Jorōgumo(絡新婦)
Jorōgumo (Japanese: 絡新婦 in kanji, じょろうぐも in hiragana) is a yōkai of Japanese folklore known for its ability to transform into a beautiful woman. The literal meaning of its true name, 女郎蜘蛛, is “woman-spider.” However, it is most often written using the characters 絡新婦, which mean “entangling newlywed woman” and are pronounced through jukujikun, linking the characters’ meaning rather than their sound to the word. In Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, the Jorōgumo appears as a spider woman controlling small fire-breathing spiders.
The name jorōgumo is also used for certain real spiders, such as species in the Nephila and Argiope genera. In modern entomology, the katakana form ジョロウグモ refers specifically to Trichonephila clavata, a species now known in English as the “Joro spider.”
Edo-period literature, including the Taihei-Hyakumonogatari and Tonoigusa, tells numerous tales of shape-shifting Jorōgumo. One such story, “Things That Ought to be Pondered, Even in Urgent Times,” tells of a young woman who approaches a youthful warrior, presenting a child and claiming he is the child’s father. Sensing deceit, the warrior strikes her, forcing her to retreat to an attic. The next day, villagers find the corpse of a large Jorōgumo—one or two shaku in length—alongside the remains of its victims.
Another tale, “How Magoroku Was Deceived by a Jorōgumo,” describes a man named Magoroku in Takada, Sakushu (now Okayama Prefecture). As he dozes on his veranda, an older woman invites him to meet her daughter, who wishes to marry him. When he refuses, she insists he has wronged them in the past. Overwhelmed, he flees, only to find the house vanish around him. Waking at home, he notices a small spider web near the eaves and recalls driving away a spider days earlier.
Perhaps the most famous legend centers on the Jōren Falls in Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture, said to be the home of the Jorōgumo mistress of the waterfall. In one version, she ensnares a traveler with her silk, but he cleverly ties it to a tree stump, which is pulled into the falls instead. Fearing her, locals avoid the area. Years later, a visiting woodcutter drops his axe into the basin. A beautiful woman returns it to him, warning never to speak of the encounter. He keeps the secret for a time but drunkenly reveals it at a banquet and dies in his sleep that night.
In another telling, the woodcutter is found dead at the base of the falls, dragged away by invisible threads. A further variation has him fall in love with the woman at the falls, growing weaker with each visit. A local monk realizes she is the Jorōgumo and drives her away with a sutra, yet the woodcutter seeks permission from a tengu to marry her. Denied, he rushes back to the waterfall, where spider silk engulfs him and pulls him beneath the water.
