Futakuchi Onna by Christina M.
It’s been a little while since I talked about Yokai, the Japanese monsters that have crept into my consciousness of late. My favorite at the moment is Futakuchi Onna, the “Two Mouthed Woman”. I like to think of her as a cousin to Harionago.
Did you ever know a woman who seemed to never eat? Or have you ever noticed how quickly the treats in the company kitchen seem to disappear, although nobody claims to have eaten them? If so, you may have met Futakuchi Onna.
She appears a normal, even beautiful woman, with long silken hair. When offered food, she will decline, or eat only a meager portion. Her curse and misfortune however, is to have a fully functional second mouth on the back of her head, hidden beneath her hair. Worse still, this mouth is insatiable, and if not fed will mumble obscenities and insults, and eventually start to scream and torment the woman. At some point, the demon woman’s hair will begin to act of its own accord, snaking out to grab utensils and food in an attempt to appease the second mouth. Unlike Harionago, Futakuchi can been seen as more a curse victim than a demon, although I’d not want to get between that hair or that mouth and some jin deui, if you know what I mean.
There are a number of folk tales about how a Futakuchi Onna comes to be. Here’s my tale:
A young woman, terrible shy and sensitive about her appearance is married off young to a terrible, abusive miser. He berates her night and day, and heckles her about eating him out of house and home, despite her near starvation. Then one day after bringing him refreshment while he is chopping wood, the poor girl is struck in the back of head by his axe as she walks away.
The wound, while not deep, does knock her unconscious, and when she awakens, she has changed. A second mouth has appeared beneath her hair on the back of her head where the wound once was. It whispers obscenely about how poorly she is treated, and swears it cannot tell a lie. And it demands to be fed. The young woman tries to maintain her dignity, but occasionally the miser catches snatches of rude comments by the second mouth as the woman turns away. The young woman swears she’s said nothing and suggests his age is catching up with him.
As time passes, the miser notices that his food stores are disappearing faster than they normally would. Keeping an eye on his wife and a sharp tongue ready to chastise her for overeating, he waits and watches. But he sees nothing, in fact it seems that his beautiful wife eats hardly at all. Claiming to go to the city one day, he sneaks back to the house. As he nears he hears someone berating his wife for not sticking up for herself, and his wife weeping in the kitchen. Peering through the window, he sees her in her fully Futakuchi form, her many tentacles of hair feeding the demon mouth as fast as they can, while the woman weeps, and the mouth between bites unleashes a string of profanities about the miser that cut him to the quick.
From that day forward the miser never speaks an unkind word to his wife, and keeps his pantry well-stocked to avoid the wrath of the Futakichi Onna and possibly his fate as a soul devoured by the demon mouth of his sweet bride.
This beautiful, modern take on Futakuchi Onna by Christina M. (above) can only be found on her deviantART page so click here to see more.
And keep an eye on the M&Ms…
