Ring: Japanese Horror, Effects in the West and the Hollywood Franchise

Ring

Given that I've recently read the novel and the new film in the franchise, Rings, came out last Friday (in Europe anyway), it seemed fitting that I start this blog with Ring. I'll give some background but I don't plan on lecturing you to death on it. It'll be interesting, I promise so don't worry.

Even if you haven't seen it, there's no doubt that the image of a girl or young woman crawling out of a TV set and suffering a bad hair day is a familiar one. The film that you know is probably The Ring (2002) or maybe its sequel The Ring Two (2005), the American-made films. I could be wrong though because you might be familiar with the Japanese film from 1998. Regardless of what film version you may know (there are quite a few), they can all be traced back to Koji Suzuki's 1991 novel, Ring.

Ring is the first in a trilogy of books that revolve around a cursed videotape that exactly one week later leads to the dead of anyone who watches it unless they can carry out a particular task. If you've seen the films or know their premise then you have a rough idea of how the whole thing works. However, as with many adaptations of novels, there are some big differences between the novel and what appears (or comes out) of the screen.

There are going to be spoilers below so if you don't want anything spoiled for you then don't read on! There are obviously going to be spoilers, this is the whole point of this so if you don't want them, leave now! I mean, why are you even still reading this?!

Now that the spoiler warning has been given, we'll be moving on.

The novel follows a journalist, Asakawa, who investigates the sudden death of four teenagers who all died on the same day at exactly the same time from heart failure. Retracing their steps to a log cabin in a resort, he watches a cursed video tape, which will lead to his death in exactly a week of viewing. Making a copy of the tape, Asakawa shows it to his friend, Ryuji, and they team up to find out where it came from and how to save themselves. They discover that the images on the tape were recorded by a person rather than a camera and trace their origin to a psychic named Sadako who has been missing for 30 years. They learn that Sadako could produce nensha, or thought photography, which allowed her to imprint images onto the video tape and cursed it in the first place. They discover that Sadako was raped, strangled and then thrown down a well while still alive and that the well is right under the log cabin where the four teenagers and Asakawa watched the tape. During her slow death, Sadako's hatred lingered and turned into a potent curse against the world. Asakawa and Ryuji retrieve her body and return it to her family, believing that they've broken the curse when Asakawa passes his week's deadline and survives. However, after Ryuji dies, Asakawa realises that he only survived because he made a copy of the tape and passed the curse onto a new person. The novel ends with Asakawa rushing away to try to save his wife and child who had inadvertently cursed themselves.

That's a fairly basic outline of the novel but it has multiple layers, many of which failed to make it into the film adaptations.

Sadako is intersex

While tracing the course of Sadako's history, Asakawa and Ryuji manage to find and confront the man who raped and killed her. The novel goes to great lengths to explain how beautiful Sadako was and her rapist tries to use such beauty as justification for what he did because he "just couldn't help it". He also tries to explain it away by saying that his smallpox infection--which he didn't even know he had at the time--had made him lose his mind. Ludicrous and unbelievable as those excuses are, after raping her, Doctor Nagao (yeah, he's a doctor, he should be a responsible member of society but he isn't. I'll talk more about him later) realises that Sadako has fully formed testicles as well as a vagina. The book terms this as "pseudohermaphroditism" but it would now fall under the label of "intersex". Basically, despite her feminine features and breasts, Sadako is technically male but one who has androgen insensitivity syndrome. Her body made testosterone but rejected it so that when puberty hit, she went through female rather than male puberty.

Now, you may be wondering why such a detail is relevant. Within the novel, it appears to provide the doctor with something of an excuse (yes, excuses again) for throttling her and throwing her down a well; he's basically disgusted by her. However, beyond that it's not entirely clear what it's wider purpose is. Is it supposed to other her by showing her "wrongness" or is it supposed to humanise her by making her appear to be some manner of victim? The detail doesn't seem to affect Asakawa's opinion of her but her rape and death cause him to pity her, not the fact she was intersex. Beyond the doctor's obvious disgust, Sadako being intersex doesn't seem to faze anyone and it doesn't appear to have much of a purpose either. However, Asakawa and Ryuji speculate that Sadako probably had a strong desire to have a child, something that wasn't possible with her condition. One of the images from the tape, one of Sadako's memories, shows an old woman predicting that Sadako will give birth, something that she seemed to dwell on when she was dying. Presumably, Sadako would have known that she couldn't actually conceive. The novel implies that her sexual organs were male regardless of external appearance so if she didn't have ovaries or a womb, she couldn't menstruate. Failing to bleed on a monthly basis would have been something of a giveaway and the prediction of her giving birth clearly dwelt on her mind or it wouldn't have been projected onto the tape. You might be wondering what that has to do with anything. Well, it's entirely possible that realising she was dying and that the prediction hadn't come true, she consciously, or possibly subconsciously, birthed something else in a less traditional sense. Namely, her psychic powers threw out the curse, which eventually found a medium in a video tape when the cabin was built over the spot where she died. The curse is her baby in a weird way. However, there's more to this baby than psychic powers, which leads me to...

Pseudoscience

I promised that I'd talk about Doctor Nagao again so here we go. As I touched on before, Nagao had smallpox. In fact, he's named as the last person in Japan to have had smallpox. In case you don't know, smallpox was a dreadful dangerous disease that either left people scarred with marks from spots or killed them. Basically, it was the demon version of chickenpox and it was usually a killer. It was a major problem and some major medical breakthroughs were made while trying to get rid of it. After all, the idea of vaccination came about because of smallpox, as a similar but non-fatal disease, cowpox, was injected into patients. Once you'd had one, you couldn't get the other. Given what an issue smallpox was, as soon as doctors had a way to stop people from getting it, there was a world effort to eradicate it through vaccination. The vaccination was so successful that smallpox cannot be found in the world naturally anymore, with the only surviving examples being kept in labs.

What does smallpox have to do with this Japanese horror story? Well, this is a kicker. It's important that Nagao is named as the last person in Japan to have smallpox because when he rapes Sadako, he gives it to her. Now, if Suzuki's reasoning is to be believed, smallpox was a bit annoyed about being eradicated so it combined with Sadako's hatred of the world and together they birthed the Ring Virus, which ends up on the cursed video tape. Yes, a virus is apparently sentient and decides it's not going down without a fight. It sounds a bit off the wall but this is Suzuki's "scientific" explanation for the whole novel. It explains why the tape needs to be copied, as viruses need to reproduce (actually, replicate is a more accurate term given that viruses get their hosts to make more of viruses) and how in the other two novels in the series, it can mutate in a weird way.

If you're reading a horror novel, you're usually willing to suspend disbelief but that's usually for a supernatural cause. If Sadako was a demon who cursed a tape, it might be easier to swallow but the bizarre attempt to explain the phenomenon in a scientific way is a bit bonkers. It is definitely not an explanation that I like and feel like it would almost have been better if Sadako's psychic powers were solely responsible. It's strange as heck but it seems important for Suzuki that he explain things as best as he can, which brings me onto...

Supernatural Powers

The important thing about Sadako is that she has amazing psychic powers and Suzuki uses Asakawa and Ryuji to trace some of her history. Sadako is by no means the first in her family to have such abilities, although they are certainly the strongest. Her mother, Shizuko, seemingly developed various powers after rescuing a statue of a religious figure that had been thrown into the sea by American soldiers. Shizuko's abilities included an ability to gain brief insights into the future and being able to "see" things that were hidden, such as the numbers that appeared on dice in a lead bowl. Shizuko worked with Professor Yamamura, Sadako's father, in his investigation of psychic powers but was deemed a fraud and hounded by the media when she failed at a public demonstration. This failure is a possible cause for Shizuko's subsequent suicide and Sadako's hatred of people, given how the public had ridiculed her mother. Sadako inherited a magnified version of her mother's powers, including stronger precognition (she predicts the exact date and time that a volcano on her home island of Izu will erupt) and the ability to imprint and manipulate certain mediums. Sadako's powers were discovered and catalogued after she mentally printed an image of her own name (in the appropriate Japanese characters) onto blank film. She could project images onto a TV set, even when it wasn't on so really making a cursed video tape was a cinch!

What's interesting about the powers discussed in the novel is that they are based on the accounts of real people! Chizuko Mifune was a psychic woman in the early 1900s, who was discovered by Professor Tomokichi Fukurai in 1910. Chizuko, whose name is reminiscent of Sadako's mother, Shizuko, was supposed to be able to read messages that were sealed away in envelopes. However, like Shizuko, she was ridiculed and branded as a fraud, as many believed that she'd had access to the envelopes. A few months later, Chizuko committed suicide by ingesting poison, far less dramatic than Shizuko's suicide by volcano although just as deadly and tragic. At the time of her death, Chizuko was just 24.

Professor Fukurai didn't allow the failure of Chizuko to affect his work but instead moved onto Ikuko Nagao, a young woman who could create nensha or images with the power of her thoughts. She also gave a public demonstration, which ultimately turned out badly and the stress of the event caused a brain fever from which she subsequently died. Fukurai was obviously very dedicated to his research and didn't seem to care who was affected as he continued to work with other women capable of thought photography. One such woman actually provides the name for Ring's antagonist--Sadako Takahashi. Takahashi never became as sinister as her fictional counterpart although she didn't turn out to be what Fukurai had hoped either. Ultimately, Fukurai's ideas never caught on but his research did provide an interesting basis for Suzuki's novel.

Japanese folklore

While the novel draws inspiration from real people in Japan's past, the 1998 film, Ringu, uses imagery from Japanese folklore, particularly in regard of ghost stories. After all, you need to remember that Sadako is dead and as a result, the film's director, Hideo Nakata, used visuals that were traditionally frightening for a Japanese audience. While most Westerners would be unfamiliar with the folklore pertaining to Japanese spirits, or yurei, the haunting images of Nakata's film succeeded in appealing and frightening a Western audience, thereby making it sufficiently popular for Hollywood to make its own adaptation.

Japanese ghosts are different to those found in the West. Obviously there are cultural differences and this is clearly reflected in folklore and stories surrounding spirits. Every human being has a reikon (霊魂), or soul. When a person dies, they pass on to the afterlife after their reikon has been enshrined at a Shinto or Buddhist shrine. Provided that the correct rites are performed, that person can enjoy a peaceful post-death existence. Those who don't have those rites performed or who feel sufficiently strong emotions after their deaths, are trapped in limbo. They cannot truly return to the world of the living but they cannot continue to the afterlife until they've been appeased. Spirits that remain want something although it isn't always easy or possible to give them it. 

An onryo (怨霊), or vengeful spirit, seems to match Sadako. Onryo usually have a bone to pick with the living and often arise from those who meet violent ends. Sometimes they seek revenge on murderers or those who otherwise wronged them but other times, there is no way to appease them and exorcism becomes necessary. Sadako's ghost is not appeased by having her body returned to her family and her motive for remaining among the living does not involve revenge--at least, she doesn't try to get back at her rapist and murderer. Given that she hates all of humanity, her spirit would probably only leave of its own accord if every person on earth was dead. However, an onryo usually haunts a specific location or person, which in this case would be the videotape but no one attempts to exorcise Sadako and her will from it.

The films seem to draw on another bit of Japanese folklore to provide the visuals for Sadako, or Samara as she is in the American adaptations. Sadako has an appearance that is a pretty

Ghost of Oyuki

standard representation of the Japanese yueri. In fact there is a famous painting that has come to epitomise the standard image of the ghost in Japan. The Ghost of Oyuki (Yūreizu: Oyuki no Maboroshi (幽霊図(お雪の幻) was painted by Maruyama Ōkyo in 1750. Apparently, Oyuki had been a geisha lover of his who had died young. Her yurei is supposed to have visited him one night and hovered at the foot of his bed. Her image so haunted (ha!) him afterwards that he felt it necessary to paint her portrait. The painting is known for the yurei's long, dishevelled black hair, the pallor of the skin, the white burial kimono and, interestingly, the absence of feet. When it comes to spirits, it is quite normal for them to be female. As a result, it makes sense that Sadako would also fall into this category, even though she is not technically female. 

While this is a very general representation, the 1998 Ringu pays homage to a particular type of yurei, who was an onryo from a story known as Yotsuya Kaidan. The versions of the story vary but they all involve a beautiful young woman named Oiwa who is poisoned by her husband, Iemon, who wishes to marry another woman. Rather than killing her, the poison disfigures her and causes her left eye to droop. This characteristic is often exaggerated in kabuki plays, making Oiwa's appearance a distinctive one. Depending on the version, Oiwa 

Oiwa from Yotsuya Kaidan. Clearly not horrifying...

either kills herself by accident or is killed by her husband. Regardless, she vows revenge on Iemon and returns as a onryo to get back at him. He eventually goes mad and she apparently continues to haunt the earth to this day. Now while you have this delightful image in your

Sadako is watching you!

head, here's something for you to draw parallels with: Sadako's eye. After Sadako climbs out of Ryuji's TV and does a nice little ghostly shuffle (she has feet), we get a wonderful close-up of Sadako's eye through the mad mop of hair. Maybe you watched the film and thought it was kind of funny but if you were terrified by it (it is rather unsettling) then you can now be unsettled by the roots it has in Japanese culture. Nakata did not pull these images out of nowhere and once you have the context, it actually makes the whole situation a lot worse. Such an image was used in the Hollywood The Ring but instead of Sadako, the wild eye images appear on horses. Knew there was a reason that I didn't like horses!

Even without the cultural context, Sadako's emergence from the TV clearly did something that was attractive to a Western audience. In fact, The Ring became the first in a series of remakes of Japanese films or J-horror. So ghosts of this sort clearly freak a Western audience out just as much as their Japanese counterparts but what else is there that might be missing a little extra significance to a Western audience.

Wells! Sadako's body ends up down one and she's seen climbing out of one before she climbs out of the TV so what's the significance? Well, it's common for water to feature in stories or artwork about the dead. In fact, Suzuki has another story that was adapted into film, Dark Water. There's good reason for that because water is often used to symbolise the spirit world. So if you have a ghost standing in water, or a living person wading through water in a horror film, guess what? They're actually moving through the spirit realm. Hence, Sadako climbing out of water (the well) is actually her climbing out of the world of the dead, much as a corpse might pull itself out of the grave. It also means that when Asakawa ends up standing in water at the bottom of the well and sifting around for Sadako's bones, he's actually standing on the cusp of the spirit world, a notion that's given credence by the fact that he's due to die at any moment and is sharing the space with a malevolent ghost.

Basically, in Japanese stories, if someone tells you not to play in the water, it may be a very good idea to listen to them. There's definitely something strange about the water!

So having successfully terrorised you with images of ghosts with their eyes sliding down their faces, I hope that you've learned something interesting and might be willing to go out into the world to pass on the knowledge. Also following the blog would be nice but that's entirely up to you--depends how much of my rambling you can put up with really!