“Tsuchigumo” (“earth spider”) was first a derogatory historical term for renegade local clans who would not submit to the Yamato court during the Asuka, Nara and early Heian periods, and it is also the name of a spider-like yōkai in Japanese folklore. It appears in ancient records such as the Nihon Shoki, the Kojiki and various Fudoki. The label was laid on those who showed no allegiance to imperial authority.
In the Tale of the Heike line of the Yorimitsu legend, Minamoto no Yorimitsu, suffering a strange illness, encounters and slays a giant tsuchigumo, a tale carried by the fourteenth-century picture scroll Tsuchigumo Sōshi. That a name reframed human outsiders as monsters in the ground connects to our world, where what gets called uncanny rests with the one observing.