• uppercase
  • I was happy to find Issue 4 of UPPERCASE in my mailbox last week, even though I regularly buy other magazines this is the first that I’ve subscribed to… I must admit that was mostly due to the Issue 1 cover design. I wanted this magazine and it took me so long to get it, instead of subscribing directly from them in Canada I went through their one and only Australian stockist – six months later I see Issue 3!

    Enough complaining :) This issues cover was designed by San Franciscan illustrator Leigh Wells, her work is a fine example of those times I feel sadly jealous that I am not a talented illustrator.

  • strangled
  • stuart white illustration

    Illustration by Stuart White VIA

    I couldn’t tell you why, but out of all the interesting illustrations and images from Stuart White, this one really spoke to me. I kind of imagine that this is the future ahead of this young melancholy girl, so not a happy picture to my eyes but interesting.

  • kuchisake onna
  • I was introduced to the illustrations of Andrea Innocent by an ABC radio segment, her sources of inspiration include Japanese ghost stories, folklore and legends. A collection of her work “Love, thieves and fear make ghosts” was most recently showing in Sydney at the Japan Foundation Gallery. I love ghost stories, and the Japanese stories are particularly interesting and creepy.

    I once tried to watch Ju-on (the original Japanese movie that was turned into The Grudge) by myself & I swear I lasted less than 15 minutes before I was so creeped out I switched it off and called my Dad. Haha! I felt like such a baby :)

    kuchisake onna (口裂け女, Split-mouthed woman) by Andrea Innocent

    The basics of the kuchisake onna have been told in the tea house: She was a vain woman married to a samurai (in some accounts, a ninja) who distrusted her. Believing she was cheating on him, he slices her mouth open at the sides–splitting her face open from ear to ear.

    She wanders, hiding her mouth behind a fan, the sleeve of a kimono, a stole, or the surgical-style masks now worn in cold and allergy seasons in Japan. She asks someone “watashi, kirei?” (Do you think I’m beautiful?). The answer is usually a resounding “yes” due to her otherworldly beauty, but then she exposes her face and repeats the question; her otherworldly beauty giving way to otherworldly horror. If the person says or does anything besides saying “yes”, she pursues him with a kama (sickle) or knife and replies “I want to do for you what has been done to me.”

    She can’t be outrun, and eventually slices her victim’s mouth open ear to ear. Women killed in this fashion return as kuchisake onna themselves. In some accounts she is said to run lightning fast, in others she “floats” (due to a famous ukiyo-e artist in the Edo period always painting ghosts with no feet, it was generally regarded by many Japanese that all ghosts had no feet–nothing to “truly link” them to the material world).

    She has appeared in picture scrolls of yokai and demons as early as the Edo period She was eventually “forgotten” as the Japanese entered the modern age and built a war machine, and then recovered to form an economic giant, but kuchisake onna returned with a vengeance in late 1979. In late 1979 and even into the early 80s, there were many sightings of kuchisake onna. The urban legend probably grew from an actual attack against a child.”