is a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese horror novel by Koji Suzuki

Koji Suzuki

Koji Suzuki is a Japanese writer, who was born in Hamamatsu and currently lives in Tokyo. Suzuki is the author of the Ring cycle of novels, which has been adapted into a manga series. He has written several books on the subject of fatherhood...

, first published in 1991, and set in modern day Japan. It was the basis for a film of the same name (1998's Ring

Ring (film)

is a 1998 Japanese horror film by Hideo Nakata, adapted from the novel Ring by Kōji Suzuki, which in turn draws on the Japanese folk tale Banchō Sarayashiki. The film stars Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Rikiya Ōtaka as members of a divorced family...

), and two remakes: a Korean version (The Ring Virus

The Ring Virus

The Ring Virus is a South Korean horror adapted from the Japanese novel Ring by Koji Suzuki. A joint project between Japan and Korea, this version has Park Eun-Suh as the creator of the cursed videotape...

) and an American version (The Ring

The Ring (2002 film)

The Ring is a 2002 American psychological horror film directed by Gore Verbinski and starring Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson. It is a remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ring....

).

Plot summary

After four teenagers mysteriously die simultaneously in Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

, 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 together exactly one week before their deaths. Once there he happens upon a mysterious unmarked videotape

Videotape

A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...

. Watching the tape he witnesses a strange sequence of abstract and realistic footage that ends with the warning "You, who watched this tape, are going to die in one week from now. There's only one way to survive. And that is-" but the end of the tape has 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. The only problem is he has no idea how to avert his fate.

Returning to Tokyo, he enlists the help of his curious friend Ryūji Takayama, a self-professed rapist who apparently (most likely due to some psychotic

Psychosis

Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...

 defect) has no fear, and who admits he would see the end of the world if he could, out of curiosity. As soon as Asakawa explains the story, Takayama believes him and wants nothing more than to see 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.

Now, both men share the seven day deadline and must fight against the clock to unravel the mystery of the tape, Sadako Yamamura, and the potentially life-saving riddle.

Characters

• Kazuyuki Asakawa: The book's protagonist, he is a Tokyo newspaper
  Newspaper
  A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
  
   reporter whose reputation was somewhat tarnished in the past in connection with a fad for UFOs and ghost
  Ghost
  In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...
  
  s. He has a wife, Shizuka (the Vertical, Inc.
  Vertical Inc
  Vertical Inc, headquartered in New York, United States, is a Japanese novel and manga company founded in 2001 by Hiroki Sakai. In February 2011 the company was bought by Kodansha and Dai Nippon Printing .-Titles:...
  
   English translation of the novel incorrectly renders her name as Shizu), and daughter, Yoko.
• Ryuji Takayama: Asakawa's friend whom he enlists to help him solve the riddle of the tape. He was a doctor but later became a Philosophy professor of a famous university due to the time the story occurred. Being of an odd mental disposition, and is also something of a genius, Ryūji usually stated that the purpose of his life is to gaze at the end of humanity. Ryūji also claims to be a rapist, although whether these claims are true or not is unclear, as it maybe just a little hoax he used in order to befriend the quiet Asakawa. He was actually a lonely person who struggled to live peacefully within society. Ryūji will have even more significant roles in the sequels Spiral and Loop.
• Shizuka and Yoko Asakawa: Asakawa's wife and daughter respectively. When Shizuka unknowingly watches the cursed video with Yoko on her lap, they become Asakawa's primary motivation for solving the riddle of the tape.
• Sadako Yamamura: The book's unseen antagonist who vanished thirty years ago; also the person behind the incident of the cursed tape. She was, in fact, a hermaphrodite
  Hermaphrodite
  In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...
  
   with special powers similar to ESP
  Extra-sensory perception
  Extrasensory perception involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind. The term was coined by Frederic Myers, and adopted by Duke University psychologist J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as telepathy, clairaudience, and...
  
  . Due to, and despite her hermaphrodism, she was said to be extremely beautiful.
• Shizuko Yamamura: Sadako's mother, who possessed powers similar to her daughter's. She threw herself into the crater of Mt. Mihara after a demonstration of telepathy, which she failed due to the present reporters' ill wishes, and was branded a fraud.

Differences between film and book

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.

• Ryuji from the book was a snarky wiseguy who enjoyed black humour, and even claimed to have raped three girls. Ryuji from the film was a stoical, somber grouch, and there was never anything in the movie about rape.
• In the book, when someone who had watched the cursed tape reached day 7 (without having copied the tape and showed it to someone else), they die from a myocardial infarction
  Myocardial infarction
  Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
  
   (a heart attack). At the time of death, they will experience intense anxiety, and should they glance into a reflective surface, they'll hallucinate themselves as hideously deformed and aged. The cursed tape in the book is a psychically engineered instrument that transmits a virus (the Ring Virus) to those that watch it.
• In the film, Sadako emerges from the television to claim her victims. She apparently 'scares' them to death, or they die from exposure to her otherworldly shade. Obviously, the film takes a supernatural ghost-story approach, while the book works on a pseudo-science-fictitious medical-mystery approach.
• The character of Okazaki does not exist in the book.
• Sadako's powers and abilities differ between book and film. In the book, Sadako did possess nensha
  Nensha
  , better known to English speakers as thoughtography or projected thermography or nengraphy, is the ability to psychically "burn" images from one's mind onto surfaces, or even into the minds of others. It is common in fiction, and made noteworthy by the recent Ring/The Ring media franchise...
  
  (psychic photography), and it was hinted that she had prenatural senses, clairvoyance, and mind control abilities. This is nothing compared to the Sadako in the films, who is tremendously powerful beyond all limits. Aside from nensha and clairvoyance, the Sadako from the movies possesses ultra-psychokinetic powers, teleportation, remote vision and travel, regenerative powers, healing abilities (used by the Good Sadako only; see the article on Ring 0 for more info), and even the ability to cheat death, in a way. Incidentally, Sadako from the books cannot kill people by simply willing it like film-Sadako can. Book-Sadako can evidently manipulate the Ring Virus at will, and psychically infect anyone she chooses.
• The true villain of the books is not Sadako herself, it is the Ring Virus, which was created when Sadako's dying will and psychic powers were fused with the smallpox virus. The smallpox virus mutated into a conscious virus capable of spreading via psychic means. In the film, it is Sadako's vengeful shade that is wreaking havoc although it is worth noting that in the book the virus was born from a fusion of Sadako's hate towards society, her psychic abilities and the smallpox virus, despite it not being Sadako herself who causes people to die.
• The cursed videotape remains a constant fixture in the Ring film franchise, while in the books, the curse evolves into other formats: from the tape, to the Ring Report, to the Sadako clones, to the Ring novel published by Asakawa's brother, and ends with the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus.
• Ryuji did not have a hint of ESP intuition in the book, although it is hinted that Asakawa gains a minor form of psychic awakening after raising Sadako from the well. In the final section of the book as Asakawa bids farewell to Ryuji at a train station, Asakawa notices a pain in his chest and the faint smell of citrus (the same symptoms Shizuku was said to experience during a premonition). Also, Ryuji was never attributed with ESP but was said to have very sharp intuitive skills naturally and Shizuku herself states that all humans are endowed with a small amount of power.
• Ryuji's genius and cognitive talents were never really emphasized in the film.
• The cursed tape in the novel is far different from the one in the movie. The book-version was much longer and more complicated. Also, the tape in the book has a message at the beginning and the end. The message at the beginning is something along the lines of, "Watch until the end, you will be eaten by the lost...", of which Asakawa thinks to mean, "Watch until the end, or you will be eaten by the lost...". He was probably wrong. The message at the end: "Those that have viewed this tape are fated to die at this exact time seven days from now. In order to survive, you must...", the rest of the end message is taped over, and it isn't until the end that Asakawa realized that the rest of the message was about copying the tape and showing it to someone else. These messages were not in the tape in the movie.
• In the film, it is Sadako's father, Heihachiro, that kills Sadako by braining her with a machete
  Machete
  The machete is a large cleaver-like cutting tool. The blade is typically long and usually under thick. In the English language, an equivalent term is matchet, though it is less commonly known...
  
   and pushing her in the well (though it is later revealed that Sadako didn't die right away, and was actually alive for about 33 years in the well, dying only a year before the events of the first film). In the book, Sadako is assaulted and raped by a doctor working at the facility her father is being treated at (for tuburculosis), who then tosses her into the infamous well. In the book she starved to death in the well full with hatred (although this was not revealed in the book 'Ring').
• Sadako is in fact a hermaphrodite in the book. She has Testicular Feminization Syndrome
  Androgen insensitivity syndrome
  Androgen insensitivity syndrome is a condition that results in the partial or complete inability of the cell to respond to androgens. The unresponsiveness of the cell to the presence of androgenic hormones can impair or prevent the masculinization of male genitalia in the developing fetus, as...
  
  , meaning she is anatomically male and has a pair of testes beneath her vagina (she evidently does NOT possess a penis). No mention of TFS is made in any of the films, and presumably she is fully female.
• Sadako in the book also had a younger brother that died during infancy.
• In the book, an incident is mentioned where Shizuko (Sadako's mother) recovers a statue of En no Ozunu (an ancient ascetic rumoured to possess supernatural power) that had been tossed into the sea during the American occupation period. After she recovers the statue, her psychic powers are awakened. Incidentally, it is rumoured that En no Ozunu might be Sadako's actual father. Furthermore, in the films, it is hinted that Heihachiro might not be Sadako's true father, but that her real father was something inhuman. One scene in Ring 0 subliminally suggests that Sadako's father is the sea (or something from it).

External links

• the ringworld - a fansite covering all aspects of the Ring series and movies.
• Vertical Inc. - Publisher of English translations of the Ring novels.
• SaruDama - Contains reviews of Ring and other Suzuki novels.