Also known as: Kotenmyou Hiragumo (古天明平蜘蛛)

Lit.: "flat spider"/"ancient dawn flat spider": a priceless Sengoku-era tea kettle owned by tea-master Matsunaga Hisahide which Oda Nobunaga coveted, so named because it was shaped like a crouched spider. The hiratagumo (written with the same characters) is a type of spider (uroctea compactilis) found throughout Japan.

When Nobunaga besieged Hisahide's castle at Shigisan with 20,000 troops, he declared, "If you should give the Hiragumo kettle over to me, I shall spare your life"—to which Hisahide replied, "Nobunaga shall have neither my head nor the Hiragumo kettle!"

Hisahide smashed the kettle before he committed seppuku to prevent Nobunaga from taking possession of it (another account says that he filled it with gunpower and blasted it along with his head over the castle walls).

(Though in the present era rare tea implements are valued highly, in the Sengoku era they were worth entire fiefdoms. One could not be a first-class tea master without owning one of these items.)