The Deadly Spider Woman: Jorogumo

People are freaked out by Spiders. It's not just that they have so many disproportionatelylong legs or move erratically it's also that they have fangs that can bite you, and theykill things wayyy bigger than they are. Yeah, real spiders are scary. But how about a giant spider that could actuallyeat you? Meet the jorōgumo: taking the scary spiderthing to a whole other level for centuries. Appearing as an attractive woman to lure hervictims to a painful death, this giant shape shifting spider of Japanese folklore is bothbeautiful and deadly—like the real-world spider that shares her name. For now let’s explore how this deadly femalemonster snared imagination in her web by taking a look at ancient storytelling and the mysteriousworld of the Japanese yōkai [Monstrum intro.] Broadly speaking the word yōkai refers toany weird or supernatural creature or phenomena in Japanese folklore. Yōkai offer explanations for things thatseem unusual or defy the known world—they are personal and cultural—shifting meaningor appearance based on who is telling the story and for what purpose. A yōkai can be pretty much anything strange,from oddly moving smoke [enenra],to head-eating spirits [kubikajiri] or even a mischievouspaper umbrella [karakasa kozō]. The word yōkai is made from two Chinese characters,kanji, that both indicate strangeness or mystery, and the word appears in Japanese text at leastas early as the eighth century [in Shoku Nihongi]. The term popped up more frequently in themid-Edo period but wasn’t really popularized as the term for anything unexplainable untilthe Meiji period (1868-1912). A 20th-century Japanese folklorist [YanagitaKunio] solidified its place in culture when he began using it in his academic writing. Before yōkai became the common term for allthings creepy, spooky, and strange in Japan, there were a whole slew of names. The name changed based on time period andcultural popularity. In the Heian period “oni” referred toanything threatening although most often that thing was a demon or ogre that had a humanlikeshape. During the Edo period, another word couldbe used to label any shapeshifting being— or any oddly formed or scary creature. So the jorōgumo falls under any of thesecategories [yokai, oni, bakemono] since it is a strange, threatening creature that cantake on a human shape or a spider form. Covering all the bases with all those legsI guess. Jorōgumo first appeared in literature inthe Edo period. It is highly likely that they previously existedas part of an oral folklore tradition. The jorō in jorōgumo , translates to prostitute,but is also associated with the word jōrō, which historically referred to the women whowaited on female royalty. Also known as the “binding bride,” “whorespider,” “entangling bride,” and “harlot spider,” this shapeshifting creature isunsurprisingly known for her ability to lure handsome men into her clutches by disguisingherself as a beautiful woman before using a painful venom to kill her victims slowly. In some stories, this venom gives the monsterthe ability to shapeshift. The jorōgumo is said to spin silk strongenough to capture a man in her web and she can control other spiders. Illustrations sometimes show this creatureas a woman with spider legs, or just as a large spider. Spiders play a central role in a lot of Japanesefolklore. The earliest known surviving Japanese textdepicting a monstrous spider, a picture scroll from the 14th century, includes a story abouta shape-shifting Earth spider that first appears [see page 80 of Reider text, available online]to two warriors as a beautiful woman. She tries to trap them by throwing balls ofsilk webbing before they stab her and she flees. Later the men find a many-legged creaturewounded in the same area the woman was stabbed. They cut the creature's abdomen open and almosttwo thousand human heads fall out along with spiders the size of small children [page 83]. The creature is called a [yama-goom-o] ormountain spider in the text. This seems awfully similar to the jorōgumoand it definitely shows the association between and spiders in Japanese folklore. One of the earliest written stories of thejorogumo comes from a 17th-century text. It tells of a young samurai who takes shelterin an abandoned structure strung with spider webs. He is approached by a young woman carryinga child who, she insists, was fathered by him. The man is instantly suspicious, since thewoman was traveling alone at night in a remote place. The child goes to approach the samurai manytimes, but turns away each time when it sees the man’s sword. Annoyed and impatient, the man slashes thewoman with his blade. She flees to the rafters of the structure. The next morning, the samurai finds an atticwhere a giant two-foot long spider lays, dying from deep cuts along it’s back—exactlylike the ones he gave the young woman. A stone grave statue of a young child is thereas well. The samurai looks up—and sees a horrificsight –carcasses of all the spider-woman’s victims, wrapped in her web. Another tale from an 18th-century collectionof ghost stories [Taihei Hyakumonogatari] has a different twist. One hot summer day, Magoroku, the heir ofa wealthy samurai family, relaxes and sings on his porch. Suddenly, a woman, who appears to be about50-years-old, approaches him. She tells him that his singing is so beautiful,it’s making her daughter fall in love with him, so much so that she wants to marry him. Curious to know if what the woman says istrue, he follows her to a large mansion. Inside, he finds a beautiful young woman,who begs Magoroku to consider her as his bride. Magoroku declines her offer, because he isin fact already wed. Both the young woman and her mother beg himto reconsider but he remains resolute in his devotion to his wife. So he runs from the mansion, but the secondhe steps outside the door it mysteriously vanishes, turning back into the bamboo surroundinghis own house. His servants insist that he has been on theporch sleeping the entire time, but Magoroku cannot believe that what he experienced wasonly a dream. Suddenly, he sees a female spider scuttlingaway. Looking around he realizes his home is strungwith numerous spider webs, even though earlier, he had driven the spiders away with his pipesmoke. Then he remembered how the beautiful girltold him the older woman had also been driven away by smoking. Magoroku realizes, to his horror, that thespiders were taking revenge on him. He orders the servants to remove the webs,and fortunately for Magoroku, the jorogumo never comes to him again. An attempted revenge via bigamy and a trickto lure [loo-ur] a man to his death? Not all yōkai are monsters, but the jorogumocertainly is. But why spiders at all? You could argue that part of the associationcomes from the cultural idea that women are out to “ensnare” men with their physicalor sexual appeal or because of the construction of the spider web itself. Weaving, spinning, and other elements of textileproduction were historically areas women dominated. Silk weaving in particular, was an importantcultural, religious, and economic activity in Japan. Then there’s the real life “Joro spider”or “Jorō-gumo spider” a member of the Nephila genus. Commonly called a “golden orb-weaver”in English, with their large size and unique, yellow colored silk and webs, it’s unsurprisingthat in Japan these spiders are said to have supernatural powers. Some tales say that once these spiders reach400 years of age, they develop magical powers and can feed on humans. They also can shapeshift into beautiful, youngwomen. Interestingly, female golden-orb weaver spidersare much larger than their drab, brown-colored male counterparts. The females are yellow, red, and black andcan be up to four times larger than the males of the species, reaching 3 to 4 inch [7.6-10centimeters) wide leg spans. Their golden webs can be large enough to eventrap small birds and bats. Given the name of these spiders and how closelyits legends relate to the yokai, my guess is that the real golden orb-weaver spiderhelped inspire the original oral folklore of the jorōgumo. Scary lady spider equals scary spider lady. The East Asian golden-orb weaver spiders werefirst discovered in North America in 2014, which seems ironic given that their fictionalcounterpart is becoming increasingly popular here and in other parts of the globe. While long associated with folklore in Japan,yokai have left a strong literary and visual history. When illustrated scrolls became popular duringthe Classical Heian period (c. 794-1185), yōkai that largely existed as oral storiestook on visual form. By recording these unusual beings, their formsbecame more solidified in how they were portrayed, but the art inspired many other differentkinds of yōkai. Today, we’ve seen a similar resurgence asthe jorogumo becomes more well-known outside of Japan. The internet and a world that’s more connectedthan ever made manga and anime more popular outside of Japan, and the jorōgumo pops upin both of these. I’m always fascinated by monsters that areexclusively female, and at least with the jorōgumo there might be a good reason, areason seemingly based on a real animal. Cultural and spiritual beliefs, mixed togetherwith the natural world, weave together a story that is completely unique—and absolutelyterrifying.