The Kuchisake-onna 口裂け女 The Slit-Mouthed Woman Japan is rife with stories of yokai; loosely what Westerners may refer to as demons, goblins, ghosts, and ghouls, that have persisted from the Edo period until the modern day in part thanks to anime, manga, and toys turning folklore figures into consumable, often cutesy, pop-culture darlings that are market friendly. One of the most modern additions to the yokai "family" is the Kuchisake-onna, or The Split Mouth Woman. Here she is seen reimagined in a popular anime as a demon-figure that needs to be battled, far away from her usual, urban haunt, and extremely different from her usually human form. Some folklorist claim that her origins date back to the Heian period of Japan, while others place it in the Edo period, and some say it didn't emerge until the 1970s. In most Japanese versions of the tale, she is a woman who had been murdered--some tales say that she was disfigured by her Samurai husband for infidelit