Well, I’m back, and this time I’m going to talk about  the jorōgumo, a type of yōkai that shapeshifts and eats people. Which, now that I think about it.

Also, just as a warning, I’m going to be talking about spiders.

Anyway, as stated above, jorōgumo usually either take the form of a beautiful woman, or a big-ass man eating spider. I’m thinking that the former kind of helps them with the former. The shapeshifting schtick is actually pretty similar to both the kitsune and tanuki. Like kitsune (which is just the Japanese word for “fox”) and tanuki, there’s also a species of spider with that name. Of course, that’s not what we’re hear to talk about, though.

There are multiple stories about jorōgumo. One tells about a guy who’s napping near the Jōren waterfall, and wakes up to find a spider’s web attached to his foot. Thinking nothing of it, he transfers the web to a nearby tree and is stunned then the web pulls the fucking tree into the water. From that point, the area is off limits, but a travelling woodcutter comes by one day.

He’s off, cutting some wood (as you do), when he butterfingers his favorite axe into the basin. He’s pretty despondent, until a gorgeous lady comes by and gives him his axe back. It’s hear the story deviates a bit, depending on who’s telling it. In some versions, the woman tells him to never tell anyone what happened. Naturally, homeboy gets wasted and breaks his promise, so the jorōgumo pulls him into the basin and drowns him.

In other versions, the woodcutter falls in love with the girl who retrieved his axe, but gets weaker and weaker the more time he spends with her. A Buddhist priest notices this, and accompanies the young man to the falls. When the jorōgumo tries to snatch him, the priest deflects the thread with a sutra and explains that the girl he’s been canoodling with is actually a monstrous spider that probably wants to eat him.

This, surprisingly, does not deter him, and he decides to ask the local tengu if it’s OK to marry her. Briefly, tengu are basically giant bird creatures that are very high up in the yōkai hierarchy. The tengu’s like, “Um, no, why would you want to? You know she probably just wants to eat you, right?”

This seems to make him more determined, to the point where he leaps into the waterfull. It’s here that he’s wrapped up in spider silk and dragged off by his love, never to be seen again. You’ll note that this is a fairly ambiguous ending, but I think she probably just ate him.

And that, friends, is the jorōgumo. I’m not sure why Japanese monsters are always so freaky, but here we are.