Loading this page…
Return homePlease wait while the next page arrives.
Bestiary of Cryptids & Legendary CreaturesTsuchigumo is a spider spirit of Japanese Noh drama that takes a monk’s shape and binds its enemies in white threads.
Also recorded as 土蜘蛛, Earth Spider, Ground Spider
An unfamiliar monk approaches the sick warrior’s pillow. Asked his name, he begins a poem about a spider. The patient takes up the reference, but the stranger keeps coming closer. [1]
Read the manuscriptTsuchigumo means earth or ground spider. In the anonymous Noh play of that name, it is a spirit able to approach a warrior in human form and overwhelm armed men with binding threads. Its first disguise is modest: an unknown monk visiting a sickbed. Its later appearance comes with a declaration of hostility to the ruler, spoken from a refuge the pursuers have begun to destroy. [1]
The older political name referred to people. Historian Satō Makoto explains tsuchigumo as a hostile label for local chiefs or groups resisting Yamato authority. He questions whether descriptions of their bodies and supposed cave-dwelling habits were fashioned from the name itself. These are the conquerors’ representations of human opponents, distinct from the later stage monster. [6]
Kochō, a woman serving Minamoto no Raikō, brings medicine prescribed by the court’s medical officer. She asks the attendant to announce her. The warrior’s opening lament likens his life to water bubbles forming and dissolving; his suffering cannot be understood by others. When Kochō is admitted, he says he has grown weaker since the previous day and now awaits his end. She urges him to remember how often treatment succeeds. He has tried different remedies, but pain consumes his attention and blurs the distinction between night and day. [1]
Later, a monk appears and asks how he feels. Raikō challenges the stranger’s identity and his presence at such an hour. The visitor answers with part of an old poem about a spider whose behaviour foretells a beloved person’s arrival. Raikō takes up the spider reference while questioning the figure’s advance. The exchange becomes an assault: innumerable threads are cast around his body, constricting him and adding to his suffering. [1]
Recognizing an uncanny attacker, Raikō draws Hizamaru from beside his pillow. He cuts at the creature and continues to strike as it turns away. His shout accompanies its disappearance. The weapon is already within reach of the weakened man. He does not have to find the strength for a journey before meeting his enemy; the attack has entered the room where he receives his care. [1]
Hitorimusha, a warrior in Raikō’s service, hears the shout and rushes in. Raikō calls him close and recounts the late visitor, the poem and the transformation into a spider about seven shaku in size. Shaku is a traditional Japanese unit of length. He describes the threads thrown over him and the creature vanishing under his blows. Crediting the blade’s virtue, he announces that Hizamaru will henceforth be called Kumokiri, the Spider-Cutter.
The play moves between a residence in the capital and an old mound associated with Mount Katsuragi. The opening room contains the arrangements of a household: an attendant announces a woman bringing medicine, and the patient calls her close enough to speak about his condition. The later scene replaces these careful exchanges with a military challenge. The location changes, but so does the way an arrival is announced: the warrior outside the mound calls out his name and purpose. [1]
Noh scholar Masuda Shōzō identifies the play’s source as the Sword chapter associated with the Tale of the Heike. All five Noh schools retain it in their repertoires. [5]
The disguise first fails through behaviour. A supposed monk will not identify himself, keeps advancing after Raikō’s challenge, and answers a practical question with a poem. Then the threads turn that unsettling exchange into physical restraint. The patient’s subsequent report supplies the spider’s enormous size; the first encounter lets the audience experience his uncertainty before hearing him give it a name and a measure. [1]
Kuniyoshi’s 1843 triptych offers a different visual scale. In the MFA impression, a many-eyed spider form looms above the reclining figure on the right. A mass of fantastic beings fills the dark background, while two retainers play at a go board in the central sheet. The foreground’s composed human activity and the crowded shapes behind it occupy the same house without becoming the Noh play’s final battle. [8]
The thread attack survives the loss of disguise. At the bed it constricts a man already weak; at the mound it catches the arms and legs of warriors arriving in force. Knowing what the enemy is does not prevent them from falling. The creature’s other powers are less complete. It disappears under Raikō’s blows but leaves blood behind. Concealment fails because the wound has made its movement visible to the people who come after it. [1]
The old mound is a refuge with material defences. The company has to turn its stones and break it open while fire and water issue from within. The spider then identifies itself with years spent at Mount Katsuragi. Its assertion of a past in that place meets the warriors’ claim that the ruler owns the soil and trees. Residence and authority become opposing grounds for possession. The play allows the hidden occupant to speak, but grants the armed intruders the victory. [1]
Reider describes a separate fourteenth-century picture-scroll story: Raikō and his companion Tsuna follow a floating skull to a ruined mansion, where a beautiful woman attacks. Her blood leads them to a giant spider. They kill it, discover victims’ skulls inside, bury them and burn the den. The sickbed play and this haunted-house adventure share a pursuit, but give its beginning different companions, disguises and dangers. [4]
The Noh poem changes the meaning of a familiar sign. A spider foretelling the arrival of someone beloved could promise a welcome. The stranger uses that verse while approaching a man who does not recognize him. The poem helps to identify the visitor’s nature without making his presence welcome; the answer to Raikō’s question brings him closer to danger. [1]
Hitorimusha argues that an enemy cannot legitimately dwell in the ruler’s land. The spider answers that it means to obstruct the reign. Their exchange makes the battle a political one without leaving the creature’s hostility for a narrator to explain afterward. The company’s appeal to divine protection also belongs to its argument: military victory, sovereign possession and religious legitimacy are voiced together as the blades close in. [1]
A more intimate conflict begins with Kochō. She answers the patient’s despair by urging him to continue treatment. The monk later asks about the same suffering before using his proximity to attack. Concern and predation enter through similar words, and Raikō cannot initially tell what the second visitor wants. His bed is both the centre of a caring household and the place where those protections fail. [1]
The web’s theatrical force has its own history. The National Noh Theatre explains that a Meiji-period development wound fine paper around a lead core, allowing the white threads to fly spectacularly across the stage. Masuda also distinguishes the strange mask used for the first appearance in Kurokawa Noh from the unmasked face used by the five main schools. The same disguised visitor can therefore confront audiences with quite different faces. [3][5]
Kabuki gave the visitor a name. The encyclopedia’s separately credited Kabuki account records Kawatake Mokuami’s adaptation at Tokyo’s Shintomi theatre in June 1881, first performed by Onoe Kikugorō V. Its monk is Chichū. The account singles out his description of severe religious training and the combat after Raikō wounds him as performance highlights. The adaptation makes room for the disguised figure’s own speech before the fighting displays his other nature. [5]
The British Museum’s curatorial commentary discusses a political reading of Kuniyoshi’s print: the sick Raikō evokes an ineffective shogun, and the surrounding beings evoke groups harmed by the Tenpō reforms. This attributed interpretation gives the monster-house image a reversal. Figures presented as an enemy’s frightening company can also be read as a population with grievances against government. [7]
Reider proposes that Kochō herself is another form of the spider, connecting her with the picture scroll’s beautiful woman and the bedside poem. The Noh sequence does not openly show that transformation. Her reading leaves a disturbing question inside the apparently reassuring opening: has the patient already admitted his enemy before the stranger comes to his pillow? [4]
The Japanese play supplies the bedside encounter, sword naming and pursuit. The bilingual Story Paper supports comparison with a modern edited presentation. Reider discusses the scroll, Sword chapter and Kochō; the encyclopedia authors distinguish political naming and performance history. Theatre and museum accounts document paper threads, Kabuki and Kuniyoshi’s print.
Anonymous Noh playwright; Nonomura Kaizō as edition editor · 1928 Nihon Meicho Zenshū edition; public primary-text transcription via UTAHI and Mikumano
Complete play from Kochō’s opening through the warriors’ return; original edition pp. 580–582, transcription markers 580 a–582 c
The account follows a public transcription of the Japanese play; the printed edition has not been independently collated.
Checked 2026-10-11
the-noh.com editorial department · the-noh.com; Caliber Cast
Complete 12-page PDF: English play pp. 1–10, synopsis/performance table p. 11, Japanese synopsis/table/credits p. 12
The publisher describes this script as an edited compilation that may differ from individual performances.
Checked 2026-10-11
Japan Arts Council educational editorial team · Japan Arts Council; National Noh Theatre
Entire public play introduction: bedside attack, blood trail/mound, paper-thread performance history
Checked 2026-10-11
Noriko T. Reider · Asian Ethnology 72(1), 2013, pp. 55–83; Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture
Full scholarly analysis pp. 55–68; beginning of translated scroll p. 69
The Sword chapter and earlier scholarship are discussed through Reider rather than independently consulted.
Artwork
Select a folio to enlarge it. Its caption describes the account, landscape or artistic choices behind the image.
Manuscript checked 2026-10-13. Artistic interpretations © Scott Schubr / Luminary Oddities.
Return to the Bestiary ↑Hitorimusha sees blood where the sword struck and proposes following it to destroy the enemy. Raikō orders him to go quickly. The retainer and his company reach the mound, declaring that the country’s soil and trees belong to their ruler. Hitorimusha announces himself and challenges whatever hostile being is concealed there. His call to break the mound encourages the men, who overturn its stones. [1]
Fire and water issue from within, but the warriors continue the demolition. From the rocks the spirit appears and identifies itself as the earth spider long associated with Katsuragi. It says it approached Raikō to obstruct the ruler’s reign and protests the attempt to take its life. Hitorimusha answers that it has harmed his lord while living in the ruler’s land. He renews the threat to destroy it. [1]
The spider gathers and throws more threads, tangling the pursuers’ arms and legs until they fall. The company regains its attack, invoking the divine protection and rule of the country. They surround the creature and press it with their swords. When it appears to fear their gleaming blades, they exploit the opening, strike repeatedly and sever its head. The warriors return rejoicing to the capital. [1]
Checked 2026-10-11
増田正造 (Masuda Shōzō), Noh entry; 松井俊諭, Kabuki continuation · Shogakukan; Nihon Daihyakka Zensho, reproduced by Kotobank
Complete credited Noh entry and separately credited Kabuki continuation, Kotobank lines 42–50
Checked 2026-10-11
佐藤信 (Satō Makoto) · Heibonsha; revised Sekai Daihyakka Jiten, reproduced by Kotobank
Complete separately credited ancient-history entry, Kotobank lines 64–67
Checked 2026-10-11
British Museum curatorial team; comment signed TC · British Museum
Complete indexed collection description and substantial curatorial comment, object 2008,3037.20906
The political interpretation is the museum’s attributed reading, not a recorded declaration by Kuniyoshi.
Checked 2026-10-11
MFA catalogue team; Utagawa Kuniyoshi as image-maker · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Full visible record and whole triptych image; accession 11.39572 a–c; 1843; publisher Ibaya Senzaburō
Checked 2026-10-11 · Catalogue metadata consulted; underlying text not verified here.