Ring Novel Koji Suzuki

[Shinyoung Gedris]

Afterfinding out three teenagers died at the same time and in the same bizarre manner as his niece, reporter Kazuyuki Asakawa of Daily News starts a personal investigation. His search leads him to South Hakone Pacific Land Lodge, a resort where the youths were together one week before their deaths. There, he finds a mysterious unmarked videotape which shows a 20-minute sequence of abstract and real scenes and ends with a text warning that the viewer has one week to live. The next part, which supposedly explains the "charm" - a means of avoiding death - is overwritten by an advertisement.

The tape terrifies Asakawa. Desperate to avert his fate, he takes the tape and enlists the help of his old high-school friend Ryūji Takayama, now a university Philosophy Professor. Intrigued, Ryūji watches the tape and asks for a copy to study at home, to which Asakawa obliges.

While Ryūji dissects the footage to figure out where it was shot and broadcast, Asakawa chases other leads. He goes home only to learn his wife watched the tape, with their infant daughter on her lap, out of curiosity.

The next day, Ryūji figures that the moments of near blackness appearing during real scenes are likely caused by the recording device blinking. The two travel to Kamakura and access a personal archive of paranormal cases found in Japan. Searching for individuals with psychic photography ability, they find the record of Sadako Yamamura, a young woman who was born on Izu Oshima Island.

Ryūji theorizes Sadako is already dead, and the last part of the tape contains what she wanted viewers to accomplish. To figure it out, they travel to Izu Oshima to learn about her past. Stuck on the island because of a heavy storm, the pair aren't able to unearth anything that helps solve the mystery. Even with the help of Oshima and Yoshino, colleagues of Asakawa, they only managed to piece together Sadako's timeline up to 30 years ago.

With their deadline approaching, Ryūji has the idea to retrace the existence of the resort lodge. Yoshino finds out that the resort used to be a tuberculosis sanatorium, where Sadako's father lived in his last days, and the only surviving staff working there in the period near Sadako's disappearance is GP Nagao Jotaro.

When the storm clears, the two travel to Dr. Jotaro's office, and recognize him as the aggressive man in the tape. Ryūji presses Dr. Jotaro for answers. The doctor admitted to being infatuated with Sadako and, as if guided by something beyond himself, raped her in an abandoned cabin deep in the woods, in the process infecting her with smallpox and learning she was intersex. Driven by the same unexplainable compulsion (which the duo later deduces as Sadako's mind control) he chokes her and throws her into a nearby well, which is beneath the lodge at South Hakone Pacific Land. Believing Sadako's rage and psychic powers projected images onto the tape, two race back to the lodge. Guessing her will is to be freed, they locate the well beneath the cabin, and Asakawa finds her remains. Asakawa's 7-day deadline passes with him alive, convincing them that the curse is broken.

The next day, they part ways and Asakawa returns Sadako's remains to her extended family. That night, Ryūji senses his death is approaching. In his final moments, he deduces the actual charm. He calls his assistant and confidante Mai Takano, but only manages to scream before dying. Asakawa learns from Mai that Ryūji is dead.

Panicked as his wife and child's deadline approaches, Asakawa tries to figure out why he was spared. Ryūji appears in a vision and guides him to the answer. Sadako's psychic powers combined with the smallpox virus and created a paranormal virus, and it wanted to propagate through tape copies. The charm is to copy the tape and show it to someone else. With five hours left, Asakawa races to his wife's parents' home with the tape and the VCR, choosing to unleash "an apocalyptic evil" for the sake of his small family.

After the publication of the book several adaptations were made,[2] including a manga adaptation of the novel which was released in 1996 by Kouhirou Nagai.[3] In 1999, a second manga was made by Misao Inagaki which took elements from the novel, film and television versions of the Ring.[3]

Welcome to Abibliophobia, the monthly column where Katelyn Nelson digs into the connections and influences buried deep within the world of the written word and its far-reaching tendrils across media. Focused broadly on horror and the ways it sneaks among the pages, each month will explore a new book or series and its impact on our culture, through the lens of history, the relationship between film and literature, and what varying adaptations have to say about how we understand and recreate stories. So curl up by the fire and crack those dusty covers open. We have a lot of exploring to do.

Loop is, unsurprisingly, the only novel in the trilogy to have never been adapted. It is also the densest to read, in some ways. There is an incredible amount of talk about mortality vs immortality and the construction and death of virtual worlds. An entire undercurrent debate on the existence of God versus the probability of chance. Ideas about the potential future steps of human evolution that might bring us one step closer to immortality, and yet more debate on just what the qualifications are for something to be considered truly real.

By the end of Loop, however, it is somehow so much worse. Because as it turns out, her suffering was at the hands of man and man-who-played-god. Her rage is so great that it found its own way out to infect both worlds. She will not be silenced and she will not be controlled. She will be heard if she has to take the whole of creation down with her until hers is the only voice and visage left.

After four teenagers mysteriously die simultaneously in Tokyo, Kazuyuki Asakawa, a reporter and uncle to one of the deceased, decides to launch his own personal investigation. His search leads him to "Hakone Pacific Land", a holiday resort where the youths were last seen together exactly one week before their deaths. Once there he happens upon a mysterious unmarked videotape. Watching the tape, he witnesses a strange sequence of both abstract and realistic footage, including an image of an injured man, that ends with a warning revealing the viewer has a week to live. Giving a single means of avoiding death, the tape's explanation ends suddenly having been overwritten by an advertisement. The tape has a horrible mental effect on Asakawa, and he doesn't doubt for a second that its warning is true.

Returning to Tokyo with no idea how to avert his fate, Asakawa enlists the help of his curious friend Ryūji Takayama, an apparent psychopath who openly jests he engages in rape. As soon as Asakawa explains the story, Takayama believes him and insists on seeing the tape. Asakawa shows it to him and although Takayama remains cool and nonchalant, he agrees there is a powerful aura around it and asks Asakawa to make him a copy to study at home, which Asakawa does.

Racing against the deadline, both men begin investigating the tape. By following the imagery from the tape, Asakawa deduces that the rapid strobe seen during certain sequences show the recording device was "blinking." The duo then connect this, as well as the significance of certain tape images, and learn of Sadako Yamamura, a deceased young woman and self-proclaimed psychic capable of technopathic feats (such as projecting mental images onto televisions). Believing Sadako is connected to the tape, Asakawa also soon learns that, after carelessly leaving the tape in his home, his wife and infant daughter viewed the tape and now have seven days to live.

Learning of an isolated sanatorium Sadako frequented when her father contracted tuberculosis, Asakawa arranges a meeting with Nagao Jotaro, a doctor at the now-closed hospital. Recognizing him as the injured man from the tape sequences, Ryūji aggressively presses Dr. Jotaro for answers; the doctor, buckling under the pressure, explains he was infatuated with Sadako, and raped her in the woods near to the hospital. Infecting her with smallpox he unknowingly contracted, Jotaro was injured during a struggle (during which he learned Sadako was intersexed), resulting in the doctor throwing Sadako into a nearby well before crushing her with rocks.

Believing Sadako's rage and psychic powers resulted in the imaged projected onto the tape, Asakawa and Ryūji head for the well where she was killed. Figuring the well is located beneath the lodge where the tape was located, the duo locates the well and Asakawa lowers himself inside, finding Sadako's remains. Recovering and giving her remains a burial, Asakawa passes his deadline, confirming his curse has ended. When Ryūji then suddenly dies of a heart attack, however, the true nature of the tapes are revealed; Sadako's rage caused her psychic powers to combine with her smallpox virus, creating a paranormal phenomenon. Demanding the viewer replicate the tape, the curse is propagated like a virus through tape copies, sparing anyone who copies it; since Asakawa duplicated the tape at Ryūji's request, he now must make his wife and daughter do the same lest they die.

There are many key differences between the Ring novel and the 1998 film adaptation. Most notably, Asakawa in the novel is a man named Kazuyuki, while in the film, Asakawa is a woman named Reiko (whose name may have been a nod to Kaoru Futami's girlfriend in Loop). Kazuyuki has a wife and daughter; Reiko is divorced (from Ryuji), and she has a son named Yoichi.

Koji Suzuki's fifth foray into the world of The Ring may have his readers divided. On one end, S continues the tale with the same amount of eeriness that made Sadako a household name with horror fans. However its means of pacing leads towards more complicated questions being presented with only simple, unsatisfying answers given to them.

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