Yamato Tsuchigumo Legend

The Yamato tsuchigumo legend records the subjugation by Emperor Jimmu of the indigenous group called tsuchigumo, who resisted to the last at the foot of Mount Katsuragi in Yamato. In the Jimmu chapter of the Nihon Shoki (720 CE), tsuchigumo who lived at Takaohari-mura in Katsuragi at the closing stage of the pacification of Yamato are described as 'short of body with long limbs, resembling pygmies'; they dwelt in pit-dwellings and were said to have been killed by being covered with mats of reeds and set on fire. Later noh and otogi-zoshi develop the cycle into the tsuchigumo-subjugation tale of the four heavenly kings of Minamoto no Yorimitsu, but the underlying form is in the Nihon Shoki account. The structure has three parts: the closing stage of Jimmu's eastward expedition and the entry into Katsuragi; the pit-dwelling and resistance of the tsuchigumo; and the killing under the reed-net mats and the completion of the pacification of Yamato. The description of the other - 'anomalous, short and pit-dwelling' - by the central monarchy is repeatedly discussed in anthropology and ancient history as a textbook case of the typification of indigenous populations. It forms the substrate from which the later Yorimitsu and Watanabe-no-Tsuna cycles drew. The site is the foot of Mount Katsuragi in Gose, Nara, near Takamahiko Jinja and Hitokotonushi Jinja. In the precincts of Katsuragi Hitokotonushi Jinja is a mound said to be the burial place of the tsuchigumo. A separate 'spider mound' east of Kitano Tenmangu in Kamigyo, Kyoto, corresponds to the Heian-kyo Yorimitsu cycle. Sources include the Jimmu chapter of the Nihon Shoki, with related notes in the Jimmu section of the central scroll of the Kojiki. The surviving fragments of the Fudoki (Bungo, Hitachi and others) and the Kogo Shui preserve genealogical references. The noh Tsuchigumo and the otogi-zoshi Tsuchigumo Soshi (said to be of late Kamakura date) carry the later transformations.