Tsuchigumo-taiji Legend

The Tsuchigumo-taiji legend has two layers. In the Nihon Shoki (720 CE), in the pre-accession section of the Jimmu chapter, Emperor Jimmu strikes tsuchigumo - described as short of body with long limbs - at Katsuragi in Yamato and kills them under a netting of arrowroot; the Keiko chapter records further subjugations of regional tsuchigumo in Kyushu. The narrative reads as a political-historical layer in which the early Yamato court describes the suppression of local groups. From the late Heian period the cycle is recast as a monster-subjugation tale: while Minamoto no Yorimitsu lies ill, a strange monk appears at night and casts threads to bind him; Yorimitsu strikes back with the sword Hizamaru, and the wounded creature flees to a mound at Kitano in Kyoto, where it is found and killed as a giant earth-spider. The first layer belongs to the Yamato court's integration narrative; the second is shaped by the Yorimitsu four-heavenly-kings cycle. The site of the Kiki layer is Katsuragi (Gose and Katsuragi cities, Nara), with a 'tsuchigumo-zuka' near the Hitokotonushi Shrine; the noh play Tsuchigumo is set on the Kyoto site, near Joborenge-ji and Kitano Tenmangu. Sources include the Nihon Shoki Jimmu and Keiko 12 and 13, the Tsuchigumo Soshi Emaki (Kamakura to Nanboku-cho, designated Important Cultural Property), the noh Tsuchigumo by Kanze Kojiro Nobumitsu, and the early-modern Zen Taiheiki.