When considering spirits, British ghouls and ghosts are relatively tame compared to the supernatural class of entities that call Japan home. In folklore, they're known as yokai, monsters that range from clawed and bloody to beautiful and dangerous; the word yōkai itself is composed of the kanji for "attractive; calamity" and "apparition; mystery; suspicious", a tumultous, arguably self-contradictory collection of words that fail to convey the full extent of their wonderous terror. But who exactly is the woman who drove me to write this piece?

The Kuchisake-onna (口裂け女, "Slit-Mouthed Woman") is a tale that left me both facinated and horrified enough to put word to paper. While not all yokai are necessarily evil she is described as a malignant entity, her face always partially obscured with a mask or other item, and characterized as always carrying. some sort of sharp object. She is most often described as having long, straight, black hair, pale skin- beautiful except for her scar, which earned her her title. According to popular legend, she lurks in the dark corners and empty streets, waiting to catch her next victim unaware. After all, her first question is deceptively simple enough; face hidden alongside her sharp object, she asks potential victims if they think she is beautiful. If they respond with "no", she will kill them with her long medical scissors. If they say "yes", she will reveal her grotesque smile, carved into her skin and splitting her mouty ear to ear. She will then repeat her question. If the individual responds with "no", she will kill them with her weapon, and if they say "yes", she will cut the corners of their mouth in such a way that resembles her own disfigurement. Why does she have this terrible disfigurment, one she clearly seems determined to share? In some versions of the mytholgy, Kuchisake-onna was a woman who was mutilated during her life by her husband for her affair with a samurai.Other versions of the tale include that her mouth was mutilated during a medical or dental procedure, or that she was mutilated by a woman who was jealous of her beauty - the latter explaining her scar as well as preccupation with appearance.

Majority of the time, the consensus is that an encounter with the   Kuchisake-onna is nearly always lethal. However, there are whispers of methods that can be used to survive an encounter with Kuchisake-onna; for example, answering her question by describing her appearance as "average" in an attempt to find common ground, or by distracting her with money or hard candies. Over time, phenomena and events thought to be supernatural became fewer and fewer, with the depictions of yōkai in picture scrolls and paintings beginning to standardise, evolving more into caricatures than fearsome spiritual entities. But next time you walk into an alleyway, maybe bring a friend, and make sure the lights stay on; and if you see the flash of a smile, walk away as fast as you can.

It just might save your life.