She Asks If She’s Pretty… And Slits Your Mouth If You Answer Wrong | Kuchisake-Onna

[Music] Hey beauty Zenfis! Welcome back to our cozy late night story time together. So bring your favorite late night snack, your skincare, and settle down. Today's story starts from a simple question. You're walking home alone. It's dark, the streets are empty, and then you see her. A woman, she's beautiful, long black hair, wearing a surgical mask. She steps in front of you and she asks, "Am I pretty? How you answer determines whether you live or die?" This is the story of Kuchizakeonan, the slid mouth woman, Japan's most terrifying urban legend. And let's begin with a story of a girl named Naumi. So if you're ready, let's go. [Music] Naumi was just an ordinary school girl. That evening, she had stayed late at Kram School. You know, one of those after our study centers that Japanese students go to. By the time she finished, the sun had already set. The alley she always took home was swallowed in darkness. The day's heat had faded. The night breeze was cool, but something fell off. Cold sweat trickled down the back of her neck, even though she wasn't hot. The street lights flickered. One moment on, the next moment dark. Shadows stretched and shifted in ways that didn't make sense. Fewer and fewer people walked by until suddenly she was completely alone. Naumi felt this inexplicable unease creeping up her spine. But this alley had always been a little creepy, right? She told herself it was nothing. She started humming a song to calm her nurse. And then she heard something. Am I pretty? A low calm voice coming from right behind her. That moment, a chill shot down her spine. Every hair on her body stood on end. Naumi turned around slowly and her heart was already pounding so hard. And there she was. A woman tall, long black hair hanging past her shoulders like wet silk. Half her face hidden behind a large white surgical mask. She stood completely still. She was just watching her. Her eyes gleamed in the dim light. Her eyes were too bright and totally focused on her. She was beautiful, even with a mask, Naumi could tell. But something about that beauty felt wrong. It was just extremely unsettling. Like looking at a wax figure that's almost human, but not quite human. Who are you? Naumi managed to whisper. And the woman didn't answer. She just tilted her head slowly and unnaturally. And she asked again. Am I pretty? And that voice didn't just reach Naumi's ears. It seemed to crawl inside her head, echo in her skull, like the woman was speaking directly into her brain. Naumi's mouth went dry. Her legs felt like they were filled with concrete. She wanted to run, but she couldn't move. Her body wouldn't obey. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but she couldn't move. It was like her feet had been nailed to the ground. The woman took a step closer than another. Her movements or smooth fluid almost gliding towards her. She leaned in until her face was inches from Naumi's. And those eyes, up close, they weren't right. They looked human, but they weren't. There was something extremely unsettling behind those eyes. Am I pretty? Naumi knew she had to answer. Something deep inside her understood that silence meant death. Yes, she whispered. Her voice barely audible. You're pretty. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the woman's eyes crinkled, like she was smiling behind the mask. Her fingers rose to the mask straps. Pale fingers in too long, nails like yellowed bone. Her hands moved slowly, so slow that it felt unnatural. The mask came away from her face. And Naumi's blood just turned to ice. The woman's mouth was torn open from ear to ear. The wound was red. It was raw. It was glistening, like it had never healed. It looked like it was bleeding after all these years. Her teeth were exposed. Stained, jagged, forming this grotesque, permanent grin that stretched impossibly wide across her entire face. It wasn't a smile. It was a wound, like a scream frozen in her flash. The woman leaned even closer. That ruined face filled Naumi's entire vision. Even like this. Am I pretty? Naumi's mind went blank with terror. And she knew the stories. Everyone knew the stories. If she said no, the woman would kill her right there right now. But if she said yes, the woman would take her scissors and carve Naumi's face to match her own. There was no right answer, no way out. It was a trap designed by something that had stopped being human a long, long time ago. Then Naumi felt it. A whisper brushing against her ear. So close it was like lips touching her skin. If you don't answer, you die. She couldn't tell if she'd imagined it. But the terror was so real, she forced her mouth to move. Yes, she stammered. You're still pretty. The torn mouth stretched wider. The edges of her wound seemed to crawl up toward her ears. And the woman's eyes, they lit up with something that might have been joy. Then do you want to become something like this too? Something glinted in the darkness, metal catching the faint light. Scissors, long, sharp scissors. The blades already spreading apart, moving toward Naumi's face. That moment, something snapped inside her pure animal survival instinct. Naumi spun around and ran. Her footsteps exploded through the alley. Her lungs burned. Her heart hammered so hard, she thought it might burst through her chest. But behind her, she could hear it. The sound of scissors opening and closing, metal slicing through air. And it wasn't fading. It wasn't getting farther away. It was getting closer. And then the voice came, riding the wind like something from a nightmare, wrapping around her like cold fingers. You need to become just like me. Just like me. And Naumi thought to herself, don't look back. Don't look back. Don't look. But she looked back. The woman was there, right there. That horrible torn mouth gaping open in the darkness. And no matter how fast Naumi ran, the distance between them never changed. Like she wasn't running at all. Like space itself was bending to keep them together. Please, Naumi screamed into the empty night. Someone helped me. Her legs felt like they were filling with sand. Each step heavier than the last. The ground seemed to grab at her feet, pulling her down, slowing her down. And the snipping grew louder, closer. She could feel breath on the back of her neck. And then suddenly, she saw a light, flashlight beams cutting through the darkness. She heard voices, real human voices. Hey, are you okay? Come this way, hurry. Police officers, two of them, they were running towards her. Naumi had never been so grateful to see anyone in her entire life. Tears streaming down her face, she just threw herself toward the light. But even as she ran, she could still hear it. Behind her, that whisper slithering into her ears, like something alive. You've already seen me. You can't escape now. Naumi collapsed into the arms of the officers, sobbing uncontrollably. And she told what she saw. There was a woman she gasped between breaths. A woman with a mask, she followed me, and the officers exchanged a look. One of them shined his flashlight down the alley. But it was empty, nothing but scatter trash and darkness. There's no one there. He said gently, you're safe now. It's okay. And Naumi wanted to believe him. She tried to let the relief wash over her. But then she felt it, a chill spreading down her spine. Her hair lifting slightly, even though there was no wind. And then right against her ear, so quiet, only she could hear. Now you need to become pretty, just like me. Naumi's face went white, her whole body seized off. The officers put a hand on her shoulder. Come on, let's get you home. And she just nodded, numbly. She started walking one foot in front of the other. It had rained earlier that evening. The ground was still wet, puddles everywhere. And that's when Naumi happened to glance down, at a puddle by her feet. The officers' reflection rippled normally in the water, normal faces, normal expressions. But Naumi's reflection, her reflection was smiling, a wide, impossible smile stretching from ear to ear, a gash of darkness where her mouth should be. She touched her own face, her mouth was fine, normal. But in the water, the reflection kept smiling. Naumi made it home that night, but they say she was never the same after that incident. She heard footsteps and empty hallways. She saw masks everywhere she went. And every time she looked at a mirror, she had to fight the urge to touch her own mouth to make sure it was still intact. So what did she encounter that night? Japanese people all know who she is. Kuchisakeona. What is Kuchisakeona? Where did she come from? And why has this legend terrified Japan for centuries? Now we're about to dig into the truth behind that terror. A lot of people think Kuchisakeona is a modern urban legend, something that started in the 1970s, but that's not quite right. Her roots go back about 800 to 1200 years, all the way to Japan's Hian period. And that's roughly 794 to 1185 AD. And the original tale is actually pretty tragic. According to the oldest version, she was once a stunningly beautiful woman. The wife or concubine of a Samurai warrior. She was so beautiful that she became vain about it. She'd walk through her village and ask people, "Am I beautiful?" Just to hear them say yes. But her husband grew jealous. You know, he became paranoid. He became convinced she was being unfaithful. And one day, in a fit of rage, he took his sword and sliced her mouth open from ear to ear. As he did it, he screamed at her. Who will think you're beautiful now? And unfortunately, she died from the wounds, but she didn't stay dead. In Japanese folklore, there is a concept called "unyo, vengeful spirits." These are the ghosts of people who died in particularly violent or unjust ways. Abused wives, torture victims, people who were betrayed. Their spirits don't rest. They come back consumed by rage and pain, and they take it out on the living. And that is what she became. Kuchisakeonna. The name literally breaks down to kuchi, meaning mouth, sake, from the verb to tear or to split. And onna, meaning woman. The Slit Mouth Woman. During the Edel period, and that's the 1600s through the 1800s, stories about her continued to spread. Back then, people sometimes blamed encounters on kuchisunna, the shapeshifting fox spirits that led to tricumins. But in 1978, everything changed. In December 1978, the fear came back in Japan. Kids are walking home from school and they start doing something strange. They are watching every telephone pole. Every dark corner, walking in groups, looking over their shoulders, terrified of seeing a woman with long, black hair and a surgical mask. What started as whispers and kuhu prefecture spread like wildfire? And within six months, it had gone nationwide. And, in fact, it wasn't just kids being kids, adults took it seriously. Schools implemented curfews. Teachers started escorting students home in groups, parents formed neighborhood patrol organizations, police increased their presence around schools. Some communities held emergency town meetings about this thing. Professor Ikura Yoshiyuki from Kokuakui University, who researches oral literature, has a really interesting theory about why it spread so fast. So, the late 1970s was when cram schools, called Juku were becoming super popular. Kids from all different neighborhoods would gather in the evenings to study, share stories, and then take those stories back to their own schools. But there's another there. When these kids left cram school late at night, they were suddenly exposed to a world they had never seen before. Adults going to nightlife jobs, drunk strangers stumbling home, unfamiliar faces in the darkness. For kids who had always been home before dark, this was terrifying. And all that fear, it crystallized into the figure of Kuchizakiona. By the summer of 1979, at the peak of the panic, reports say that 99% of Japanese children knew her story. The Azaishin Bun, one of Japan's biggest newspapers, named Kuchizakiona as a buzzword of that year. The hysteria eventually faded around summer vacation, but the image of that woman, the mask, the scissors, that horrible question, it never really went away. Now here's where the story gets really interesting, because this wasn't just mass hysteria, over nothing. There were actual documented incidents connected to Kuchizakiona. And I'm not talking about secondhand rumors or my friends because I saw her stories. I'm talking about newspaper articles, police reports, medical records. So yeah, let me walk you through them. Okay, let me start with the Youts of Sighting, January 26, 1979. And this is where it all started to feel real. The Q Daily News, a local newspaper and Q Prefecture published an interview with an elderly woman from a farming family in a small town called Youtuchou. She was working in her field one evening when she noticed something at the edge of her property, a woman. And this woman was just standing completely still, just watching her. And at first, she thought it was a neighbor, but something was wrong. The woman's face, even from a distance, she could tell something was horribly wrong with her face. According to her testimony, and I'm paraphrasing here, there was a woman at the edge of the field whose mouth was torn all the way to her ears. Now this could have been dismissed as one old woman's imagination, but when the Q Daily News published the story, it spread. Other local papers picked it up. Then the weekly ASEA, a national magazine ran with it. Suddenly, what had been whispered rumors among school children was front page news. That single interview transformed Kuchizakeone from a schoolyard ghost story into a nationwide phenomenon. Parents who had brushed off their kids' fears that only weren't so sure anymore. And then the next incident, the Himedi arrest, June 21, 1979. A five months later, police in Himedi City made an arrest that sent shockwaves through the country. A 25-year-old woman had been dressed up as Kuchizakeone. Long hair, surgical mask, the whole thing. And she was just walking around the streets at night with a knife. We don't know much about her motives. Maybe she thought it was a prank. Maybe she was disturbed. Maybe she was trying to scare someone specific. The details are scarce. Now imagine your kid in 1979. You've been hearing about this terrifying woman for months. Your parents have been walking you to school. Police have been patrolling your neighborhood, and then you turn on the news and hear that someone was actually arrested for pretending to be her. And that's the moment the legend stopped being just a story. Because if one person was doing it, how many others might be out there? And the third incident, the coroner's discovery, October 2007. And this one still gives me chills. Nearly 30 years after the original panic, a medical examiner in Japan was going through old archives when they stumbled across something disturbing. Records from the late 1970s described a woman who had been reported multiple times for chasing children through the streets at night. The reports described her as acting aridically, pursuing kids on their way home from school, terrifying entire neighborhoods. Eventually, while chasing a child one night, she ran into the street and was struck by a car. And she died instantly from her injuries. And here's the creepiest part. When they examined her body, her mouth was ripped open from ear to ear. It wasn't a mask, it wasn't makeup. Her actual face was just figured torn in a way that matched the legend exactly. Was she mentally ill, a victim of some horrible accident or attack? We don't know. The records don't say how she got those injuries. But some researchers now believe this woman, this real flash and blood person might have been the original spark that started everything. Children saw her or heard about her and the story kind of grew from there. A real monster who became a legend. So what do we make of all this? Was Kuchizaki-on-Naril? Probably not in the supernatural sense. There is no vengeful ghost from the hey-en period stalking the streets of Japan. But was there someone who multiple people who inspired the panic, someone with a disfigured face, who frighten children, someone unstable, who dressed up in terrorized neighborhoods? The evidence suggests, yeah, maybe. Because the legend is so famous across Asia, there are actually a bunch of different origin stories. The jealous Hamurayaspin is just one of them. There is the story of three sisters. In this version, Kuchizaki-on-Naril was the youngest of three sisters. Her older sisters had successful plastic surgery and they became even more beautiful. But when she went under the knife, something went horribly wrong. The surgery failed, leaving her mouth torn and disfigured. And the surgeon, he was wearing a lot of pomemid in his hair. And that smell became forever associated with her trauma. And there is the story of the car accident. This is maybe the most sympathetic version. A woman was in a terrible car accident and suffered severe facial injuries. She scraped together money for plastic surgery, but the results were awful. She tried again, and again, but her face was never restored. And overwhelmed by despair, she eventually threw herself into a pond and became the vengeful spirit. We know today. And there is the story of the mental hospital escapee. Some say she was a real woman with a disfigured face who escaped from a psychiatric facility and wandered the streets at night. Which might connect to that 2007 coroner's report. Each version adds something different. Jealousy, vanity, tragedy, failed beauty standards. In a way, Kuchizaki-on-Naril isn't just one ghost. She's a mirror reflecting all our fears about appearance and acceptance. So let's say you actually encounter Kuchizaki-on-Naril. What do you do? Japanese kids in 1979 spend a lot of time figuring this out. And honestly some methods are pretty clever. The first is the average response. This is the most famous one when she asked, "Am I pretty? Don't say yes or no." You say, "So-so" or "hutsu," which means average. And this confuses her. It's not an insult, so she can't kill you, but it's not a compliment either, so she can't proceed. And while she's standing there trying to process, you run. And there's the pomeyd trick. Shout pomeyd. Pomeyd, pomeyd three times. And I know it sounds ridiculous, but remember the plastic surgery story? The surgeon who botched her face were a ton of pomeyd. The smell traumatized her. And hearing the word triggers those memories and makes her freeze up. And that's when you run. And there's the pecuamit candy. And here's a sweet one, literally. Pecuamit is a traditional Japanese hard candy made from caramelized sugar. And apparently, Kuchizaki-on-Naril loves it. If you throw some at her feet, she will stop to pick it up. Kids in 1979 actually carried this candy with them for protection. And there are other methods. Throw money or coins on the ground. Shout nin-niku, which means garlic or hage, which means baldness. Right? The kanji for dog on your palm. And if you can make it above the second floor of a building, you're supposedly safe. She can't go higher than that. Well, any of these actually work? I don't know, but you might want to have a few of these ready. Just in case. And around the year 2000, Kuchizaki-on-Naril went international. Thanks to the internet, her story spread beyond Japan. And as I traveled, it changed. Different cultures added their own fears. So in South Korea, she became Balganmaske, the Red Mask Woman. In 2004, there were actual reports of a woman in a Red Mask chasing children. The Korean version incorporated fears about plastic surgery gone wrong, which makes sense, given South Korea's intense beauty standards. But here's the interesting part. In Korean folklore, evil spirits can only travel in straight lines. So the Korean Kuchizaki-on-Nar can't turn corners or climb stairs. So if you zigzag or run up a staircase, you're safe. And some versions even gave her a companion, a slit mouth boyfriend who also wears a mask. In China and Taiwan, online communities connected Kuchizaki-on-Nar to their own traditions of vengeful female spirits. The wronged women ghosts that have haunted Chinese folklore for centuries, murdered wives, betrayed concubines, women who died with so much resentment they could have moved on. And in the West, people connected her to legends like Bloody Mary or Lyrona. Same monster, different roles, and that's how legends survive. They absorb whatever a culture already fears. Is Kuchizaki-on-Nar real? Maybe she's an urban legend, a story that got out of control, a collective nightmare born from anxieties about beauty and strangers, and things that hide in the dark. Or maybe somewhere out there, even now there's a woman in a mask watching and waiting for the next person to see her. Next time you're walking home alone at night and you see a woman in a surgical mask, you might want to walk a little faster. If she stops you, if she tilts her head and asks that question, well, I hope you remember what I told you today. Am I pretty? Think carefully before you answer. That's the end of today's story. Hope you guys sleep well after this. See you guys soon. Bye.