The Spider’s Thread
E181246
"The Spider’s Thread" is a renowned short story by Japanese author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa that explores themes of sin, redemption, and moral choice through a parable-like tale set between hell and paradise.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| The Spider’s Thread canonical | 4 |
| By a Spider’s Thread | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T1604067 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Spider’s Thread Context triple: [Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, notableWork, The Spider’s Thread]
-
A.
The Smiling Spider
The Smiling Spider is a famous Symbolist charcoal drawing by Odilon Redon depicting a fantastical, grinning arachnid that exemplifies his eerie, dreamlike imagery.
-
B.
The Coathanger
The Coathanger is the iconic steel arch bridge spanning Sydney Harbour, renowned as a symbol of Sydney and Australia.
-
C.
The Silk Spinners
"The Silk Spinners" is an episode of the nature documentary series *Life in the Undergrowth* that explores the remarkable diversity, behavior, and engineering feats of silk-producing invertebrates such as spiders and caterpillars.
-
D.
The Backbone of Night
"The Backbone of Night" is an episode of the science documentary series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" in which Carl Sagan explores humanity’s evolving understanding of the Milky Way and our place in the universe.
-
E.
The Black Sleep
The Black Sleep is a 1956 American horror film featuring a mad surgeon who experiments on human brains, notable for its cast of classic horror stars.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Spider’s Thread Target entity description: "The Spider’s Thread" is a renowned short story by Japanese author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa that explores themes of sin, redemption, and moral choice through a parable-like tale set between hell and paradise.
-
A.
The Smiling Spider
The Smiling Spider is a famous Symbolist charcoal drawing by Odilon Redon depicting a fantastical, grinning arachnid that exemplifies his eerie, dreamlike imagery.
-
B.
The Coathanger
The Coathanger is the iconic steel arch bridge spanning Sydney Harbour, renowned as a symbol of Sydney and Australia.
-
C.
The Silk Spinners
"The Silk Spinners" is an episode of the nature documentary series *Life in the Undergrowth* that explores the remarkable diversity, behavior, and engineering feats of silk-producing invertebrates such as spiders and caterpillars.
-
D.
The Backbone of Night
"The Backbone of Night" is an episode of the science documentary series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" in which Carl Sagan explores humanity’s evolving understanding of the Milky Way and our place in the universe.
-
E.
The Black Sleep
The Black Sleep is a 1956 American horror film featuring a mad surgeon who experiments on human brains, notable for its cast of classic horror stars.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (46)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
literary work
ⓘ
short story ⓘ |
| adaptedAs |
animated film
ⓘ
radio drama ⓘ stage play ⓘ |
| author | Ryūnosuke Akutagawa ⓘ |
| basedOn | Buddhist parable ⓘ |
| centralConflict | struggle between self-interest and compassion ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin | Japan ⓘ |
| depicts |
vision of hell
ⓘ
vision of paradise ⓘ |
| explores |
consequences of selfishness
ⓘ
fragility of moral goodness ⓘ possibility of salvation ⓘ |
| featuresCharacter |
Kandata
ⓘ
the Buddha ⓘ
linked to:
Shakyamuni Buddha
|
| firstPublicationMedium | Akai Tori magazine ⓘ |
| genre |
allegory
ⓘ
moral tale ⓘ religious fiction ⓘ short story ⓘ |
| hasMoral | selfishness can destroy the chance of redemption ⓘ |
| hasSymbol | spider’s thread as a symbol of salvation ⓘ |
| includedIn | collections of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short stories ⓘ |
| influenced | later Japanese moral and religious fiction ⓘ |
| intendedEffect | moral reflection in readers ⓘ |
| languageStyle | simple and accessible prose ⓘ |
| literaryMovement | Taishō period literature ⓘ |
| literarySignificance |
classic of modern Japanese literature
ⓘ
widely anthologized in Japanese school textbooks ⓘ |
| moralFramework | Buddhist cosmology ⓘ |
| narrativePerspective | third-person narration ⓘ |
| originalLanguage | Japanese ⓘ |
| setting |
hell
ⓘ
paradise ⓘ |
| structure | single-episode narrative ⓘ |
| studiedIn | Japanese literature courses ⓘ |
| targetAudience | general readership ⓘ |
| theme |
Buddhist ethics
ⓘ
compassion ⓘ egoism ⓘ moral choice ⓘ redemption ⓘ sin ⓘ |
| tone |
didactic
ⓘ
parabolic ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: The Spider’s Thread Description of subject: "The Spider’s Thread" is a renowned short story by Japanese author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa that explores themes of sin, redemption, and moral choice through a parable-like tale set between hell and paradise.
Referenced by (5)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
linked to: The Spider’s Thread