Japan's Terrifying Legend of the Slit-Mouthed Woman

Some men feel that a woman asking “Am I pretty?” is a trap of some kind. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what it is when the question comes from Kuchisake-Onna (the Slit-Mouthed Woman), a paranormal yokai creature that looks like a seemingly attractive human with her mouth covered by a surgical mask. If you answer “no” to her question, she stabs you to death. If you answer “yes,” she removes her mask to reveal a gruesome smile carved into her face, stretching from the corners of her lips to her ears. She then asks: “Still think I’m pretty?”

If this interaction sounds equally horrifying and frustrating, that’s probably because the legend was invented not that long ago by Japanese kids. And they did it so well, they actually got the cops involved in the whole thing. This is what happened:

The first newpaper coverage of the Kuchisake-onna, appearing in the Nagoya Times January 22 1979

Who You Gonna Call? The Police, Apparently

December 1978. That’s apparently when Japanese children first started warning each other about a tall, pale woman prowling their neighborhoods with scissors, a knife or a sickle, targeting kids and asking them questions with, seemingly, no good answers. Just young people making up stories out of boredom because the NES/Famicom hadn’t been invented yet, right? Definitely. But the adults took it seriously.

This was shortly after the much-publicized 1976 execution of serial killer Kiyoshi Okubo, whose youngest victim was only 16. So, when Japanese parents in the late 1970s started overhearing their children talking about a strange adult with a deadly weapon, maybe they remembered Okubo and thought it was better to be safe than sorry. In the end, many decided to contact the police.

It wasn’t a nationwide panic or anything like that, but some places, like Koriyama in Fukushima Prefecture and Hiratsuka in Kanagawa Prefecture, did dispatch units specifically to look for the suspicious woman with scissors — or a knife, or maybe a sickle — who might have been wearing a red coat. Or maybe it was yellow? Also, she might have actually been a man. It all depended on the child giving the police details of a story they heard from a friend who heard it from another friend, and so on and so forth. Needless to say, after months of investigating, the police … actually caught the Slit-Mouthed Woman?! Well, sort of.

In June or July 1979, they arrested a 25-year-old resident of Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, for dressing up as Kuchisake-Onna and walking around with a knife. Details are scarce, but it seems that she was just playing the most ill-advised, non-YouTube-related prank in Japanese history. The newspapers declared the end of the Slit-Mouthed Woman panic, not realizing that it was just beginning. Telling kids that their imaginations have literally come to life is not the way to kill a story, after all. In fact, the Kuchisake-Onna urban legend remains a staple of Japanese schoolyard gossip to this day.

Ancient Origins

The myth of the Kuchisake-Onna actually originated during the Edo period (1603–1867). Only back then, the female yokai wasn’t that bad. She still had the horrifying slit-mouthed appearance — which in some myths did end up scaring someone to death — but much like in the Iyaya myth that we talked about before, the feudal Kuchisake-Onna mainly scared people as a prank. In many legends, the figure is revealed to actually be a shapeshifting magic fox in disguise, looking for a laugh on a boring night.

Back in 1978, specifically in Gifu, one kid picked up this story, and it set their mind ablaze. Giving it a bit of a modern update with the surgical mask and a touch of gore with the stabbing weapons (because Japanese kids can’t get enough gore in their entertainment), that one unnamed child started a tradition that’s been going strong for nearly half a century now. What did your kid ever do?

Are Schools and Reading To Blame?

Japan actually has a long tradition of inventing new ghost stories, possibly going as far back as the 17th century. But back then, the new yokai were crafted by literary clubs and gatherings of horror fans wanting to cool down with spine-chilling stories on hot summer nights. The new monsters came and went, and only a few ever broke out of their initial circle. But it took a while for them to enter the popular consciousness: News did not travel fast in those days. This is where 20th-century Japanese kids had the advantage.

It’s believed today that the killer version of the Slit-Mouthed Woman legend spread mainly through cram schools, which gather kids from different parts of the city — and therefore different schools — allowing stories to travel that much faster. The 20th century also had phones and TVs — plus magazines that not only jumped at the Kuchisake-Onna rumors but maybe inadvertently helped create them. Some researchers believe that the fascination with a demonic woman with a mutilated face was the result of internalized anxieties about one’s looks, fueled by the beauty and fashion magazines of the 1970s.

However it happened, it looks like the homicidal Kuchisake-Onna is here to stay. And, in case you ever run into her, she can apparently be stopped by vague answers to her questions (“You look so-so/average”), saying that you’re late and simply leaving, throwing candy or coins on the ground to distract her, yelling the word “pomade” three times, or tracing the kanji character for “dog” on your palm. Again, this is a story made up entirely by kids; it doesn’t have to make much sense.