nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> You can see 
> where giant youkai and Godzilla legends originate from the sheer 
> devastation left...

  AFAIK, the concept that Godzilla (Gojira) and other kaiju originate
from ancient Japanese folklore seems to be just a misconception.

  Youkai are part of ancient folklore and mythology, but they consist
mostly of supernatural creatures taking various forms of small animals
such as raccoon dogs, foxes, cats and wolves, or sometimes even humans.
The closest youkai is probably a mountain ogre (but I don't know how
large the mythology says they are, but from the description it probably
wasn't deemed anywhere even close to gigantic; I'd guess human-sized or
slightly larger.)

  Godzilla and other kaiju were most probably a pure invention of the
1950's Japanese movie industry, mostly inspired by King Kong. (In other
words, gigantic monstrous animals as a movie plot were actually invented
in the US before they were in Japan. This is not to say that there were
not pieces of fiction, mostly literature, that had gigantic animals even
earlier. However, none of them were probably based on Japanese folklore.)

  I suppose that the closest you could get in ancient oriental folklore
is dragon myths (which were probably inspired by dinosaur bone fossils).
In a way this could ostensibly be a source because Japanese dragons were
most often associated with rainfall and bodies of water. (I wouldn't be
surprised if some myths associated tsunamis with dragons for this reason.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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