Futakuchi-onna

◆ The legend

From the front, she's an ordinary woman. But part the hair at the back of her head, and there's a second, large mouth: that's the futakuchi-onna. The back mouth is always hungry, and her hair is said to move like a pair of hands, grabbing food and carrying it to that mouth. She eats only a little with her front mouth, and yet the food keeps disappearing. That's what makes this yokai so strange, and so unsettling.

She appears in Ehon Hyaku Monogatari ("Picture Book of a Hundred Stories"), published in 1841 in the Edo period with pictures by Takehara Shunsen. The story that goes with it tells of a woman who didn't give enough food to her husband's child from his first marriage. After the child died, a wound on the back of the woman's head slowly turned into a mouth that cried out for food. It's a tale that shows, in an uncanny shape, how what people do comes back to them.