Jorogumo Shizuoka Legend

The Shizuoka jorogumo legend is a standard early-modern variant of the spider-woman cycle. A long-lived joro-gumo spider takes the form of a beautiful woman and entraps young men with her silk. In the Shizuoka version she dwells in the gorges of Shizuhata-yama and the deep pools of the upper Abe River. A woodcutter or traveller meets her at a pool and becomes intimate; thread begins to wind around his body. On one occasion, as he places his axe against an old stump, the silk would have drawn him into the pool, but the line catches on the stump and he escapes, realising her true nature. The structure of seduction, thread-attachment, and substitution by an old root or stump is the standard form. Related variants are recorded for Mount Togakushi (Nagano), the Echigo mountains (Niigata) and northern Saga. Sources include Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyo (1776), Konjaku Gazu Zoku-Hyakki (1779), and Suzuki Bokushi's Hokuetsu Seppu (1837), with further references in local folklore studies.