Tsuchigumo
There are lots of spider Yokai – and this one is actually meant to be the next entry in this list, but it can also stand in got Tsuchigumo! There are really three types of Spider Yokai. Okay, there are more with spider features, but there are three spider-spider Yokai. To start with, there is the Jorogumo – i.e. the “spider whore,” based on the colorful Nephila Clavata orb weaver. The Ushi-Oni will be described below. But the most generic spider is the Tsuchigumo, the “Sand Spider” or “Dirt Spider” or “Mud Spider.” It is based on the Purseweb Spider, a really fat wandering spider.
Actually, Tsuchigumo started out as an ethnic slur – a name for the indigeneous tribes that occupied Japan before the modern Japanese people came in from China. They were dirt spiders. Only later did it get applied to actual dirt spiders. The Tsuchigumo of legend is a powerful and intelligent spider that can grow to be the size of a house. Some also have wolf or ox heads or tiger bodies or something else similar. And yes, like everything else, it has shapeshifting powers. One of the most famous stories (and there is a Netsuke figure commemorating the end of this) involves a samurai defeating a particularly gigantic Tsuchigumo and cutting its belly open only to find thousands of skulls and bones pour out, the remains of hundreds of meals. Try to imagine that one, arachnophobes!
Featured on Life In Plastic: nerditis.com/2014/06/20/life-in-plastic-special-the-night...
Tsuchigumo
There are lots of spider Yokai – and this one is actually meant to be the next entry in this list, but it can also stand in got Tsuchigumo! There are really three types of Spider Yokai. Okay, there are more with spider features, but there are three spider-spider Yokai. To start with, there is the Jorogumo – i.e. the “spider whore,” based on the colorful Nephila Clavata orb weaver. The Ushi-Oni will be described below. But the most generic spider is the Tsuchigumo, the “Sand Spider” or “Dirt Spider” or “Mud Spider.” It is based on the Purseweb Spider, a really fat wandering spider.
Actually, Tsuchigumo started out as an ethnic slur – a name for the indigeneous tribes that occupied Japan before the modern Japanese people came in from China. They were dirt spiders. Only later did it get applied to actual dirt spiders. The Tsuchigumo of legend is a powerful and intelligent spider that can grow to be the size of a house. Some also have wolf or ox heads or tiger bodies or something else similar. And yes, like everything else, it has shapeshifting powers. One of the most famous stories (and there is a Netsuke figure commemorating the end of this) involves a samurai defeating a particularly gigantic Tsuchigumo and cutting its belly open only to find thousands of skulls and bones pour out, the remains of hundreds of meals. Try to imagine that one, arachnophobes!
Featured on Life In Plastic: nerditis.com/2014/06/20/life-in-plastic-special-the-night...