Prarthana Somaiah

Dr. Linda Haas

Writing 39B
2 March 2016
RIP Companion Essay
Kuchisake-Onna is a 1970s Japanese folktale and was the original version of the wellknown folktale Slit-Mouthed Woman. This story is about an evil female spirit who goes
around at night scaring people with her slit-mouth and then killing them. In our cross cultural
analysis of the text, we explain the purpose of the story and compare it to the Korean version of
the Slit-Mouthed Woman called Red Mask and analyze the differences in the rhetorical
situation due to the difference in the cultural backgrounds of each story. In order to appeal to a
college-aged audience, we articulated the message of women submissiveness to men and their
drive for beauty in a Draw My Life presentation style. Our video incorporates clips from the
movie and images to help portray our main message and help illustrate the differences in genre
conventions between the stories.
One of the main points in our presentation that helped tie everything together was the
transition mentioned Now we are going to move on from rhetorical situation of the Japanese
version to the Korean version of the Slit-Mouthed Woman. This small but crucial part of our
presentation emphasize the fact that we were comparing the different rhetorical situations of the
two folktales. Before this transition, we had finished narrating the Japanese version of the SlitMouthed Woman and in the in depth analysis of an evil female spirit. For the narration, we used
actual video clips from the movie of the Slit-Mouthed Woman because it is easier to
understand a story when you have an image of the characters in your head. We felt like the actual

movie would allow the audience to follow the plot better and therefore understand the analysis
portion of the video. After the narration, we explained how the purpose of the Japanese folktale
was to reflect how divorce was frowned upon in 1970s Japanese culture; therefore, the story was
viewed as a warning against divorce since it showed how the husband slit his wifes face because
she wanted a divorce. The visuals we drew represents the message by showing the sacred bond
in marriage and the emojis used adds emphasis to the points. Also, the use of emojis appeals to
a college-aged audience because everyone texts and uses emojis so there is more engagement
when the students watch the video. After this explanation we emphasized the fact that in many
folktales women were most of the time portrayed as evil spirits because they were seen has
having an emotional weak spirit and would undergo a stressful event. In order to make this
comparison easier to understand, we used tables and explained the weak spirit in a formula
format so that the students can visually see what characteristics were need to create this weak
spirit. I think the structure in which we did the analysis and narration flowed well; in other
words, we narrated first then analyzed that part of the narration. I feel like this technique was
effective because that way audience follows along easily, and to ensure that they followed along,
we put the narration in a film like box while the analysis was drawn in other shapes and colors to
emphasis the transitions. When the main transition occurred, it was important because it made
the audience aware of the fact that we would be switching to the Korean version of the folktale.
For the Korean version, we explained how the main points of the story was that women would
undergo plastic surgery to be beautiful to be attractive for the men, and that one plastic surgery
went wrong resulting in a woman with a slit-mouth. We used a graphic illustration to depict how
plastic surgery was more apparent in Korean culture because we felt that if students saw
statistical data, it would help prove our point. The analysis depicts the difference in the rhetorical

situation of different cultural context of the folktales. One folktale was to reflect the view against
divorce, and the other was to reflect how the drive for beauty in the Korean society could lead to
harmful consequences for women, such
as surgical errors. Throughout the video
we also wrote when we were explaining
the genre conventions so that the
audience had a clear understanding of
what convention was being reflected
Screenshot of Transition

and the way it was being reflected in the story. This

really helped

with conveying the analysis and message of our presentation. However, I do feel like we
couldve emphasized a little more on the genre conventions to tie it fully back to the fairytale
genre. Overall, we used video clips, images, emojis, and specific formatting techniques to make
our video appealing to a college-aged audience while also illustrating our analysis.
When assigning parts for the video presentation within the group, we broke it down into
three sections: the beginning part of the story, the ending, and the Korean version of the story. I
was in charge of the narrating the beginning part of the story which included the part where
Kuchisake-onna wants a divorce and the part where her husband is finds out and punishes her by
slitting her mouth ear to ear and then killing her. Within this narration, I also was in charge of the
rhetorical analysis of divorce in Japan during the 1970s and folktale genre convention of the
purpose of the story. The main analysis of the divorce aspect of the story was that women were
allowed to get a divorce because of the marital laws, but it looked down upon in society.
Therefore, the purpose of this story was in a way a warning sign to women about how one should
not get a divorce. We were each in charge of writing the script for our own narration parts and

coming up with what we wanted to draw for each of our sections. Jennifer and I did the title page
and introductory portion of project, by writing the script for that narration part and Jean and I
ended the project with the conclusion narration and drawing. I did the majority of recording the
videos with my IPhone and then sending them to Jennifer who then put the video together and
edited it. Overall, we all collaborated together and came up with the storyline and what we were
going to analyze, we then divided the story and analysis into three different sections.

Works Cited
Ito, Masami. "Marriage Ever-changing Institution." The Japan Times: News. N.p., 3 Nov. 2009.
Web. <http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/11/03/reference/marriage-ever-changinginstitution/#.VtdtipwrLIX>
James. "The Slit-Mouthed Woman." The Slit-Mouthed Woman. Read-legends-and-myths, 2014.
Web. 02 Mar. 2016. <http://www.read-legends-and-myths.com/the-slitmouthedwoman.html>.
Nouza, Tomas. Kuchisake onna CZ Titulky Horor, Japonsko, 2007. Online video clip.
Youtube. Google. 27 Jan. 2016. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.
Ong, Aihwa. Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia.
Albany: State U of New York, 1987. Print.