27th January – 睦月

日本の怪談　（Nihon-no-Kaidan）- Japanese Ghost Story

Thanks to the request from my blog reader, once per month I am going to introduce some famous ghost stories in Japan!

Many Japanese people love the horror stories and every summer, there are many TV programs showing ghost related shows. This is because summer is when the soul of dead people comes back to earth – called お盆(Obon) – (Will explain when the season comes later on, stay tuned!). There exists number of areas where a lot of people have seen the ghosts and some curious people visit there and try to see them or take films.

The first topic is related to school ghost –

トイレの花子さん　（Toire-no-Hanako San）-　Little girl Hanako from the school bathroom

She lives in the third cell of the ladies bathroom, wearing red skirt with bobbed hair style. Knocking from the first cell of the bathroom, asking 花子さんはいますか？＝’Are you there Hanako san?’. When knocking the third cell and ask this question, it is believed she will knock back the door and will drug person who knocked into the cell.

Hanako san actually has the model: The sad crime story from Iwate prefecture Touno area. In 1937, there was a family with 2 daughter and 1 son, wife and husband who was a police. The husband police cheated the wife and went to hot spring with prostitute. The wife found out this fact and got extremely furious, at the end she decided to commit suicide and killed the kids – the younger sister and son were killed first and the older sister, called いくこ (Ikuko) could ran away from her mom. She escaped to the elementary school which was at the back of the house and hided inside the bathroom – One school janitor man saw her going there…

Ikuko’s mom came to the school and screaming where she is, and asked to Janitor man. This man told her she is inside the bathroom – She found Ikuko.

The next day, the family including Ikuko was found dead.

After this incident, strange phenomenon occurred in the bathroom where Ikuko hided.

The reason why the name has been changed from Ikuko to Hanako is considered as the name Hanako is often used for example names for girls, therefore when this story was transmitted it was changed to the general name.

口裂け女　（Kuchisake-Onna）－Cracked mouth lady

The rumor of the cracked mouth lady spread from Gifu prefecture in 1978 – 1979. The long black hair lady wearing mask came to the elementary school kids and ask ‘Am I beautiful?’, the kids answered ‘Yes’, then she showed her mouth cracked until the ears and asked ‘Even like this?’ and attacked them. Another rumor says the lady had scissors and cut the kids’ mouth like hers.

This Kuchisake Onna is the ghost of the one ladies who failed her plastic surgery. She is the oldest member of 3 sisters, and other 2 sisters surgery were successful. However, second sister died from the car accident, so the youngest one was the only one reminded beautiful. But she got nut because of her sisters and tore up her mouth just like her oldest sister.

There are some solution when elementary school kids confront the Kuchisake Onna. One is to tell her the dog is coming. As Kuchisake Onna was believed to be scared of dogs, she would run away. Another solution is to recite ‘ポマード’ = Pomard three times. The surgery practitioner was called Pomard, so she gets scared of hearing this name.

In 1979, there was a woman imitated this ghost and walked around the city with knife in Hyogo prefecture, she got arrested.

There are various opinions but this story was believed to be created in order to make the kids give up on going to private lessons. At that time, only kids from rich family could go to the private lessons, so the middle class family told this story to the kids and made them scared to commute to the lessons.