Kuchisake-Onna is a vengeful spirit of a lady. She walks the streets of Japan, wearing a surgical mask to hide her disfigured mouth. Her weapon is mainly a scissors, but some versions say she is carrying a giant scythe. When she sees you (mainly primary and college students) she will stop you, and ask:
“Am I beautiful?” ‘Watashi wa kirei?’
She is beautiful at first sight, so many people say ‘Hai’ as ‘Yes’ in Japanese. But when you say yes, she will tear off her mask and ask ‘Kore demo?’ (Sorry, I did not know the English for Kore Demo.’) This is when it gets tricky.

If you say ‘No’ she will kill you, by chopping you up. If you say ‘Yes’ she will slice your mouth from ear-to-ear, making you look just like her, due to the fact that ‘kirei’ is a near homophone of ‘kire’, meaning ‘to cut’. If you try to run away, she will track you down and kill you, by chopping you into two.

The only way to escape from Kuchisake is to give a non-commital answer. My mum told me that if you run into Kuchisake Onna, you should say ‘Ma-Ma’ meaning ‘So-so’. Or you can spray her back with pomade, throw fruits or candy at her, go out together, write the hiragana for ‘inu’, that means ‘dog’, or say garlic three times.

There are many rumours of how Kuchisake got her horribly disfigured mouth. Some say she went for oral plastic surgery and it went horribly wrong, or she was gang raped by a gang of thugs, went insane and slit her mouth, or the gang slit her mouth. Others say that she was an escaped mental patient who became so demented she cut her own mouth apart.

According to a legend, there was a samurai with a pretty wife who was extremely vain and self-absorbed, and probably was cheating on him. In a fit of rage, he took out his sword, slit her mouth and said,” Who will think you’re pretty now?!” She became a vengeful spirit, hunting down and killing anyone who gave her the wrong answers to her question.

as in lock shock and barrel, oogie boogies minions ¬_¬

*The question is a play on words. ‘Kirei’ (beautiful) sounds like ‘kire’ (the imperative form of “kiru”, the verb “to cut”).

Kuchisake-onna is a pretty scary legend (and one of my favorites). The one my boyfriend’s mother told me is that she’ll come up to these windows that the Japanese have near the floor in their bathrooms (o_O) and she’ll yell curses and swears at you, and try to break in.