Kuchisake-onna

What it is

Kuchisake-onna belongs to Japanese folklore and to the modern stock of urban legend. She is the ghost of a woman whose mouth was cut from ear to ear, and she comes back to harm the living, which makes her an onryō, a vengeful spirit. A mask usually covers the scar, though a fan or a handkerchief does the same in some tellings. People describe her as tall and pale, with long straight black hair and white hands, and otherwise good-looking. Writers on the subject also count her as a yōkai, one of the supernatural beings of Japanese story. She is a tale told to frighten, not a rite anyone performs.

Where it comes from

Accounts of her age disagree. Matthew Meyer, an author and folklorist, puts the roots in the Edo period, the stretch from the 17th to the 19th century. Iikura Yoshiyuki, who teaches Japanese literature, argues for the 1970s instead. The origin most often accepted is Gifu Prefecture in 1978. Print followed in 1979: the Gifu Nichi Nichi Shinbun of 26 January, Shukan Asahi of 23 March, and Shukan Shincho of 5 April. Over the summer of that year the story travelled the country, and parent–teacher groups began escorting children home from school.

How it is done

The encounter is told as a test of answers. She stops someone and asks 'Watashi, kirei?', which means 'Am I pretty?'. A refusal is said to bring death, at once or later that night in sleep. Agreement makes her uncover the mouth and ask again, 'Kore demo?', 'Even with this?'. A second refusal, or a scream, ends the same way; a second yes is answered by cutting the person's mouth at the corners to match hers. Tellers add escapes: calling her looks 'average', saying you are late, handing over coins or candy, or repeating 'pomade' three times.

Tools and materials

A surgical mask is the usual covering, with a hand fan or handkerchief in other versions. Her weapon changes with the teller; long scissors recur most often, and she is also said to move faster than a person can run. Coins and hard candy appear as things she will accept, or stoop to gather if thrown. The candy named is bekko ame, sugar boiled down to caramel. In one escape the word 'pomade' is spoken three times.

What it is for

Within the stories her aim is revenge. She was disfigured while alive and returns to kill, or to leave others with a mouth like hers. The question works as a trap, since a plain refusal and a frightened answer both end badly. Outside the story, the tale served to scare: in 1979 it gave children a reason to avoid walking alone, and adults arranged company for the walk home. She also belongs to a Japanese horror tradition that moves frightening figures from magazines to playgrounds.

Who does it

No training or office attaches to her; she exists in the telling. Newspapers and weekly magazines carried her story in 1979, children repeated it to one another, and parent–teacher groups answered it with escorted walks. Her status as a yōkai arrived later, through Shigeru Mizuki, a historian and manga author, who put her into an encyclopedia of such beings. Zack Davisson, a translator of Mizuki's work, holds that this listing is what made people treat her officially as one.

Peoples and places

She is Japanese, and her story is set in Japan. Gifu Prefecture is named as the most accepted place of origin, and from there the rumour reached the rest of the country in 1979. The backstory changes with the audience. Japanese versions usually blame a jealous woman, often a sister, or a plastic surgery or dental procedure gone wrong; versions told in the West make her a samurai's unfaithful wife or mistress, punished by her husband with a cut mouth. Some tellings give her a mouth full of sharp teeth instead of a scar.

What people believe

The figure rests on the onryō, a spirit that returns because of a wrong suffered in life. Her cut mouth is the mark of that wrong, and her reappearance is the repayment. Japanese folklore gathers supernatural creatures under the word yōkai, and she has been placed in that group. The encounter has almost the form of a rule: which answer is given, and in what tone, decides what follows. Nothing in the tale asks for worship or offering, only for the right words at the right moment.

When it is done

There is no rite and no season of practice attached to her. The date most often given is the summer of 1979, when the story crossed Japan and children were walked home in groups. Inside the tale, nightfall matters: one version has her spare a person who answers yes, then come to the house after dark and kill them in bed. Otherwise the meeting happens by chance, in the street.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Courses of study treat her as folklore rather than as a report of something met. Folklorists and literature scholars disagree about her age: Meyer looks to the Edo period, Iikura to the 1970s. Mizuki and Davisson discuss how she entered the yōkai canon, with Davisson crediting the encyclopedia entry. Michael Dylan Foster's Pandemonium and Parade and Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt's Yokai Attack! are among the works on Japanese monsters that take figures of this kind as part of the culture's storytelling. The newspaper and magazine pieces of 1979 are the earliest printed trace named.

Compare and confuse

Close neighbours in Japanese legend include Teke Teke and Ouni, a yōkai whose face is torn from mouth to ear. Readers elsewhere set her beside Bloody Mary, the apparition said to appear in mirrors, and La Llorona, the weeping woman of Latin American story, and beside Madam Koi Koi, a dead teacher in an African urban legend. English texts also write her name unhyphenated, as Kuchisake Onna.

Today

She now lives mostly in entertainment. She appears in Studio Ghibli's 1994 film Pom Poko, in a 1996 short by Teruyoshi Ishii, and in Hideo Nakata's 1998 Ring. Kōji Shiraishi's 2007 Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman, with Miki Mizuno in the part, was followed by two films in 2008 and by Kuchisake-onna Returns and a found-footage mockumentary in 2012. Manga, anime and games use her too, among them Even If You Slit My Mouth, Dandadan, Jujutsu Kaisen, Mob Psycho 100, World of Horror and Ghostwire: Tokyo.

Questions people ask about Kuchisake-onna

Good reading and sources

• Kuchisake-onna on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data