Jorōgumo (written as
絡新婦) is a Japanese demon similar to succubi. According to some stories, the demon's true appearance is that of a spider, but it can transform into a seductive woman. The name of this demon actually means
entwining bride, though it has other more harsh variations such as
spider whore.
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| Jorōgumo playing the lute |
Legends from the
Tokugawa period—or Edo—between 1603 and 1868 respectively, say that Jorōgumo lured her male victims into isolated dwellings. Here she would begin to play the lute for them and, distracting them with the charm of her song, she would wrap them in spider silk to eat them later when she was hungry. Most legends about this succubus were written during this period, some of the best known being
Taihei-Hyakumonogatari and
Tonoigusa.
The origin of this demon lies in the Japanese belief that, after reaching 400 years of age, spiders gain supernatural powers. Thus, to capture their victims more easily, they take the form of either attractive women trying to marry a samurai or a young mother carrying her baby in a sack on her back. This sack turns out to be, according to Tokugawa-era stories, the spider's egg sac. Sometimes the demon is depicted as a creature that is half woman, half spider.
The Legend of Jorōgumo
A local man from a village near the
Jōren waterfall (in
Izu,
Shizuoka) stopped at the foot of the waterfall to rest and dipped his feet in the water. Immediately after, spider webs appeared from the water and began to coil around his feet. The man struggled to break the threads and tied them to a stump on the water's edge, but a force from beneath the waters pulled the stump into the water.
After this event, locals in the area began to fear that spot and avoided the waterfall, but one day a woodsman passed by and, while cutting wood by the lake, dropped his axe into the water. Although he tried to search for it by diving into the waterfall's pool, he could not find the axe until a beautiful woman appeared from the waters and, returning his axe, asked him not to tell anyone about her.
Days passed and the woodsman kept his promise, but one day, while drunk, he forgot the words of the beauty from the waters and told his friends about her. The woodsman then fell into a deep sleep and never woke up again.
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| Jorōgumo and her victim |
Another version of this legend says the woodsman fell in love with the demon from beneath the waters and began to visit her daily at the waterfall, her dwelling. As time passed, the woodsman became increasingly weak, losing his strength. A monk from a Buddhist temple noticed the woodsman's transformation and set off with him to the waterfall to save him from Jorōgumo's spell. On the shore of the lake at the foot of the waterfall, the monk began to read Buddhist sutras trying to break the spell, but the demon's spider threads emerged from the water and tried to pull the man into the depths. Eventually, the monk broke the spell and the demon spider withdrew its web into the water, releasing the woodsman. Although the woodsman realized the woman he loved was actually a demon, he could not forget her. Tormented by longing for her, he sought help from a tengu—another legendary Japanese creature, often depicted with a red face and long nose. The tengu forbade their love but could not help the woodsman forget, and finally, he returned to the waterfall to reunite with the demon woman. Here, however, the spider caught him in its net and pulled him to the bottom of the water, from where he never emerged.
In Japanese mythology, there are many stories about trees being uprooted from the water's edge and dragged into the depths, and not all legends portray Jorōgumo as demonic. In Kashikobuchi, Jorōgumo is considered a protector of the waters, and people bring her offerings as they do to the gods to protect them from drowning.
