Raiko on His Sickbed and a Thousand Threads — The Tale of the Earth Spider

The story of Minamoto no Raiko (also read Yorimitsu) and the tsuchigumo, or "earth spider," is a slightly unusual hero's tale. In his famous raid on Shuten-doji of Mount Oe, Raiko marches into the oni's mountain himself. Here, though, he's attacked while lying sick in bed. His enemy isn't a huge, rampaging beast but a faceless, mysterious monk who slips up to his pillow and throws threads at him. This different kind of monster-slaying tale went on to become a legend about a sword's name, a picture scroll, and a Noh play, and it has been retold for a very long time.

Two sides of the name "tsuchigumo"

First, a quick word about the name. "Tsuchigumo" appears in very old records such as the Nihon Shoki (the Chronicles of Japan) and the regional Fudoki gazetteers. There, it isn't a monster at all, but a name for local people who refused to obey the imperial court.

Over the centuries, the same name came to be used for a giant spider monster hiding in mountains and burial mounds. This article is about that second one: the tsuchigumo as a yokai.

The monk at the sickbed

Raiko's fight with the tsuchigumo appears in the "Tsurugi no Maki" (the Book of Swords), a chapter found in some versions of The Tale of the Heike, among other sources. The story goes roughly like this.

Raiko had fallen ill with a fever and had been bedridden for a long time. One night, an unknown monk crept up to his pillow and tried to bind him with a rope. Still lying down, Raiko grabbed the sword by his pillow and slashed. The monk fled, leaving a trail of blood behind.

Following the blood, Raiko's men came to an old burial mound. When they broke it open, they found a huge mountain spider inside, and they are said to have slain it.

The fun part of this story is the sword's name. Raiko's sword was originally called Hizamaru, "Knee Cutter," but after it cut the spider, it's said to have become known as Kumokiri, "Spider Cutter." By defeating a monster, the sword itself gained a new name and a story of its own.

A haunted house in the Tsuchigumo Zoshi scroll

Another famous version is the Tsuchigumo Zoshi, a picture scroll thought to date from the Kamakura period. In this one, Raiko isn't sick at all. With his retainer Watanabe no Tsuna, he goes chasing after something strange on his own.

The two arrive at an old mansion on the edge of the capital, where one weird-looking monster after another appears. Raiko and Tsuna refuse to back down and keep searching for the true culprit, until at last they find a giant spider and slay it. The scroll shows a great many skulls spilling out of the dead spider's body.

If the Tsurugi no Maki version is "a quiet, creepy story of a sleeping hero under attack," the scroll is "an adventure through a haunted house." Same spider, very different flavor.

The Noh play Tsuchigumo and its thousand threads

The version that made the story truly dazzling is the Noh play Tsuchigumo. Its plot is close to the Tsurugi no Maki: it opens with a suspicious monk appearing beside the sick Raiko.

The highlight, without question, is the spider's thread. When the spider spirit, the monk's true form, hurls its threads at Raiko, strands of thin white paper burst out in wide arcs. This is the staging known as "sensuji no ito," the thousand threads. In the second half, Raiko's retainer, a warrior called Hitori-musha, follows the blood trail to the spider's lair, and the spider spirit fights back, throwing its threads again and again. With every throw, the stage is covered in more and more white thread.

This staging was later taken up in kabuki as well, and the tsuchigumo still delights audiences today as a monster of the stage. You'll find its looks and legends on the tsuchigumo's Yokaipedia page, and Raiko's other great monster hunt in our story on Shuten-doji of Mount Oe.