15 Scary Japanese Urban Legends

Purple Mirror

Purple mirror. If you remember these two words by the time you turn 20, you will die. The reason for that is because there is a hidden curse behind those words.

Long ago, there was a young girl who enjoyed playing tricks. This girl received a valuable hand-mirror from her parents which she then painted purple. She thought she would be able to remove the paint if she didn't leave it for too long, but no matter what she did, the paint refused to come off.

Filled with regret, the girl muttered "purple mirror... purple mirror..." over and over until her death, on the day of her 20th birthday.

Ever since that day, the girl's feelings towards that purple mirror were transferred to the words themselves, and all those under 20 who remember them will die just like she did.

Purple mirror, or murasaki kagami, is one of the most popular urban legends in Japan. Ask anyone in the street and chances are high they've heard of it before. At its most basic, this legend is about two words, in English 'purple mirror,' in Japanese 'murasaki kagami,' and if you remember those two words by the time you turn 20, you will either be cursed or you will die. If, for some reason, you don't think about those two words together, then there's no problem! But we all know how well we go when we're told not to do something, and that's the charm behind this legend. By telling you not to remember those two words, it's pretty much guaranteeing that you will.

The purple mirror urban legend originally sprang to life from the following story:

A young girl was hospitalised with immune impairment. Her body was so weak that she spent most of her teens in a hospital bed.

For her birthday one year her parents gave her an extremely cute hand-mirror. You might be wondering why it was a hand-mirror, but this was a time before Japan experienced rapid economic growth.

The girl fell in love with that hand-mirror. She looked into it every single day and treated it like a precious object.

Until one day.

One day, for some unknown reason, the girl painted the hand-mirror purple. According to her own words, this was because she liked the colour purple. Even so, her actions were clearly strange. Suddenly coming back to herself, the girl looked upon the purple mirror and was shocked.

She tried desperately to peel the purple paint off, but it was stuck there, and in the end she couldn't remove it. Her beloved mirror that she received as a present was now purple, and she was unable to use it any longer.

Of course, it could be said that sickness and health start with the mind, and the girl was so shocked by what happened that her illness worsened right before their eyes. In order to brighten their daughter up again, the girl's parents presented her with another mirror, but she wasn't interested in it.

The girl took her last breaths whilst holding that purple mirror, muttering, "Purple mirror... purple... mirror..."

She was 19-years-old, only days away from her 20th birthday.

That girl's grudge lives on in the words "purple mirror," and children who remember those words will meet an unfortunate fate.