ABSTRACT
The very possibility of Japan wielding "soft power" from the global circulation of media exports like films and animation is a relatively phenomenon, a development of the past quarter century. With a vision of Japanese popular culture as being definitively cheesy, as was embedded in the American collective imagination for most of the postwar period, the potential for Japanese soft power in the United States was elusive for decades, and may just prove elusive. The chapter focuses on the reception of Japanese popular cinema, especially the Godzilla film series, in the United States after World War II. In the postwar advance of Japanese popular culture into international markets and the global consciousness, Godzilla was a pioneer. Political messages continued to be excised for American consumption and the Godzilla movies, which became increasingly lighthearted even in their Japanese incarnations over the 1960s and 1970s, were made even goofier and more self-parodic in the name of "improvements" for the U. S. market.
