Jorōgumo is a type of yōkai, a creature of Japanese folklore. It can shapeshift into a beautiful woman, so the kanji that represent its actual meaning are 女郎蜘蛛 (lit. 'woman-spider'). In Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, it is depicted as a spider woman manipulating small fire-breathing spiders.

In the ''Tonoigusa'', a young woman appearing to be about 19 or 20 years old who appears to a youthful warrior (bushi). She tells the child she carries "Him there surely is your father. Go forth, and be embraced". The warrior sees through her ploy and, realizing she is a yōkai, strikes her with his sword, making her flee to the attic. The next day, they find a dead jorōgumo one or two shaku long in the attic, along with numerous bodies of people that the jorōgumo had devoured.

The ''Taihei Hyakumonogatari'', relates the story of Magoroku dozing in his veranda in Takada, Sakushu (now Okayama Prefecture). As he was about to doze off, a woman in her 50s appeared. She said that her daughter had taken a fancy to Magoroku and invited him to her estate. There, a 16- or 17-year-old girl asked him to marry her. Already married, he declined, but the girl persisted. She claimed that he had almost killed her mother two days before, and yet she still visited him, and surely he could not let her feelings come to nothing. Bewildered, Magoroku fled. The house disappeared as he ran and he found himself back on his own porch. Magoroku's wife then assured him that he had been sleeping on the veranda the whole time. Concluding it was only a dream, Magoroku looked around and noticed a small jorō spider that had made a tight web around the eaves. Relieved, he recalled how he drove away a spider two days before.

At the Jōren Falls of Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture, allegedly lives the jorōgumo mistress of the waterfall. The local legend tells of a man who rested beside the waterfall basin when the jorōgumo tried to drag him into the waterfall by throwing webs around his leg. The man transferred the webbing around a tree stump, which was dragged into the falls instead of him.

In yet another version, the woodcutter fell in love with a woman he met at the waterfall. He visited her every day, but grew physically weaker each time. 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. When a spider thread reached out to the woodcutter, the oshō let out a thunderous yell, and the thread disappeared. 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. When the tengu denied him the woodcutter ran towards the waterfall, where he was entangled by spider threads and disappeared into the water.

*Gazu Hyakki Yagyō
*Taihei Hyakumonogatari
*Tonoigusa

*Jorōgumo can also refer to some species of spiders, such as the Nephila and Argiope spiders. Japanese-speaking entomologists use the katakana form of jorōgumo (ジョロウグモ) to refer exclusively to the spider species Trichonephila clavata, and this has been adopted into English as "Joro spider".
*In One Piece, [https://onepiece.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Maria 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. She is also a courtesan and musician who keeps many men captive.

*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jor%C5%8Dgumo Wikipedia]
*[https://comicvine.gamespot.com/jorogumo/4005-122289/ ComicVine]
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