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Japan is home to some of the world's most extreme martial arts.
Tumbling wrestlers, raging swordsmen, stick thumping assassins.
These martial traditions are the legacy of samurai warriors.
The samurai also created another martial art that is unknown to the
rest of the world, the combat sport of spider fighting
Each year the world's largest arachnid fight club meets for its annual show
down, the Kumo Gassen.
If you thought spiders were creatures to be feared wait till you see the
clash of Japan's samurai spiders.
It's said there's nowhere in the world that you are ever more than a meter
away from a spider.
Well in a city like Tokyo a metropolis of 12 million inhabitants, spiders are
even closer than you think.
Spiders are creeping into Tokyo's pop culture scene in many guises and the
city is full of eccentric and colorful spider lovers.
Living in Tokyo's urban jungle is a real-life Spiderman, Peter Yawata.
Ever since childhood, spiders have been Yawata San's great passion.
He now makes his living working at an arachnologist.
Yawata dreams of a world where one day humans and spiders will live together
in harmony.
Peter Yawata lives in the outskirts of Tokyo with his wife and two daughters.
They also share the space with 50 spiders
Since I was little kid, I always love spider, everything about spider
fascinates me.
Yawata's great obsession is the tarantula.
These eight legged roommates might not be everyone's idea of creature
comfort, but for Yawata San they are more than just a hobby, he breeds
tarantulas for a living.
His youngest daughter Sawah is also crazy about these hairy houseguests.
She'd much rather play with spiders than dolls.
This year Yawata has decided to expand his horizons and take up the sport of
spider fighting, a martial art practice not with tarantulas but in
orb-weaving species known in Japan as kogane gumo
Those who train the spiders for combat call it the samurai spider.
Yawata hopes to train his samurai spiders to compete at the annual
spider contest in the country town of Kajiki.
Kajiki has the biggest arachnid fight club in Japan, so the competition will
be fierce.
So they grew into brawny little fighters, Yawata is raising his
spiders on a power diet.
My strategy for the little spider to become stronger, first I try to feed
them quickly, so that they can lay egg early enough at least once before the
battle in Kajiki.
Like miniature bodybuilders, he feeds them crickets that have been raised on
protein gel.
He even sprays the spider's web with sports energy drink to supplement
their diet but he won't say what's in his secret formula.
I won't tell all the secrets.
The city spiders will be facing tough competition when they meet the giant
spiders of southern Japan.
They will travel from Tokyo to the town of Kajiki which is the home of
the Kumo Gassen, the oldest and the most famous spider fighting contest in
Japan.
In the subtropical climate of Kajiki, a female spider may grow to an
enormous size.
Only the female competes in the Kumo Gassen, for the female samurai is a
natural assassin.
She abseils through space on her silk dragline and scales walls with the
stealth of a ninja.
A spider may spend days in ambush silently upside down, then pounce like
a hairy devil on any creature that crosses her path.
She has a secret weapon for luring insects to her web, a thick band of
silk called the stabilimenta.
Some believe this ribbon like silk reflects ultraviolet light which
attracts flying insects like bees to honey pot.
The energy absorbed by the stretching silk means the insect neither breaks
nor bounces off the web.
There is no way from escaping this gooey trampoline, a thousands of
sticky silk droplets ensnare the victim.
The hungry spider spins a straitjacket to subdue her meal.
As the grasshopper gives up the struggle, the spider moves in to
administer a lethal injection.
While the venom paralyzes her victim, chemicals from the stomach juices
begin to break down the insect, so the spider sucking stomach can pump up the
liquid meal.
Despite having eight eyes, she can't see much instead she uses sensory
hairs to interpret the world through vibration sensations.
Get.
As the spider grows fat on her summer diet of bugs and crickets, the people
of Kajiki headed to the rice paddies for the annual spider hunt.
Locals look for the best samurai spiders, those with the biggest webs
and the longest legs.
These arachnids will be trained as wrestlers for the Kumo Gassen, the
local fighting contest.
But Zen masters the spider fighting the location where they collect their
own warrior spiders is a fiercely guarded secret that they share with
nobody.
Especially when there's an outsider amongst them.
Peter Yawata, our spider-man from Tokyo has come to Kajiki with his
daughter Sawah.
They are here to collect eight legged opponents for training against their
city spiders.
The local country folk aren't quite sure how to take him as he's new at
the sport, a rookie and a city slicker to boot.
Yawata San maybe an outsider amongst the local spider fighters, but they
are not writing him off just yet.
After all, his experience with tarantulas means he may have a few
tricks up his sleeve.
Samurai spiders have all the techniques to make them legendary
warriors, stealth, speed and a killer instinct.
When they fight at the upcoming Kumo Gassen, it will be a clash of
cannibalistic wrestlers.
Through martial arts, the samurai spirits lives on in Japan.
The way of the warrior, the laws of Bushido extend beyond sword play into
all aspects of the warrior's life following a code of courage, honor and
discipline.
The way at the warrior also extends to the sport of spider fighting, a
martial sport that's been practiced for more than four centuries.
The town of Kajiki is home to the samurai spider.
There are so many spiders here that locals call it spider town.
Every year Kajiki hosts the world's largest spider fight, the Kumo Gassen.
With the prize fight approaching, the arachnid athletes are now in training.
Inside Kajiki homes, spiders become invited houseguests.
This may seem unusual, but in Kajiki there's a good reason for keeping
spiders behind closed doors.
For training samurai spiders is the covert operation.
By having spiders inside, locals are able to keep their athletes under
wraps, away from the prying eyes of competitors.
The spiders are encouraged to set up their webs in the corner of each room
while the trainers prepare their warriors in practice tournaments.
Handled gently they rarely bite their owners, but release their full fury on
their opponent.
While a bite to human may be as painful as a bee sting, to another
spider the venom is deadly.
Trainers are careful to make sure the warriors don't injure one another, for
spider fighting is no blood sport, instead arachnid athletes are selected
for their skillful techniques.
The rules of spider fighting are straightforward, a spider wins her
fight if it drops its opponent in silk, bites the other spider on the
behind or severs the silk dragline of the other.
Legatani is a Kajiki local who has built a spider's den on the side of
his home.
Here he's been raising warrior spiders for the Kumo Gassen for more than 60
years
I had my spiders in house for a longtime but our room gets dirty from
spider droppies, and my wife and my children have a hard time cleaning up
after them.
They didn't like them in the house so they made me bring them outside.
My wife doesn't really like spiders, she's given up on me.
A spider's brain is the size of grain of sand so it's unlikely an arachnid
will learn any techniques in training with the master.
But for the trainer there's a chance to assess the spider's strength and
willingness to fight.
Trainers must be careful to make sure their athletes are not injured during
the battle.
A samurai spiders need to be in peak form for the approaching Kumo Gassen.
Those who follow the cult of spider fighting protects their knowledge like
well guarded family secrets.
It's a sport where outsiders are usually not welcome, but this year the
locals of the spider town will face a new kind of competitor whether they
like it or not.
Having returned to Tokyo, Yawata San is preparing his stable of samurai
spiders for the approaching Kumo Gassen.
He knows that to take on the large spiders of the Kagoshima region, it
will be a battle of David versus Goliath, so his best chance is to
favor speed and skill over size and strength.
So he's come up with a cunning plan.
So this year I also collected Kagoshima spider not for the entry but
for training.
So my spider will be trained with the bigger Kagoshima spiders at home, so
that maybe some of them would already defeat the Kagoshima spider.
Sawah keep score as her father test his spiders against the rival they've
collected from Kagoshima.
[speaking in foreign language]
Well, the Kagoshima spiders actually really big and strong, so it may be
difficult for Tokyo spider.
I have to find out those with special techniques like good at biting or good
at cutting thread of the other spiders.
So I'll try to choose one of those who are most skillful.
One particular spider shows promise as she's quick to draw her web.
Her name is the Bride.
Her veil of silk makes her skill the tying up the opposition.
But the other spiders still have a long way to go before they can match
the superior strength at the Kagoshima spider.
[speaking in foreign language]
Keeping a house full of spiders may seem like an oddity to many people,
but in Japan creepy crawlies are often kept as household pets.
Considering the size of apartments in Tokyo, invertebrate pets are good
choice as they don't need to be taken out for exercise and they can be kept
in tiny spaces.
Tucked away in the back streets of Tokyo, exotic pet stores sell a motley
array of creatures as companions for city slickers.
Peter Yawata supplies baby tarantulas to stores where arachnids are becoming
fashionable amongst collectors.
Overcoming their phobias, young Tokyoites are learning that slimy
scaly slippery pets are perfect for high-rise living
The Japanese have always been usually fond of insects.
Singing crickets have been kept as pets throughout the Far East for
thousands of years.
Japan's affection for spiders also goes back hundreds of years as spiders
were once associated with matters of the heart.
Women would write poems about spiders to their sweethearts as a way of
alluding to secret love and to be visited by a spider in the morning was
a sign of good luck.
Another ancient custom involved placing a spider in the box to spin a
web, a fortune teller could then predict a person's future by reading
the silken weaving.
Whether a spider's web can reveal the future is unlikely, but it does have
some miraculous properties all the same.
When it comes time to build a web, spiders don't actually spin, they
squeeze.
The silk starts inside her in liquid form.
Her spinnerets acts like a glue gun as she squeezes out the sticky cord,
attaching each thread with a little wiggle to the frame lines of her web.
Just a teaspoon of silk is enough to weave 10,000 webs.
Moving around on tiptoes, first she embroiders a dry spiral of silk, then
she reverse its direction and lays down a gooey spiral.
In just 10 minutes a spider can spool out half a mile of thread.
Over the centuries people have tried to farms spiders for their silk, yet
they have always failed because spiders are territorial and have
cannibalistic tendencies.
Instead the silk we use today is harvested from communal vegetarians.
Silkworms live happily together in their hundreds and thousands.
The Chinese were the first to extract silk from cocoons and kept it a
closely guarded secret for over two and a half thousand years.
So prized was the secret of the silk cocoon that the penalty for revealing
its origin was death.
Legend has it that in the 5th century a Chinese princess smuggled the eggs
of the silkworm out of the country by concealing them in her hair.
Once the secret was revealed, Japan began its great love affair with silk.
Today Japan is one of the world's largest producers of silk.
It takes 2010 silkworms to make just one kimono.
While the fiber is easier to extract from cocoons, spider silk is far
stronger.
It may look fragile, however each filament has a tensile strength
greater than steel.
In fact engineers have calculated that a rope made of spider silk the
thickness of a pencil could stop a jet plane in mid air.
Warriors have known the strength of silk for hundreds of years and the
spider and its sticky trap feature in their famous folktale of the samurai
who battled the demon spider Tsuchigumo.
Caught by a giant web in the spider's lair, the samurai fight for their
lives only by slaying the spider with the sword do they escape from the jaws
of the demon.
But the samurai and the spider share more than just folktale, for it's
believed the samurai warriors originated the sport of spider
fighting.
Local laws says the tradition began in the 16th century when a Japanese
warlord named Shimazu Yoshihiro instructed his troops to host spider
fights the night before battle.
Spider fights were held as a way of rallying the troops for war.
The first spider contest is believed to have occurred in 1595, before the
samurai cross the waters to take on the Korean army.
Four centuries of turbulent history including civil wars, volcanic
eruptions and the bombing of nearby Nagasaki and still the Kumo Gassen
persists.
In 1945 when Japan surrendered to the Allies, the first event held in Kajiki
was the Kumo Gassen.
Despite the devastation to the town, people gathered together to continue
their spider tradition.
The event was even attended by the occupying American forces.
While the Kumo Gassen may seem like a strange event to outsiders, the
Japanese have a number of other eccentric festivals.
Every summer throngs of men chant and heave their way through the streets
dragging deities.
The animistic beliefs of Japan's Shinto religion are expressed in a
colorful and lively spirit.
These parades originated as a communal prayer for a bountiful harvest, yet
overtime they have become a raucous excuse for a party.
Japan has maintained many such pagan celebrations from the Middle Ages and
it's this reverence for the past that preserves the unique cultural heritage
of small towns like Kajiki.
The town is now gearing up for its most unusual annual festival, the Kumo
Gassen.
Local children are given the chance to compete in their own spider fighting
contest, a week before the main event.
Already some strong contenders are emerging for the war of the spiders.
Will it be a local spider or a city slicker that will take out this year's
title?
Can Yawata city spiders pack the same punch as their country cousins?
With anticipation rising, the countdown to the battle begins.
Under the smoking volcanoes of Japan's Southern Islands, samurai spiders grow
to an immense size.
The fertile soils, the sub-tropical warmth and the abundance of insects
make this an arachnid paradise.
Only the occasional dust fall from the volcano interrupts the peace and
quiet.
But even then, spiders adapt to changing conditions rapidly.
In fact spiders are some of the first creatures to colonize the slopes of a
volcano after an eruption.
Sakurajima is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, averaging
between 100 to 200 explosions every year.
But the last major eruption in 1914 was accompanied by a devastating
earthquake.
For the people of the region, the--rumblings of the earth are in
everyday part of life as steam from thermal pools swirls up through the
township.
Despite the rumblings of Sakurajima, life goes on.
For the spiderman of Kajiki, the schooling of warriors continues.
Kajiki has dozens of expert trainers who all have their own method of
raising spiders.
Breeding a champion only comes after decades of experience, once the
trainer has learnt the signs and secrets of a spider.
The harem of female spin their webs inside the spider tent and are handfed
beetles by their keepers.
By breeding from last year's champions, these master trainers raise
bigger stronger arachnid athletes.
The spiders with the best odds of winning are placed on a starvation
diet in the lead-up to the Kumo Gassen.
Fighting on an empty stomach makes them hungry for victory.
To spur the spiders into battle, a pinch of sand is sprinkled on the
wrestlers.
Kajiki fighters typically train their warriors against smaller spiders to
build that confidence and give them a taste for winning.
Many trainers believe spiders that have laid their eggs are stronger
fighters.
They say the maternal instinct makes them more aggressive.
But the trainers have to keep a close watch, for the female has the ability
to injure or even kill her opponent with a deadly bite.
Women wrestling match becomes dangerous for one of the competitors,
blowing on the spiders will force them apart.
But there is no intervention in the wild and that's where our femme fatale
shows her greatest cannibalistic tendencies.
The massive size difference between the sexes makes spider sex risky
business.
The female can be five times larger than the male which makes him easy
pickings.
The advantages of being small mean the mini males are quick to maneuver.
However each time a male goes courting, he takes his life in his
hands.
To complete the task, he may have to commit hara-kiri, a ritual suicide.
Males find mates by tracking airborne pheromones released by matured
females.
Once he locates her web, he must first establish his identity very, very
carefully.
He communicates his *** intent by strumming on the female's web in a
spider's version of Morse code.
Plucking the silken strings, he serenades his sweetheart.
With jaws sucking on her prey, the male makes his move.
First he touches, then he steps onto the female and drums directly on her
abdomen to make sure she receives his message loud and clear.
She tolerates his pursuing for sex but only to a point.
Although she has shrugged off his advances, the male is insistent.
In a spilt second she turns on him.
He has escaped his kamikaze mission, but its costs him an arm and a leg.
As she wraps up his limbs with the rest of her meal, the male staggers
away.
This six legged lover is lucky to have his life.
Her message is loud and clear, don't mess with a samurai spider especially
during dinner.
In the hill surrounding Tokyo, Peter Yawata studies the wild population of
orb weavers in the paddy fields.
They call me a Spiderman in Satoyamo.
Sometimes I'm--I encountered the local people or the farmers while I'm doing
the spider research here in the paddy fields.
I always explain that I'm doing this for the preservation for the
environment and spiders are very good indicator of the good nature.
Well, that surprises people, some people never thought of spiders play
such important role in ecosystem, but some other says, okay, that's fine, my
paddy fields, I don't use lots of insecticides, that's why you get there
lots of spiders.
So, you get along, they have been very good, you know, in discussion.
Here in the temperate climate of Tokyo, the spiders are smaller than
the giant spiders of Kajiki, but the role they play as pest exterminators
is equally important.
So that's why I thank the people, you should learn to love spiders and
that's how the farmers thought, thought spiders are important.
Look closely and the paddy field is crawling with hundreds of different
spiders from the web weavers to the tiny jumping spiders.
The paddy is alive with eight legged critters.
Like the samurai spiders, jumping spiders are also fierce fighters.
Their elaborate form of combat takes place between males.
A fight can last from a few seconds to a minute or more and it ends with one
of the combatants making a run for it.
So impressive is the fighting that children in Japan picked these
miniature creatures against one another in spider wrestling matches.
Jumping spiders compete by pushing and shoving like a pair of midget sumo
wrestlers.
In the sport of sumo, the wrestlers collide with an earth shattering
wallop.
It is a brief but spectacular show of strength.
Likewise, the encounters of tiny arachnid wrestles can be equally
dramatic, just on a miniature scale.
Both have their ritual display of strength before the contest begins,
arm moving and leg lifting, then the fighters charge forward and collide.
Locked against one another, the wrestlers try to throw their weight
against their opponent to bulldoze them out of the ring.
Even though jumping spiders are similar in size to a grain of rice,
their wrestling is just as impressive as the big boys.
Spider games once used to be widespread throughout Japan, but as
cities take over the countryside, spider fighting is fast becoming a
thing of the past.
Only Kajiki is turning the tide where the cult of the spider is stronger
than ever.
The town's now gearing up for the world's largest spider event, the Kumo
Gassen.
Back in Tokyo Yawata San prepares to leaves for his big trip south to
Kajiki.
His daughter Sawah has helped him cherry-pick the best fighters for the
Kumo Gassen.
His hopes rest with the spider he's called the Bride.
As in out of town Yawata San knows the competition will be tough, but with
the well wishes of his family and his warrior spiders raring to go, the
journey begins.
Yawata and his spiders head south on a rising moon.
Kajiki is more than a thousand kilometers away, but its worlds apart
from the modern metropolis of Tokyo.
Yawata maybe street-smart but will his modern methods stand up to the locals
advantage?
The reputation of his Tokyo spiders hangs in the balance.
The morning of the Kumo Gassen and 150 enthusiastic trainers have registered
to pick their spiders against one another in the knockout competition.
To enter the Kumo Gassen, each player must have three spiders in their
stable.
If a spider wins three matches in a row, it moves into the championship
division, if it loses, it's out of the tournament.
Circle signify a win, the cross shows the spider's been knocked out.
Standing out from the crowd is our Spiderman from Tokyo, Peter Yawata.
As a self-taught spider fighter, he can't shake off that feeling of being
outside the local scene.
Everybody in Kajiki has their own little secret.
Some big secrets about how to get the big strong kogane spider and they
don't talk about that each other.
In that sense I still remain as an outsider.
His Tokyo spiders also look a little out of place compared to the huge
spiders of Kajiki.
Before the fights begin, there's a spider beauty pageant.
The judges look for a well-proportioned figure, slender
limbs and a bright luster.
They decide on this beauty for her leggy looks and she is crowned queen
of the arachnids.
As the crowd builds, the battle begins.
500 fights will take place on the center stage before the winner is
determined.
The split-second action is judged by the keen eye of an expert referee as
the M.C. calls the score.
The fights are fast and furious with each spider going three rounds on the
stick against her opponent.
If a spider wins all three rounds, she's granted entry to the
championship battle.
Like watching miniature horse racing, the audience follows the action and
cheers their favorite spiders on.
Yawata San also watches his competition carefully.
Local fighters here, their behavior during the battle is quite varied.
Some are very much seriously looking at the possible competitors and some
others are more relieve only just after they saw the sequence of their
match.
They already are confident for maybe at least two win or three win.
So it's also very interesting to see those participants.
The main event draws the greatest attention as the crowds line up to
capture the best view of the wrestling spiders.
Next up is Yawata's turn.
He's been picked against one of the strongest trainers, a local named
Makato San.
Despite his young age, Makato was been a strong competitor for Kumo Gassen
for several years now.
To get a sense of how the Tokyo spiders will stand up to the
competition, Yawata will first fight one of his smaller warriors.
Things begin well as both spiders are raring to go.
But the bulk of the Kagoshima rival proves to be too much for the little
spider to handle.
But Yawata is not giving up hope yet.
If he's to have a chance against the Kagoshima monsters, he'll have to
bring out his secret weapon.
Here comes the Bride.
The Kumo Gassen is no place for arachnid phobes as the world's largest
gathering of spider fighters meet in Kajiki for the annual spider contest.
The event draws all types of spectators who have come to see the
clash of the samurai spiders.
Peter Yawata, a rookie from Tokyo has saved his best spider for the final
fight.
Yawata has chosen this warrior because she specializes in lassoing her
opponent with silk.
She's called the Bride.
Once more he has to face off against the local Makato San who annihilated
his previous Tokyo spider.
But the Bride is ready for her big day.
Yawata is confident she will have her fight wrapped up in no time.
The referee holds them back.
The two fighters size up.
Sixteen eyes stare each other down.
The Bride squeezes up masses of silk in attempt to tie up her rival.
The Bride squeezes up masses of silk in attempt to tie up her rival.
It's a tight battle with neither of the spiders ready to surrender.
The Bride tries to throw her lasso around her opponent but she just can't
get within reach.
At the end of her dragline, she's placed herself in a vulnerable
position.
The Kagoshima spider takes advantage and cuts her dragline, claiming
victory.
Holding back his disappointment Yawata takes his defeat graciously.
The Kajiki locals are generous with their condolences.
He seems to have won their respect.
Actually the mike holder said that Yawata San's spider is so small during
the battle.
Suppose to have some skills to work against the big Kagoshima spiders but
just too huge.
My spider is trying to throw web with the rear legs, but the rear legs were
too short to reach to Kagoshima spiders and Kagoshima spiders has far
long reach so it can easily throw webs to me--mine.
A bit too unlucky to face with that kind of strong Kagoshima spider this
year.
Meanwhile the contender that beat Yawata's spider, Makato San has made
it through to the championship match.
Makato was desperate to take out this year's title, but the battle will be
waged against a female trainer whose spider is exceptionally strong.
Emotions run high as the little spiders battle it out.
Makato's spider is on top but this proves to be her downfall.
She is pinned down with sweets of silk that gag and bind her to the path.
The referee has to step in before she is suffocated by her opponent.
The winning is ecstasy.
But for Makato San losing is just too much to bear.
The day comes to a close as prizes are given for the champion.
A female trainer has taken out the main event.
Although Yawata San didn't reach the finals, he has become quite a
celebrity all the same.
The local people are curious to find out more about the spiders he's raised
in his high-rise apartment in Tokyo.
Local people are interested in me as a tarantula keeper and kogane fighter.
I am very much willing to come back again and again until I can get three
score winner.
To the rest of the world, this passion for spiders may seem rather strange
but to the people of Kajiki, the spider weaves the community together
and it has done so for more than four centuries.
In a magical way the spider creates unity.
The rising sun signals a new day.
Before the summer ends, the spiders are set free to continue the circle of
life.
Like their wild cousins, they now have the opportunity to find mates and have
offspring of their own.
In the humid undergrowth, females lay their egg sacs safe from harms way.
As many as 1,400 siblings will hatch from one sac and grow into tiny
spiders.
Within 30 days, the egg capsules burst open with tiny spiderlings.
Baby spiders are sprinkled over the landscape in their hundreds and
thousands.
In a year's time these microscopic creatures will have become fully grown
warrior spiders.
Like other newly hatched spiders, late summer signals the time to leave the
nest and build webs of their own.
As the eagle circle on the thermos above, the baby spiders also feel the
warm air currents and climb to the highest place nearby.
As they point their backend skyward, the spiders release silk that is
caught by the wind carrying them up and away as though they were in a hot
air balloon.
Many land close by swathing the landscape in delicate silk.
But others travel long distances across the land and sea carried on
gossamer wings.
Some even may reach as far as the island of Honshu to the rice paddies
visited by Yawata and his daughter Sawah.
Wherever they land, the spiders of Japan are sure to weave a web of
intrigue.