Godzilla’s Original Story Writer Wrote Two Novellas. Here’s Where to Start.

Start with Shigeru Kayama’s Godzilla, then read Godzilla Raids Again. Both novellas were published in Japan in 1955, and both are collected in Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again, translated by Jeffrey Angles and published in English by the University of Minnesota Press in 2023. You only need one volume.

November 3 is Godzilla Day, the anniversary of the original film’s 1954 Japanese theatrical opening. If you came to the franchise through a recent movie, Kayama’s books offer a short route back to a version of Godzilla that makes the monster’s emergence feel like a mystery with a human cause.

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1. Start with Godzilla

Kayama opens with a strange light beneath the ocean. The trail leads to Ōdo Island, where the monster has a name before the scientists have an explanation. That progression is a big part of the pleasure of starting here. You know what’s coming, but the people investigating the disappearances have to put the story together one piece at a time.

The most interesting question arrives once they know what they’re dealing with. Professor Yamane sees a creature worth studying, even as Tokyo faces a threat it may have to destroy. Godzilla’s connection to nuclear testing gives that choice an edge. The scientists are trying to understand a disaster that human ingenuity helped bring about, and their strongest response depends on another potentially devastating invention. If you only have time for one of the two novellas, this is the one I’d pick.

Read Godzilla in the English paperback collection on Amazon

2. Follow it with Godzilla Raids Again

The second novella brings in Anguirus and shifts the action to Osaka before heading north. Two monsters give the book a different rhythm. The first story follows people trying to make sense of a single creature. The sequel asks how people evacuate and respond when two creatures have a fight of their own and a city is in their path. The chapter list alone gives a sense of that change in focus, moving from an encounter over the ocean to crowds of evacuees and eventually the northern seas.

Read it second even if Anguirus is the reason you picked up the collection. Once you’ve seen how much work it takes for people to grasp the danger in Godzilla, it’s easier to appreciate the sequel’s quicker turn toward logistics and survival.

Find Godzilla Raids Again in the same two-novella collection on Amazon

Did the Godzilla books come before the movies?

The 1954 film came first. Kayama wrote its original story treatment, which director Ishirō Honda and screenwriter Takeo Murata developed into the screenplay. Kayama also drafted the story for the first sequel and published the two prose versions in 1955. The books give him room to revisit the material in his own voice, with plot differences and a more explicit emphasis on nuclear testing and humanity’s treatment of the natural world.

Should you watch the movies first?

You can read both novellas cold. If you want to see how the same story changes between page and screen, try a pairing instead. Read the first novella, then watch Honda’s 1954 Japanese film. Pay attention to what each version asks you to notice before Godzilla appears and how each handles the debate over what to do with him. Then read Godzilla Raids Again and finish with Angles’s afterword, “Translating an Icon.” The English edition also includes a glossary.

Which English edition should you look for?

Search for Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again by Shigeru Kayama, translated by Jeffrey Angles. The University of Minnesota Press lists a 256-page edition in paperback (ISBN 9781517915230) and ebook (ISBN 9781452969855). Both formats contain the two novellas in reading order.

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