Horror: Rising From the East
Suzuki, Koji. Ring. Translated by Robert B. Rohmer and Glynne Walley from the Japanese original Ringu (1991). Vertical, 2003.
Koji Suzuki's Ring is arguably the first Japanese horror novel translated
into English. As our first official look at the tip of the Japanese horror boom,
the book is compelling reading despite a slow-paced plot. While weak in his
characterization, Suzuki creates a satisfying story, with effective use of the
supernatural, psychic powers and science fantasy.
The plot is a familiar one even to those who have not seen
the different film versions of the story. A newspaper reporter, Asagawa,
investigates why four apparently unrelated but strange deaths occurred in Tokyo
at exactly the same time. Using his resources as a journalist, he finds that all
four young victims stayed in the same rental cabin and watched the same
videotape. Asagawa finds the cabin, locates the tape and watches it. It is an
odd mixture of apparently random scenes: erupting volcanoes, rolling dice,
hideous crowd scenes, weird old women, and a newborn baby. It is a really bad
"art" film. At its end is the now famous curse: "The viewer will die in exactly
seven days unless.." and the rest is recorded over with a Japanese talk show.
The majority of the novel is Asagawa's attempt to find the "charm," the erased
"unless"cc that will undo the curse. He enlists the aid of his friend Ryuji, a
rough mannered, eccentric but brilliant college professor who also watches the
videotape. The two of them set out on a journey to track down the meaning of the
video, their only hope for survival.
While the story unfolds from Asagawa's point of view, Ryuji is the main character and ultimately the hero of the tale. Asagawa enlists his aid for his unflinching, cold personality, one that is driven to find the truth at any cost. Contrary, blunt and combative, he breaks the stereotype of the cool, polite, passive Japanese male. Ryuji repeatedly saves Asagawa from fits of panic and despair. The other characters in the novel are generic and forgettable. Besides Ruuji's fascinating character, the book keeps the reader's attention by shifting its focus from biology, to the supernatural and the psychic. Just as the television camera shifts its viewpoint to hold the viewer, the novel looks at the story from different angles. The four deaths suggest some strange virus or disease that causes panic-induced heart failure. Then Asagawa discovers the videotape and the attention is on the supernatural. When Ryuji and Asagawa find the identity of the antagonist, the emphasis shifts to psychic phenomena, seriously studied in Japan for the entire 20th century.
A young psychic, Chizuko Mifune, inspired part of the original story, according
to Hideo Nakata, director of the Japanese film version of Ring. It is
loosely based on the tale of a young Japanese woman who lived in the early
1900s. This woman, Mifune, reportedly had many supernormal abilities. She could
project writing on film, see through walls, locate missing objects and detect
diseases. She met a Tokyo University professor, Tomokichi Fukurai, who devoted
his life to studying psychic phenomena. His specialty was nensha, or
psychography, the ability to project images onto film. Mifune was his most
controversial subject. Under controlled conditions, Fukurai verified that Mifune
could read text concealed in envelopes. She could project images onto
photographic film sealed in paper envelopes, a device that Suzuki exploited and
modernized in his story. Under criticism from the press and from Fukurai's
colleague, Yamakawa Kenjiro, Mifune attempted a public demonstration of her
powers. She failed, probably distracted by the large numbers of skeptical
onlookers. The enormous outcry of fraud against Mifune made her commit suicide.
Suzuki incorporates this real event as an important subplot of the novel. The
videotape has scenes of rolling dice and the hideous faces of an angry audience.
This is the public demonstration of psychic ability, foretelling the throw of
the dice -- a failure that tormented the antagonist, Sadako, and partly led to
her demise. This introduces a science fantasy sub-theme -- those with special
powers ultimately become outcasts. Olaf Stapledon's Odd John is a
well-developed early example of this theme. A super intelligent man, John had no
lack of psychic abilities that frightened and repelled people, just as Sadako's
did. This theme inspired literally hundreds of stories, novels, and films about
the psychic outsider in both science fiction and horror media.
Ring relies on plot and situations to convey horror. Asagawa has a curse
on him, and he believes in the curse. There is no pretense of suspension of
disbelief. Asagawa is doomed to die in seven days, and the reader goes along
with him. The weird atmosphere comes from the description of the strange images
on the film, some strange sounds and unexplained behavior of electrical
appliances. Atmosphere notwithstanding, most of the story occurs in ordinary
settings. Asagawa's ability as a reporter seems as powerful as any psychic's.
The way he and Ryuji track down the originator of the cursed video are
marginally believable because readers are used to such extravagant searches,
coincidences and dumb luck. Yes, it is likely that they could identify the
volcano shown in the film, but identifying and finding the people in the film in
a country as large as Japan seems unlikely, given the short deadline and the
skepticism of their potential helpers. They spend a whole day looking through
thousands of files of psychic people to find Sadako without knowing her name,
date of birth, or what she looked like. They only knew or thought they knew
where she lived. The kanji, or Japanese character, for "Sada," the first part of
Sadako's name appears in the video, which of course, they remember and
immediately recognize. Though this is possible, credibility gets badly stretched
during their frantic research, though Suzuki's skill as a writer makes the
reader gladly go along for a ride.
Even from reading the translated novel, one can see why the film producers decided to replace Asagawa with a young woman, also named Asagawa. Ryuji becomes her cold, eccentric, unremorseful ex-husband who reluctantly helps her unravel the mystery. A strong female divorcee and devoted mother is a much more interesting lead character than the bland and undemonstrative Asagawa of the novel. The female Asagawa has a greater range of emotional --expression and subtle responsiveness to the rising strangeness of the story.
Taking into account that Ring is Suzuki's first novel, it is an
impressive integration of themes that attracted a wide readership. The book was
an immediate bestseller that has been translated in most Asian languages. While
Suzuki has been named the "Stephen King of Japan," he does not match King's
ability to make boatloads of unforgettable characters. But then King lacks
Suzuki's ability to make a clean plot with interesting subthemes and a
satisfying conclusion. Ryuji is a well-drawn character and from all accounts,
and Suzuki further developed characterization skills in subsequent novels. As
horror novel, Ring successfully creates a sense of unease and foreboding.
The reader feels that Ryuji and Asagawa are facing unknown horrors. The
atmosphere is sparse, with little of the usual horror claptrap of gore,
apparitions, over-extended panic and pain. Suzuki makes the absurd idea of a
cursed videotape with an impossible riddle into a plausible quest for the
frightening truth behind a very real curse.