Japenese Urban Legends | 日本の都市伝説

Kejoro

Kejoro is a prostitute whose face and body are hidden behind a curtain of long, matted black hair. She appears in red-light districts and brothels. In most stories, it is only the hair on her head that is disturbingly thick and long, but in some stories, her whole body is covered in thick hair, like some kind of beast.

A kejoro’s victims are the young men who frequent brothels and red light districts. Thinking he sees a girl that he recognizes from behind, a man runs up to the kejoro to speak with her. When she turns around, her face and body are covered by a thick mat of hair, hiding all of her features. Her victim is shocked by the horrible, hairy monster in front of him, giving her time to attack her victim, tangling him up in her hair and using it to slice him up. Despite this, reports of kejoro-related fatalities are very rare.

Despite her horrible appearance to humans, the kejoro is said to be quite popular with yokai. So popular, in fact, that male yokai frequently fight each other over her, competing for her affection. Kejoro seem to return this devotion as well; in some stories, a kejoro will cut off her hair and send it to her lover (human or yokai), or tattoo his name into her skin to prove her undying devotion to him.

The earliest records of kejoro go back to Toriyama Sekien’s “One Hundred Demons of the Past and Present.” There is some debate over his original description as to whether the kejōrō has a normal face under the matte of hair, or whether she is a faceless monster, related to the nopperabō or the ohaguro-bettari, with various yokai researches weighing in on either side of the question.