FUTAKUCHI ONNA ふた口女
Pronunciation: FOO-tah Koo-chee OHN-nah
Translation: The Two-Mouthed Woman
Similar to: Kuchinashi Onna (口無し女), the No-Mouthed Woman; and Kuwazu Nyōbo (食わず女房), the Wife Who Didn’t Eat
Overview
Futakuchi onna is one of those deceptively harmless looking yōkai that, at first glance, appears to be a nice young lady, but it turns out she has a surprise up her sleeve—or, in this case, beneath her long silky hair.
The thing that makes futakuchi onna distinctly nonhuman is the second mouth hidden on the back of her head (or sometimes at the nape of her neck). Only when it’s time to eat does her hair part and the large hideous orifice reveals itself.
If you think that scenario is unsettling, wait until those flowing locks—wild with hunger—take on a life of their own and begin whipping around like shiny black snakes, snatching up nearby food and feeding it to the gaping maw that devours faster than any person could possibly eat. While futakuchi onna consumes all edible provisions in the house, fortunately, her appetite is limited to food alone, sparing any acts of cannibalism.
It’s important to note that there is a very similar yōkai that is often mistaken for futakuchi onna called kuchinashi onna (口無し女), “the no-mouthed woman,” or kuwazu nyōbo (食わず女房), “the wife who didn’t eat.”
Background and Popular Stories
Futakuchi onna’s origin story starts almost like a Grimm’s Fairy Tale but ends less happily. According to the 1841 book Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (絵本百物語), or the Picture Book of a Hundred Stories, by Takehara Shunsensai, futakuchi onna acquired this extra mouth as a result of a curse from a deceased stepchild. The tale starts off in a familar way: A man, after losing his wife, remarried. However, the new wife favored her own children over the man’s only daughter. Instead of leaving the poor stepchild in the woods or making her scrub floors, this evil stepmother actually starved the girl to death.
The resentment and restless soul of this ghost baby sought revenge by cursing the stepmother. There are two versions of this curse; in the first, the stepmother’s future children were born with an extra mouth on the back of their heads and were given a ravenous appetite. In the second, it’s said that the wicked stepmother herself became a futakuchi onna, and it happened in the most unusual way.
On the forty-ninth day after the child’s death, an accident occurred. A man hired to split firewood swung his axe and unintentionally sliced the back of the stepmother’s head. It was a bad injury, but she survived—only, the lesion never completely healed. Over time, the wound started to look like two lips, and the still-exposed bone resembled teeth. There was even a swollen bit of flesh that appeared to be a tongue.
The stepmother experienced constant agonizing pain. Somehow, though, she discovered that if she placed some food in this “mouth” on the back of her head, this suffering would ease (see the Jinmensō entry for another parasitic yōkai that insists on being fed in order to alleviate its host’s torment). It wasn’t long before the stepmother was eating with both mouths, and all the food in the house was disappearing at an alarming rate.
For those who thought this story couldn’t get any creepier, occasionally, this new mouth murmured, “Apologize. Apologize.”
The similar yōkai kuwazu nyōbo’s tale is quite different. You’ll find her even less discerning about what she eats. In her story, there was a rice farmer who decided he wanted to get married. He was very picky, though, and wrote up a list of requirements for a bride. She had to be beautiful and hardworking and have little to no appetite. The farmer toiled long in his fields and didn’t want to share his rice with anyone, not even with his future wife.
Unsurprisingly, no such woman could be found, and it looked like he’d never find his perfect partner—that is, until one night while he was sitting outside in his wooden barrel tub. He was startled when the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen suddenly appeared out of the darkness. She introduced herself as new to the area and in need of employment and a place to stay. This stranger also mentioned that she wasn’t afraid of hard work, and—the best part—she never ate.
The joyous farmer seized his good fortune. It wasn’t long before the two were married and it was as if all his dreams had come true. He continued to work his fields while his new bride dragged the bags of harvested rice into the storehouse and took care of the home. True to her word, he never saw her eat a single bite of food.
Months went by and spring arrived. Readying to plant new seedlings, the farmer realized he hadn’t admired all the rice stores recently. He pulled open the heavy door to the storehouse and, horror stricken, found the room almost empty. He questioned his wife, but she feigned ignorance. This raised his suspicions.
The next day, the farmer pretended to go out and till the fields but instead returned home and snuck up into the rafters. There he observed his delicate wife haul in the last of the previous year’s harvest, cook it all in a large iron pot, and proceed to make a mountain of rice balls.
What came next was worse. The gentle beauty parted the back of her hair to expose an oversized second mouth, its drooling tongue greedily licking its lips. The long tresses then proceeded to grab the rice balls and drop them into the cavernous, gnashing hole one by one until they were all gone.
The horrified farmer realized that his perfect, noneating wife was in fact some kind of mountain witch. Later that evening, he made up a story about how she should return to her childhood home to take care of her aging parents. His wife obediently agreed to leave, but asked if she could take a long length of rope and the wooden barrel tub with her, and requested that he check the small leak in the tub before she left.
The farmer happily handed her the rope and climbed in to examine this hole she’d mentioned. Suddenly, she threw the rope around the tub, hoisted it onto her back, and bolted away. The farmer had been tricked. When he looked again, he saw his once-beautiful wife had transformed into a hideous yamauba ogress (a mountain witch). The oni wife—running far too fast for the farmer to leap out of the tub—cackled and told him she was taking him into the mountains to feed him to her hungry children.
The farmer almost gave up, but after some time, she stopped under a tree to rest. He quietly grabbed on to a branch and lifted himself out of the tub. Knowing she could easily track him down and outrun him, he found a patch of irises and hid inside them. Here he was safe because oni abhor iris flowers and their sharp, swordlike leaves.
In Modern Stories
Probably the best-known adaptation of this double-mouthed creature is the Pokémon Mawile. This Pocket Monster seems to have a large ponytail on the back of its head, but it also acts as a giant mouth. Then there is Mega Mawile, which has two such mouths, surely making futakuchi onna proud.