Futakuchi-onna
Mythical Monsters, Critters, and Cryptids
Greetings all! The series doing quite well, and I am enjoying making a list of creatures I’d like to learn more about. I am starting to keep a notebook to add names of creatures I read about during the week. I’m actually running out of space!
Anyway, today I decided to turn toward the land of the rising sun to learn more about Japan’s Futakuchi-onna.
Creature: Futakuchi-Onna roughly translates to “two-mouth woman,” and this creature mostly, if not only, lives in Japan.
What is it?
If you met a Futakuchi-Onna, you likely wouldn’t know it, as she appears as a normal, if not beautiful woman, that has her hair tied up. She often has a small mouth and doesn’t eat much. However, if she’s living with you, you will notice that your food is disappearing far quicker than it should, considering the number of people in your home. That’s because behind the luscious hair of a Futakuchi-Onna is a secondary mouth, more like a maw, that is always ravenous. This maw is surrounded by fat lips and lined with teeth. It controls the surrounding hair-like tentacles that will take any food that is within reach.
But what is a Futakuchi-Onna? There are three main thoughts on this. In Eastern Japan, it’s believed that Futakuchi-Onna is a shape-shifting Yama Uba, while those of Western Japan believe it to be a shape-shifting Kumo or a magical spider. All these creatures are considered yokai, a type of supernatural or mysterious creature found throughout Japan.
In other cases, the Futakuchi-Onna isn’t a thing, but rather a curse that is placed on men and women who are considered greedy, wicked, or otherwise unwilling to share resources when they’re able to.
Historical significance
Two main stories surround the Futakuchi-Onna. The most commonly told one is about the miser and the Futakuchi-Onna, while the second is a little muddy and told in several ways and is considered the curse version of the Futakuchi-Onna.
In the first story, there was a stingy miser from Fukushima, a small rural village, that hated to spend money and never wanted to support a family. When he was an old man, he came across a beautiful woman who barely ate a thing. He took her as his wife and was amazed by how little she ate despite being a hard worker. However, within a few days, he noted that his stores of rice were diminishing far faster than they should of.
After a few puzzling days, he decided to stay home and observe his wife. He was soon rewarded by her lowering her hair to reveal the monstrous mouth at the back of her head. The hair soon stretched out and started shoving rice balls into it, making all sorts of sounds. Disgusted and horrified, the man decided that it would be best to divorce his wife. However, the Futakuchi-Onna wasn’t going to allow that. She trapped her husband in a bathtub and took him up into the mountains, threatening to boil him alive to consume him. Somehow, he managed to escape and took to hiding in a lily marsh that prevented the Futakuchi-Onna from finding him.
It would take him weeks to return home, and by the time he did, the Futakuchi-Onna was long gone, along with all his rice and money. Those of the village explained how she had spent all his money on food before disappearing into the forest never to be seen again. For the rest of his days, the man lived in poverty and terror of the return of the Futakuchi-Onna coming back and making good on her promise to eat him.
The second story was more tragic and is told in several ways and is said to have occurred in the Shimosa province. The gist of the story is the typical stepmother type of story. A woman marries a man who already has a daughter and together they have another daughter. The family was poor, and there wasn’t much food to go around. So, instead of feeding both girls equally, the mother decided to use what resources they had on her biological daughter while giving her stepdaughter far less than was necessary to survive.
The girl got sicker and sicker until one day she finally died. Some stories state that the Futakuchi-Onna developed on the back of the woman’s head after 49 days. The alternative to this story is that the husband was working in the garden with an axe, and accidentally hit the back of his wife’s head, just above the neck. Having already lost his daughter, the man couldn’t stand to lose his wife as well, so he helped her heal from the terrible gaping wound. While the wife did survive, the wound never closed and eventually developed into a Futakuchi-Onna after 49 days.
The woman started suffering debilitating headaches until she fed the new mouth. It wasn’t just the pain she was trying to stifle but also the voice of her stepdaughter that seemed to come from the second head. She was doomed to feed the second head, herself, and her daughter, or she would be afflicted with terrible pain and feel the hunger pangs that her stepdaughter felt before her death.
In some tellings of this tale, the woman fell asleep, exhausted from headaches and having to feed everyone in her home. However, her husband hadn’t fallen asleep because something was whispering to him from the back of his wife’s head. The second head would go on to tell him that it was his daughter and that his wife had murdered her through starvation.
Protection from
It’s believed to avoid meeting a Futakuchi-Onna is by simply being a good and generous person, within reason. They are generally a form of punishment.
Resources:
Futakuchi onna. (n.d.). Yokai.com. https://yokai.com/futakuchionna/
Futakuchi-onna. (n.d.). Japan Box. https://thejapanbox.com/blogs/japanese-mythology/futakuchi-onna
Scibbler Production. (2017). Tales from Papan: Futakuchi onna, the two mouthed woman [creepypasta reading] [Video]. YouTube.
Further viewing:
Previous Monsters
Aswang
Bunyip
Church Grim
Drop Bears
Enfield Horror
And that’s the Futakuchi-Onna. Whether a curse or a yokai, it’s better not to be stingy or an asshole, or it will come for you!
As for next week, I’m spoiled for choice when it comes to monsters that start with the letter G. Currently on my list I have gargoyles, Groot slang, and Gashadokuro. I guess I will see how I feel about it next week to choose one.
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good heavens! I am thoroughly engrossed by this series. What a fascinating window into monsters that I know very little about, or in this case, I have never heard of! I know this story has a tragic air to it and perhaps I shouldn't make light... but I can't help thinking how good she'd be at stealing all the cupcakes 😂
Oh those cupcakes will disappear so quickly, you wouldn't even know where they disappeared to. I'm enjoying looking up monsters I don't even know about.
Hehehe hehe! Love it! Please keep'em coming!
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