Kuchisake onna by Andrea Innocent
Kuchisake onna (the split-mouth woman) was a beautiful but vain woman married to a jealous and paranoid lover. Believing she was cheating on him, he sliced her mouth open from ear to ear. Now she wanders, hiding her mouth behind a fan, a sleeve, a scarf or a facemask like those in cold and allergy seasons in Japan.
She asks you “watashi, kirei?” (Do you think I’m beautiful? ). If you answer “yes”, then she exposes her face and repeats the question; her otherworldly beauty giving way to otherworldly horror. Now if you say anything besides saying “yes” a second time, she pursues him with a kama (sickle) or knife and replies “I will to do for you what has been done to me.” She can’t be outrun, and eventually slices her victim’s mouth open ear to ear. Women killed in this fashion return as kuchisake onna themselves.
Kuchisake onna had a resurgence in the late 20th Century, and a more vicious one. In modern times, she will attack you regardless of your answer to her second question, and favours attacking children.
Featured above is another beautiful work of obakemono by Andrea Innocent, who did an entire show on Obakemono called Love, Thieves and Fear Make Ghosts
[for some reason this ghost really creeps me out. I imagine Kuchisake onna approaching me and then pursuing me across a late night Tokyo streetscape like in the Tokyo/Glow video.]
