Kuchisake-onna (The Slit-Mouthed Woman)

In the spring of 1979, a rumour spread through the back alleys and school routes of Japan. A woman with the lower half of her face hidden behind a red surgical mask was appearing without warning before children walking home alone. Before the season had even turned, the story had reached every corner of the country — and it surfaced again, with grim regularity, in 1993 and once more in 2004.

She always asks first. *Am I pretty?* Answer yes, and she slowly lowers the mask. A mouth split open to the very edges of her ears is revealed. Then she asks again. *…Even like this?* Say yes, and she steps closer, promising to make you just as pretty. Say no, and she produces a blade on the spot. Either way, stories of a child returning home unharmed are rare.

Accounts of her weapon vary slightly from region to region. On busy streets she is said to carry something easily concealed — scissors, or a scalpel. On deserted country roads, a kitchen knife or a hand axe. Some say it hardly matters: she has one hundred and thirty teeth, and her bite alone is more than enough.

The testimonies regarding her physical abilities grow stranger still. She can cover a hundred metres in two seconds. She outran a police motorcycle while wearing wooden clogs. She stands over two metres tall, yet her body is skeletal, wasted to almost nothing. The rumours converge on a single, quiet conclusion: running was never an option.

There are many stories, too, about how she came to look the way she does. Some say two jealous sisters tore her mouth open. Others say it happened mid-surgery — that she turned her head toward the scent of her anaesthetist's pomade at precisely the wrong moment, and the scalpel slipped. No one has ever been able to confirm which version is true. Those who went looking for the answer did not come back.