Jorōgumo

Concluding it was only a dream, Magoroku looked around and noticed a small joro spider that had made a tight web around the eaves.

[3] At the Jōren Falls of Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture, allegedly lives the jorōgumo mistress of the waterfall.

Then one day, a visiting woodcutter who was a stranger to this all tried to cut a tree and mistakenly dropped his favorite axe into the basin.

[4] In another version, the woodcutter was pulled outside by an invisible string and his corpse was found floating the next day at the Jōren Falls.

The oshō of a nearby temple suspected that the woodcutter was "taken in by the jorōgumo mistress of the waterfall", and accompanied him to chant a sutra.

Now knowing that the woman was actually a jorōgumo, the woodcutter still persisted and tried to gain permission for marriage from the mountain's tengu.

[1][7] The jorōgumo of Kashikobuchi was worshipped for warding off water disasters, and even now there are monuments and torii that are engraved with "Myōhō Kumo no Rei" (妙法蜘蛛之霊).

She kills female musicians, takes on their likeness, and performs in clubs to feast and mate with unsuspecting males.

A very young Jorōgumo child is the focus of a one-episode OVA made in 2012 by Toshihisa Kaiya and Daishirou Tanimura, titled Wasurenagumo (Li'l Spider-Girl).

Many years ago she was sealed away in the book by her own caretaker – the priest who defeated her monstrous mother but had no heart to kill the yokai child.

In the novel Magic for Nothing by Seanan McGuire (book 6 in the InCryptid series), a Jorōgumo disguised as a human performer is traveling with a carnival, feeding on locals.

In Demon Slayer, Spider Demon (Mother) (蜘蛛鬼「母」, Kumo Oni (Haha)) has the design of a woman with a short, curvaceous physique and voluptuous figure, and the ability to control her victims using her threads, which are attached by small white and red spiders, pulling inspiration from the Jorōgumo.

In One Piece, Black Maria, a member of the Beast Pirates, has eaten the Spider-Spider Fruit: Rosamygale Grauvogeli Model and modified it for only her lower half to change into a large spider.

In ' 'Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth' ' The story mission "Living Doll, Dead Person" centers around people being turned into ultra-realistic dolls manufactured by Jorōgumo Co. Alma Katsu’s 2022 novel, “The Fervor”, takes place partly in a Japanese Internment Camp in Idaho where a mysterious illness is befalling prisoners.

When the protagonists go to investigate, a man is brutally murdered, hung, and his corpse entangled in a massive spider's web.