INTRO:

Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythological monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

Firstly, I just want to say a huge thank you to all of you, we hit 150 downloads this week and it’s such a huge milestone with only 4 episodes out. I appreciate every single one of you, and would give you a big hug if there was not a deadly virus hanging around. But seriously, I can’t thank you enough for listening to me indulge my folklore fantasies. 

I have a song preamble into this one this week, and bear in mind I cannot use licensed music because MONEY so enjoy this rendition I recorded earlier with a tambourine.

DESCRIPTION

Oh-oh here she comes

Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up

Oh-oh here she comes

She's a maneater!

Today’s creature is the terrifying Japanese Jorogumo. Now before we get off on the subject of these, it’s best I define something in Japanese mythology. So they call demons/spirits/monsters yokai, which translates to ‘spirit, strange creature or apparition’, so if you hear me say yokai, that’s what I’m referring to - just as a heads up. 

Jorogumo are described as a yokai who is actually a giant spider, but can disguise themselves as humans to seduce young men to take back to their lairs and eat. It’s said that when disguised as a person, kind of like a vampire, it’s reflection would show it’s true form - which is not something you’d like to see when snogging someone at a party. In other tellings, they’re described as being half-woman, half-spider, disguising themselves with long kimonos so that their horrible spidery boy legs are hidden.

Jorogumo are also able to control other ‘lesser’ spiders, including a fire-breathing spider species, that are also clearly mythological - no details on these unfortunately, but I’m really hoping these don’t actually exist in real life. They use these fire breathing boys to burn down houses of people who suspect them of being Jorogumo, but they often live solitary lives on their mounting pile of young men’s bones. That could be an innuendo, but I’m not going to entertain it, this is a MATURE podcast. 

Jorōgumo can spin silk threads strong enough to tie up a grown man so that he cannot escape. They also have a powerful venom that can slowly weaken you day by day, which kind of lets the beast get off on your undying or realistically, dying attention. They make their nests in caves, forests, or empty houses in towns. Then they spend most of their time trying to tempt blokes to come home with them so they can wrap them up in a nice little silk blanket and munch on their liquidized innards - yum. 

The first recording of the Jorogumo is in the Tonoigusa - which is a collection of ghost stories from the Edo period. The story “Things That Ought to be Pondered, Even in Urgent Times'' describes a young samurai who encounters a beautiful young woman, carrying a child in her arms. The woman, pointing at the samurai, tells the child, “Him there surely is your father. Go forth, and be embraced”. However, the samurai realises the woman is not what she seems, and attacks her, slashing her with his blade, she thento the attic of his house. The next morning, in the attic, all they find is the corpse of a giant joro spider, about half a metre long, along with the bodies of the victims it had already murdered and eaten, stuck to the ceiling encased in webs.

The second mention of the joro spider as a yokai is in the story “How Magoroku Was Deceived by a Jorōgumo”. The story takes place in Takada, Sakushu (now Okayama).

As the story goes, Magokoru was resting in his veranda, when, just as he was about to fall asleep, a woman of around 50 appeared before him. She told him that her daughter fancied Magokuro, and asked him to visit her estate. There her daughter confessed her love to him and asked him to marry her. As Magoroku was already married, he refused her. However, the girl insisted, saying that although Magoroku had almost killed her mother two days ago, she still loved him, and shouldn’t reject her. 

Confused by her words, Magoroku escaped the woman’s estate, which vanished as he ran away. He found himself lying back on his veranda, as if he’d just woken up from a dream. His wife told him that he had been sleeping there the entire time. 

However, Magoroku looked up and webbing it up above his head, there was a small joro spider. Seeing the spider, he remembered he had chased a spider from his home two days prior. He had almost killed it - which is what the women were referring to when they had said he had almost murdered her. Spooky!

The Jorogumo is also often associated with waterfalls. In particular, the Jōren Falls of Izu, Shizuoka, have a really cool legend about a spider-woman who is the mistress of the waterfall. 

The original legend says that as a man rested by the Joren falls, he felt a sticky web clinging to his leg. He pulled the spider web off his leg and stuck it to a tree stump instead. The Jorogumo then dragged the stump into the water and beneath the falls.

After this event, because they were so spooked about it, the villagers avoided the falls. However, a woodcutter who hadn’t heard the story tried to cut trees in the area. He accidentally dropped his axe into the pool below the falls. When he tried to get his axe back, a woman appeared and gave it back to him, telling him he must never tell anyone about what he saw. Then he got pissed, and he told a whole bunch of people (as you do). After he fell asleep that night, his body was pulled outside by an invisible string. The next day, the villagers found his corpse, floating in the water below the Joren falls.

A second version of the legend says that the woodcutter fell in love with a woman he met by the falls. He went to see her every day, but his body grew weaker with every visit. The oshō, who are Buddhist Priests of a local temple, suspected that he was enchanted by the Jorogumo. 

On the man’s next visit, the oshō accompanied him to chant sutras. When a spider thread wrapped around the woodcutter, the oshō shouted, and the thread vanished. Despite knowing that the woman he loved was a Jorogumo, the woodcutter persisted, asking the local tengu another mythological creature that resembles a half-bird, half-human (we’ll talk about this in another episode) for permission to marry her. The tengu refused, so the woodcutter ran to the Joren falls, where he was entangled in spider silk and pulled beneath the water, gone forever.

At the Kashikobuchi ravine, in Sendai, people tell a surprisingly similar legend about woodcutters using tree stumps as decoys to avoid being pulled into the water by a Jorogumo. However, in this legend, once the log is pulled into the water, a voice can be heard saying “Kashikoi, kashikoi.” or “Clever, clever”. Since the name “Kashikobuchi'' literally translates to “Clever Abyss'', some people speculate that this legend is the origin of the ravine’s name. The Jorogumo in Kashikobuchi is worshipped as a preventer of waterborne disasters, with shrines and monuments in the area engraved with the words “Myōhō Kumo no Rei”, meaning what we think is Spider’s Ghost.

Another legend from the Kashikobuchi area says that a man named Genbe met a beautiful woman, who was actually a shapeshifted eel that lived at the bottom of the Kashikobuchi ravine. She was going to be attacked by the Jorogumo, so she asked Genbe to help her defend herself. Genbe agreed, but on the night of the attack he was too afraid to go out, staying hidden in his house instead. The defenseless eel lost her battle with the Jorogumo, and Genbe died of insanity. All fun right? 

ORIGIN:

So where did this lovely creature originate from? 

In Japan, some spiders are known to possess amazing supernatural powers. It’s said that when a golden orb-weaver reaches 400 years of age, it develops magical powers and begins to feed on human prey instead of insects. One of these, the jorō HYPHEN gumo, is actually a golden orb-weaver in English, is the most well-known of the arachnid yokai, their latin species name is Nephila Clavata. Jorō-gumo are found all over Japan, except for Hokkaido. 

The actual spiders are about two to three centimeters long, but they can grow much larger as they age; some are large enough to catch and eat birds. These spiders are renowned for their large size, their beautiful colors and the large and strong webs they build. We don’t have these spiders in the UK, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them in a zoo/arachnid enclosure before at Bristol Zoo Gardens and they are MASSIVE, but they’re very pretty spiders to look at - if you like spiders in any way. If you want to look at a picture of this spider, I’ll put one on twitter.

In regards to the actual mythological creature however, they only started being talked about in the Edo period in Japanese history, which was about 1603 to 1867. When the Jorogumo name is written with kanji, that little wiggly line above the o in their name, makes it mean “entangling bride.”, which is how the actual spider's name is spelt. However, this funky alphabetical character was added on to the name much later to cover up the original meaning of the name which is lovely and polite - “whore spider.”

They’re only ever described as women, which is interesting as in their actual spider origin, the male spiders are significantly smaller than the females and generally spiders and women in mythology tend to go hand in hand due to their seductive and entangling nature. Also, if you think of the term widow, which is primarily used to describe a woman who’s male partner has died, what do you think of other than that? Oh yeah, a black widow spider - or Scarlett Johanssen, I get it Marvel fans. 

However, I’ve said that and actually a similar half-human, half-spider yokai is the Tsuchigumo, which is also based on a real spider species, a kind of tarantula. However the Tsuchigumo can be either male or female - not many accounts of this however, so we won’t focus on it.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

So in modern culture, it can mostly be found in anime and manga, which if you didn’t know - is mostly Japanese. You can read/watch about them in the following; Yokai Watch, xxxHolic, Dororo, Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi, Yu-Gi-Oh or Rosario + Vampire. I’m not a huge anime fan, the only one out of these I’ve watched is Yu-Gi-Oh and that’s because I’m a HUGE nerd and I honestly don’t remember any use of the Jorogumo in there, but I imagine it was some cool monster card. 

They’re also in a couple of video games, for me I remember seeing them in Diablo 3, there’s a character called Cydea who is the Maiden of Lust, she’s like one of the top dogs around Hell - as you do. But they’re also in Ayakashi: Ghost Guild, Pathfinder, Nioh, Ōkami, The Evil Within and even Dark Souls - if you like a challenge the latter is definitely for you.

TV and movie wise, they’re in an episode of Dr. Who if you’re into timey-wimey stuff in the season with David Tennant and Catherine Tate, I believe it’s the episode where Donna attempts to get married? Other stuff like the series Grimm, Escape the Night and Hellboy: Sword of Storms have characters who at least look like Jurogumo’s, even if not explicitly named so.

The book recommendation this week is not explicitly on Jurogumo’s but if you’re interested in Yokai, my recommendation is The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore by Michael Dylan Foster - it’s a good one for all the spooky spirit creatures including these spider ladies in Japanese mythology. Just a really interesting and culturally significant read. 

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

I bloody hope not - Jesus Christ. As someone who is scared of spiders, (not massively, may I add, I think they’re super cool - but I really don’t like their eyes or the way their legs move. It’s NASTY) I really don’t want to imagine it. 

With this one, I think it’s probably again more of a cautionary tale, for young guys not to get - haha - wrapped up in something based on first glances, something like that. Or for them to remain faithful to their wives. However, I think they’re a really cool concept - I love the idea of them wandering about with super long kimonos on, but moving like a spider underneath it. It super reminds me of that newer Pokemon, called Mimikyu, which takes on the look of Pikachu because it’s renowned as being cute and loved, but underneath apparently it causes anyone who sees it to go mad. If I was a pokemon trainer, I would be a ghosty trainer I think. I digress, pokemon is a weakness and I mustn’t give in. 

I haven’t found any modern claims of any Jorogumo sightings, which seems to be unusual as far as Japanese spirits go. Perhaps no spiders have reached their 400th birthday recently.

But hey, the Japanese people still believe that a Jorogumo guards that waterfall, and offerings are still left to it - so someone must believe that there is still a spidery lady who could either trip them into the falls or save them from drowning, one of the two. 

OUTRO: 

Well isn't that fun, I had a fun time researching this one - for me learning about cultures and mythology previously unknown to me is my favourite pastime. Thank you for letting me indulge it with you and I hope you learnt something too about our Spider Queen of the week.

Next week we’re delving into world mythology as I’ve listed it - and looking into the terrifying Night Hags, who sit on you whilst you sleep and make you dream horrible nightmares. Sounds fun right? Make sure you have a nice hot chocolate after that episode before bed - I’ll give you nightmares next Thursday.

For now thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The twitter is @mythmonsterspod or the instagram is @mythmonsterspodcast. Or you can email me, old fashioned-style on mythmonsterspodcast@gmail.com And share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

Stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.