Kuchisake-onna, the slit-mouthed woman

A rumour about a masked woman whose mouth is split to the ears. It started in Gifu Prefecture late in 1978, reached print in 1979 and frightened schoolchildren across Japan.

Iikura Yoshiyuki of Kokugakuin University told Nippon.com that late in 1978 a rumour went round Yaotsu, a town in Gifu Prefecture: an old woman from a farming household had seen a woman with a slit mouth in a corner of her garden. A local paper wrote it up, and children in the area passed the story on and added to it. Iikura says the details varied: a mask, a red coat, a sickle.

Writer Yamaguchi Bintarō, in AERA dot, describes the rumour as it was told. A woman in a mask asks a child if she is pretty. When the frightened child says yes, she takes off the mask, shows a mouth split as far as her ears, asks again and attacks. In some versions she carries scissors and cuts the child's mouth. Yamaguchi writes that the tale scared him too when he was a child.

English Wikipedia lists the first print reports: the Gifu Nichi Nichi Shinbun (26 January 1979), then the weekly Shukan Asahi (23 March 1979) and Shukan Shincho (5 April 1979). AERA dot says the Gifu paper's report turned the rumour into a major issue in the prefecture. Japanese Wikipedia says it frightened primary and middle school pupils nationwide. Police cars were called out in Kōriyama, Fukushima, and Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, and pupils in Kushiro, Hokkaidō, and Niiza, Saitama, were sent home in groups. English Wikipedia says members of parent-teacher associations sometimes walked young children home.

The rumour has been filmed. Eiga.com lists a 2006 horror film, Kuchisake-onna, starring Satō Eriko and set in the town where the rumour began. In the film the story starts going round again and the town's children start to disappear.