It was based on a 1905 episode of McCay's comic strip series. Įlements of the genre were present at the end of Winsor McCay's 1921 animated short Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Pet, in which a mysterious giant animal starts destroying the city, until it is countered by a massive airstrike. However, there are no traditional depictions of kaiju or kaiju-like creatures in Japanese folklore but rather the origins of kaiju are found in film.
For example, in 1908 it was suggested that the extinct Ceratosaurus was alive in Alaska, and this was referred to as kaijū. After sakoku had ended and Japan was opened to foreign relations in the mid-19th century, the term kaijū came to be used to express concepts from paleontology and legendary creatures from around the world.
The Japanese word kaijū originally referred to monsters and creatures from ancient Japanese legends it earlier appeared in the Chinese Classic of Mountains and Seas. The kaiju Godzilla from the 1954 film Godzilla, one of the first Japanese films to feature a giant monster.
