"Earth spider", this term sounds quite scary, friends who like the second dimension may have heard this word, this is a kind of monster in the legend of Japan, Japan this country we know, folk "animism belief" is more extensive, and then popular culture developed, so some folk legends of the gods and monsters of the demon image is easy to be used in popular culture elements.
The same is true of the earth spider, which in Japanese legend is an unusually large spider that often haunts the mountains. He has a fierce personality, and often binds the people he sees with spider silk and takes them back to the cave dwelling to eat. Its eight legs, fangs, bristles, etc. are all sharp weapons that hurt people.
The image of the "earth spider" that circulates is a kind of large spider monster
However, the earth spider is not like some local yokai, may only be well-known in some places, "earth spider" legend is almost all over Japan, in the ancient capital of Japan, In a shrine in Katsugiyama, nara Prefecture, now Japan, there is a place of "sac mound", where the legend is sealed by the huge spider monster captured by Emperor Kammu, that is, the "earth spider".
However, as we all know, yokai do not exist, due to cognitive limitations in the era of underdeveloped science and technology, it is temporarily difficult for people to explain phenomena or things in science, so some things are called yokai, so how is the "earth spider" "evolved" into a yokai? The truth may come as a big surprise, in fact, "earth spider" does not refer to "spider monster", but to a kind of person!
If the real "earth spider" knew that the future generations had recorded themselves as such, it was estimated that they would have crawled out in anger
How can an "earth spider" be a human? Who is it? In fact, the "earth spider" refers to some local hao clans in ancient Japan who were reluctant to obey the Yamato regime. In fact, about the "earth spider", not only is it recorded in some biographies of Shiki, but also in the Japanese shoshi (of course, the Japanese shoshi is generally not very reliable) has mentioned: in the records of the "Ancient Chronicles" and the "Nihon Shoki", "earth spider" is written with the homonym "All Know Hisamu".
What exactly are these aboriginal Hao tribes? To put it this way, the Japanese archipelago today, with the exception of some indigenous peoples in Ryukyu and Hokkaido, can basically be considered to be the Yamato nation. Japan is an island country, so it is easy to misunderstand that this island country has always been a whole and has developed the Yamato nation.
In fact, this is not the case, Japan is actually quite large, the main part of the Yamato nation was initially limited to the southwest, and then the Eastern Expedition to the West to control the growing territory of the Japanese archipelago. Moreover, Japan has not always been a whole as we think, and the Japanese archipelago is actually fragmented by various mountain divisions, and there was no real centralization until after the Meiji Restoration.
Therefore, even if the Yamato court controlled a relatively large area, there were also land snakes in many corners, and some of these tribes were attacked, so they set up their base areas in some mountains, and these base areas were called "national nests", originally these ground snakes were "earth spiders", and later spread outrageously, and "earth spiders" became monsters. The "Sac Spider Tomb" just mentioned above may not actually be emperor Shenwu capturing the giant spider monster, but Emperor Shenwu conquering a very powerful tribe.
It may be a homophonic relationship, and later legend has it that the aborigines who hid in the mountains at odds with the Yamato court were transformed into monsters after death, that is, "earth spiders". In the Yamato Imperial Court's main history of the "Nihon Shoki", the earth spider is a discriminated nation, but in all parts of Japan, the earth spider is actually a people who are quite close to the people, after all, people are not some outsiders, and there are many exchanges with the people of the Yamato nation, but they do not obey the jurisdiction of the imperial court.
There are some Shinto shrines in Japan (Shintoism has a strong animistic characteristics and reflects the worldview of some ancient Japanese peoples), for example, in Suwa City, Nagano Prefecture, there are HandChang Shrine and Foot Long Shrine. The gods worshipped there are said to be subordinates of the suwa gods, with two giants with long hands and long feet. In other words, some "earth spiders" are also worshipped as local gods.
Moreover, in The Japanese records, after the Nara period, the earth spider never appeared on the stage of Japanese history, which is also in line with the historical law, after the Nara era, the Yamato king's power became relatively powerful, and there were fewer and fewer disobedient mountain people in the ruling area.
Conquered some small tribes everywhere, and was rumored to have defeated the "Earth Spider Youkai"
Legend has it that the "earth spider" did not survive by plundering the property of the farming people at first, but only by hunting, but sometimes quarreled with the peasants and attacked the farmland. Later, the agricultural peoples expropriated the earth spider on a large scale, and the Yamato court brought horses from the Korean Peninsula, and the earth spider never saw a horse. As a result, they were defeated by cavalry, who ran far faster than themselves. After the earth spiders surrendered, the patriarch ordered them to reclaim the wasteland and become farmers. And the barren mountains and wilderness where the earth spider used to run has become a rural area.
In other words, these tribes were also included under the rule of the imperial court, and over time they were also integrated into the Yamato nation. As for some of the unruly places in the north and south, there are not "earth spiders", but "bear raids" and "Ezo" (the ancient Japanese name for the aborigines of southern Kyushu and Hokkaido).
This is actually very much in line with the normal laws of history, after the agricultural people are strong, the process of conquering the surrounding mountain people is often like this.
Interestingly, after the "earth spider" was mistaken for a yokai, there was another kind of natural enemy in Japanese legend, which was another legendary yokai, the prawn toad, which was said to be a huge toad that would swallow the "earth spider". As mentioned in the picture above, it is estimated that the "earth spiders" know that the future generations will say so about them, and they will be angry and climb out again.
Author: Yun Fan