Unfortunately, the word ‘nuclear’ populates a great deal of discussion in the modern era. Aside from some glowing recommendations about the potential of nuclear energy and its many reservations, this word has inspired volumes of prophetic doomsday conversations and, regretfully, a whole litany of historical documentation on its horrors and dangers. In short, the word ‘nuclear’ is bloated with negative connotations.

I shouldn’t have to explain why. Look to Nagasaki, Hiroshima, the hallowed surroundings of Pripyat and Chornobyl. And, for the sake of your attention today, look to the Pacific. Since Oppenheimer’s diabolical invention was first tested in the wastes of the Socorro desert, the motive of Western powers to harness nuclear power for themselves has seen atolls and islands, waves and reefs, beaches and briny depths purged in the light of nuclear testing. Why? Because these nations want to be at the same table, in equal measure, when it comes to dealing out destruction with ease. For Hone Tuwhare, the noted Māori New Zealand poet, the horizon of nuclearisation burned brightly, but for all the wrong reasons. His poem, ‘No Ordinary Sun’, shelves all debate about the ethics of the nuclear age. It refuses to mime the arguments made by those in defence of nuclear energy, or those who regurgitate the so-called ‘benefits’ of being armed with such weapons. Tuwhare’s words land with raw recognition of the immolation and annihilation dealt to nature in the modern world. The poem’s significance exists in its ability to elevate native Pacific voices, and empower them to engage with the erasure of their habitats at the hands of the global industrial military complex.

Tree let your arms fall:

raise them not sharply in supplication

to the bright enhaloed cloud.

Let your arms lack toughness and

resilience for this is no mere axe

to blunt nor fire to smother.

Your sap shall not rise again

to the moon’s pull.

No more incline a deferential head

to the wind’s talk, or stir

to the tickle of coursing rain.

Your former shagginess shall not be

wreathed with the delightful flight

of birds nor shield

nor cool the ardour of unheeding

lovers from the monstrous sun.

Tree let your naked arms fall

nor extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball.

This is no gallant monsoon’s flash,

no dashing trade wind’s blast.

The fading green of your magic

emanations shall not make pure again

these polluted skies . . . for this

is no ordinary sun.

O tree

in the shadowless mountains

the white plains and

the drab sea floor

your end at last is written.

In cinema, Tuwhare’s words aren’t fully realised by any specific film. However, embalmed within the poem’s themes, the iconography of the legendary Toho brand Godzilla comes to mind.  At the centre of this gargantuan cultural icon, the horrific shadow of nuclearisation haunts and hectors our fears. Takashi Yamazaki’s 2023 epic film Godzilla: Minus One houses these fears with more intensity than its predecessors. Beyond the film’s capabilities of recognising the post-war reckoning of Japan or the finer realities of PTSD, it is a film that hollows out the darkening of the Pacific. Tuwhare’s close inspection of the flora, fauna, and climate of this world, and the subsequent radioactive decimation of these things, blossoms with environmental caution. But for Yamazaki, the radioactive fringes of his narrative invite more scrutiny as he unpicks the negligence of global powers in polluting the climate, and creating the beastly kaiju of the film’s namesake.

The most striking image in Tuwhare’s poem rests on the central metaphor of the tree and its impending destruction from a nuclear test. The opening phrase “Tree let your arms fall,” assigns passivity in response to a “bright enhaloed cloud.” Here, Tuwhare acknowledges that, like the tree, the local environment is powerless to nuclear weaponry, thus it is forced into submission. Shifting the power balance, where nature is now subject to manmade influence, allows the poem’s speaker to begin their poem through the lens of a witness, observing a huge change in action. The verbs “let” and “fall” reveal that the tree is at first resistant to such a threat, but out of care, the speaker requests that the tree surrender and accept its fate.  This begins what appears to be a sustained plea from the speaker to the tree, witness to witness, prophesying what is to come in the direst and bleakest of ways. The personification of the tree’s “arms” engages this idea further, highlighting how the speaker wishes to humanise this tree to converse with it and warn it. In metamorphosing the tree, the speaker invites the reader to identify the “fall” of nature as a cataclysmic event that impacts humanity, too.

As the poem continues, the tone of the speaker softens, sympathising with the tree regarding its fate. The speaker, at the close of the first stanza, poses that the nuclear bomb is not like an “axe to blunt nor fire to smother,” and therefore this threat is unexpected and unnatural; an unwinnable battle. This is significant in the eyes of the speaker, because it allows both the reader and the tree to recognise that this nuclear age is unprecedented and apocalyptic in scope. Later, the poet continues to remind the reader of how important one singular tree can be; to shelter “birds” and create shade for “lovers” below. Because of nuclear testing, this tree, if not destroyed, is void of purpose, a casualty and remnant of what nature once was. At the beginning of the fourth stanza, the speaker repeats the opening line, albeit with an important addition: the adjective “naked.” This inclusion extends two suggestions. Firstly, due to radiation and fallout, the tree no longer finds itself adorned with vegetation; it is now “naked” and vulnerable. Secondly, the tree, a symbol of nature itself, reflects the dawning of radical exposure. Nothing is safe; the environment and ecosystem is now “naked” when faced with the merciless aftermath of nuclear testing. At the close of this same stanza, the speaker sympathises with this ‘new state’ of being, where the “fading green” of the tree’s “magic” cannot cleanse or rejuvenate its immediate surroundings. Nature’s ability to recover and salvage itself is now defunct. The covenant between the tree and the restorative powers of the sun is now fractured, because this is “no ordinary sun.”

Throughout the poem, the nuclear explosion itself isn’t garbed in grim detail or descriptions. The “bright enhaloed cloud” is regaled with holy connotations of purity and clarity. The softness of the noun “cloud” even misguides us to see the event as something soft and heavenly. However, the speaker isn’t interested in erasing its menace. Instead, the speaker does this to capture the juxtaposition of such an image with its consequences. By referring to it as “no ordinary sun” in both the poem and the title, the speaker disarms this imagery by reminding the tree and reader that this event is unnatural. By contrasting the explosion with the sun, the speaker relays that, unlike our sun, this ascending inferno doesn’t operate as something that brightens up the earth, warms its inhabitants, or assists in the growth of all natural elements. Instead, it is heavily suggested that this nuclear event offers the opposite: death, on a large, unending scale. Here, the beastly scale of nuclear testing matches the scale of Yamazaki’s Godzilla, a titan rich with destructive qualities.

We must look at the concept of Godzilla across two dimensions. Firstly, as a result of nuclear interference with the natural world. Secondly, as a product of the nuclear age that, like a nuclear weapon, has no exact evil motivation but instead facilitates a capacity for untold destruction. In the first sense, Yamazaki’s film explicitly exposes the truth of Godzilla as a prehistoric creature trapped in a hostile modern era, where its size and instinct force it to act aggressively in response to human settlement across the Pacific. Would you begrudge a shark for attacking divers in the sea? The sea is the shark’s domain, and therefore any interlopers are seen as a threat or food. The shark has no intention of causing suffering; a shark isn’t a moral being. Like this hypothetical shark, Godzilla’s attack on Odo Island is hastened out of territorial, animal behaviour. Yet the later mishap of Godzilla being caught in the ‘crossfire’ of US nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll intensifies not only the narrative, but also Godzilla’s size, power, and predetermined natural intent to challenge any threat. Would Godzilla’s attacks on Japan later in the film have happened if he had not been radioactively interfered with on a biological scale? Probably not. Yes, Godzilla does kill thousands of people, ruin warships, and decimate cities, but is this because it has evil intentions? No. In the vast, heavily militarised archipelagic surroundings of the Japanese Pacific, such a predatory creature, at such a size and scale, is likely to run riot against warships that threaten its habitat. It isn’t out of moral choice, but animalistic instinct.

Beyond this practical science, might we also recognise Godzilla’s aggression as a response from the natural world? Across the Pacific, the endless conflict brought about by World War Two, and the prior tensions between China and Japan, likely sped up the erosion of vegetation and fauna. Gunfire, oil leaks, the brutality of man-made weaponry, and the pulverising of coastal land, it is easy to see why nature might be a bit angered. Add to that a series of nuclear tests that scorch these biomes further, Godzilla might just be nature’s reckoning, a message or response on human terms, through the medium of violence. If one were to read Tuwhare’s poem and locate the limitless capacity for human science and warfare to barbarically play with nature, then Godzilla’s crusade into the Ginza district during the film seems pretty understandable.

If we put aside this interpretation of this cinematic version of Godzilla, and instead see his monstrous rampage as a metaphor for the rampant nuclearisation of militaries across the globe, then we might have another interesting take. Sure, we see Godzilla lay waste to a Japanese military base at the start of the film without any radioactive upgrades in the mix. However, after Godzilla’s genetic makeover, we see his thirst for destruction increase. If we compare this to the nuclear age, a resonant metaphor emerges. Humanity has, and unfortunately always will, find different ways to deal death, whatever the scale. But if we were to see the earliest forms of combat represented in Godzilla’s tussle with the Japanese Navy on Odo Island, then we might see his siege on Tokyo later in the film as a clear parallel to the dawn of the nuclear weapon, which, like the infamous bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima years prior, shows a capacity to flatten buildings and burn communities beyond measure. Being a Japanese film, this interpretation becomes more haunting. Like Tuwhare’s poem, Yamazaki’s film uses metaphor to envision such stark events via the function of scale. The tree in the poem represents the vulnerability of the Pacific and its ecosystems when faced with nuclearisation. But for Yamazaki, his use of Godzilla as a metaphor for a nuclear bomb breeds a more serious question: do we learn from tragedy? After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US still tests its nuclear arsenal, and in doing so, gives Godzilla the power and means to terrorise Japan and its people. Godzilla, like a nuclear bomb, has little choice in its actions. But still, like the bomb, Godzilla represents the harrowing cycle of the global arms race, which sees civilians and nature as victims of testing and trauma.

Throughout the film, the central character of Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) battles with PTSD following his first-hand experience with Godzilla, the death of his parents at the hands of US pilots, and his own shame at being a surviving Kamikaze pilot. His life continues, albeit plagued by trauma. He works as a minesweeper, responsible for the clean-up of munitions and explosives left behind after the war. In this role, Yamazaki uses Shikishima to represent the personal fallout of warfare. As a man, he exists to suffer in shame, yet he uses his time to erase the presence of conflict and threat. Like Tuwhare’s tree, he attempts to resist the pressures of nuclearisation and global conflict.

However, Shikishima’s resistance, much like the tree’s in Tuwhare’s poem, is ultimately constrained by forces far beyond his control. His role as a minesweeper is deeply symbolic; he labours to dismantle the remnants of war, yet he is simultaneously surrounded by the inevitability of further destruction. This mirrors the speaker’s futile attempt to console and warn the tree, knowing full well that the “bright enhaloed cloud” cannot be reasoned with or resisted. In Godzilla: Minus One, Shikishima’s trauma is not simply personal; it is emblematic of a wider, collective suffering that mirrors the ecological grief embedded within Tuwhare’s poem. Both the man and the tree exist as witnesses and casualties, suspended in a world where the consequences of nuclearisation linger long after the initial flash.

This enduring aftermath reveals why the word ‘nuclear’ carries such lasting weight. Neither Tuwhare nor Yamazaki offers true resolution; instead, both texts emphasise that destruction leaves behind a world fundamentally altered, whether through the “fading green” of the tree or the scarred landscapes and psyches of post-war Japan. Even with Godzilla’s defeat, the conditions that created him persist, just as the forces behind the “no ordinary sun” remain active in global tensions. In returning to the idea that ‘nuclear’” is saturated with negative connotations, it becomes clear that this is not exaggeration but consequence: a legacy of damage that extends beyond singular events, and continues to shape both our environment and our collective memory.