the octopus does not appear in Godzilla vs. Kong. However, the
fantasy and images of Kraken-related monsters had already been deeply
incorporated into monster movies since King Kong. As Caillois predicts,
these representations have been accepted so widely via ‘multiple,
incessant and almost simultaneous communications’ that it is nearly
impossible to find ‘the bland of the origin’ (Caillois 1973: 148). The
reception of the European-originated imagination, however, was not
unanimous. It underwent a unique metamorphosis and hybridisation as



                                                                               79
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



it critically took on the controversial Cthulhu mythology from America
and mingled it with representations of the Far East.




80
         Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)




Fig. 1




Fig. 2




                                                     81
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular




       Fig. 3                                 Fig. 4




       Fig. 5




82
         Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)




Fig. 6




Fig. 7



                                                     83
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular




         Fig. 8




Fig. 9                                        Fig. 10




84
            Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)




Fig. 11




  Fig. 12



                                                        85
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular




                                   Works Cited
Begg, Paul, Mary Celeste: The Greatest Mystery of the Sea, London,
    Routledge, 2014.
Bru, Ricard, Erotic Japonisme: The Influence of Japanese Sexual Imagery on
    Western Art, Leiden, Hotei Publishing, 2014.
Burton, Sarah, Impostors: Six Kinds of Liar, London, Viking, 2000.
Caillois, Roger, La Pieuvre: Essai sur la Logique de L'imaginaire, Paris, La
    Table Ronde, 1973.
Marco Benoît Carbone, Tentacle Erotica: Orrore, Seduzione, Immaginari
    Pornografici, Milano, Mimesis, 2013.
Godfrey-Smith, Peter, Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep
    Origins of Consciousness, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
Hackett, Jon – Harrington, Seán, Beasts of the Deep: Sea Creatures and
    Popular Culture, East Barnet, J. Libbey Pub., 2018.
Hanada, Toshinori, Okinawa ha Gojira ka [Is Okinawa Godzilla?], Tokyo,
    Hana Shoin, 2006.
Hahsimoto, Yorimitsu, “Pirates, Piracy and Octopus: From Multi-
    Armed Monster to Model Minority?”, A Pirate's View of World
    History: A Reversed Perception of the Order of Things from a Global
    Perspective, Ed. Shigemi Inaga, Kyoto, International Research Center
    for Japanese Studies, 2017.
Hashimoto, Yorimitsu, “W. T. Stead as Global Circulator of the
    Caricatures”, Caricatures and Cartoons, 1890-1905. Vol 1, Ed.
    Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Tokyo, Edition Synapse, 2015.
Hornibrook, J. L., “The Case of the ‘Mary Celeste’: an Ocean Mystery”,
    Chamber’s Journal, 17 September, 1904.
Kodama, Otomatsu, Nanyo [South Seas], Tokyo, Kokado, 1910.
Lee, Henry, Octopus or, the ‘Devil-fish’ of Fiction and of Fact, Chapman and
    Hall, 1875.
Lee, Henry, Sea Monsters Unmasked, William Clowes and Sons, 1883.
Lovecraft, H. P., The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, London,
    Penguin Books, 2002.
Owen, Richard, “Descriptions of Some New and Rare Cephalopoda.
    Part II”, Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, 11.1, 1881.


86
                                  Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)



Pitt-Kethley, Victor, “The Diver and the Devil-Fish”, Wide World
     Magazine, 15, 1905 May.
Rohmer, Sax, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, London, Methuen, 1913.
De Rougemont, Louis, “The Adventures of Louis De Rougemont”, Wide
     World Magazine, 1, September, 1898.
Schweid, Richard, Octopus, London, Reaktion, 2014.
Suzuki, Kenko, “Ama ni Karamitsuku Tako no Keihu to Gui” [“Image
     Genealogy and Allegory in the Pictures of the Octopus Entwining
     around a Female Diver”], Japan Review: Bulletin of International
     Research Center for Japanese Studies, 38, 2008:13-51.
Tchen, John Kuo Wei - Yeats, Dylan, Ed. Yellow Peril! An Archive of Anti-
     Asian Fear, London, Verso, 2014
Tsuchiya, Noriko, Netsuke, London, British Museum, 2014.
Tsuji, Nobuo, Kiso no Zuhu [Illustrations of Eccentricity], Tokyo, Chikuma,
     2005.
Williams, Wendy, Kraken: The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing
     Science of Squid, New York, Abrams Image, 2010

                            Filmography
The Trail of the Octopus, Dir. Duke Worne, America, 1919.
The Drums of Fu Manchu, Dir. John English, William Witney, America,
    1940.
Reap the Wild Wind, Dir. Cecil B. DeMille, America, 1942.
Know Your Enemy: Japan, Dir. Frank Capra, America, 1945.
Wake of the Red Witch, Dir. Edward Ludwig, America, 1948.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Dir. Eugène Lourié, America, 1953.
Godzilla, Dir. Ishiro Honda, Japan, 1954.
It Came from beneath the Sea, Dir. Robert Gordon, America, 1955.
Kingu Kongu tai Gojira [King Kong vs. Godzilla], Dir. Ishiro Honda, Japan,
    1962.
Furankenshutain tai Baragon [Frankenstein Conquers the World], Dir. Ishiro
    Honda, Japan, 1965.
Clash of the Titans, Dir. Desmond Davis, Australia, America, 1981
Oldboy, Dir. Park Chan-wook, South Korea, 2003.


                                                                              87
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Spectacular Tentacular



Shin Godzilla [Godzilla: Resurgence], Dir. Hideaki Anno, Japan, 2016.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Dir. Michael Dougherty, America, Japan,
    China, Mexico, 2019.


                                    The Author
Yorimitsu Hashimoto

      Professor (Comparative Literature and Culture), School of Letters,
Osaka University, Japan. Major Publications in English: "An Irish
Theosophist's Pan-Asianism or Fant-asia? James Cousins and
Gurcharan Singh" in Hans Martin Krämer, Julian Strube (eds.),
Theosophy across Boundaries (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2020). Caricatures and Cartoons, 1921–1930, 3 volumes (Tokyo: Edition
Synapse, 2018). Yellow Peril: Collection of Historical Sources, 4 volumes
(Tokyo: Edition Synapse, 2012).

       Email: hsmt@let.osaka-u.ac.jp


                                    The Article
Date sent: 15/07/2020
Date accepted: 20/10/2020
Date published: 30/11/2020


                           How to cite this article
Hashimoto, Yorimitsu, “Spectacular Tentacular: Transmedial Tentacles
and Their Hegemonic Struggles in Cthulhu and Godzilla”,
Transmediality / Intermediality / Crossmediality: Problems of Definition, Eds.
H.-J. Backe – M.Fusillo – M. Lino, with the focus section Intermedial
Dante: Reception, Appropriation, Metamorphosis, Eds. C. Fischer – M.
Petricola., Between, X.20 (2020).



88
