Novel: Ring

Content Warning: Death, suicide, murder, sexual assault, and “Testicular Feminization Syndrome” which is really part of Androgen insensitivity syndrome. Google it.

The Ring (or Ringu as some insist on calling it) is one of the most famous J-Horror movies ever made. For many, it’s the ending and the now iconic appearance of Sadako that makes it so memorable. For me, it was the story, the mystery. So imagine my delight when I found the book series, on sale no less, a few years after I watched The Ring on a VCD with English and Cantonese subtitles. That’s right, it’s series. So, let’s get started with the book that started it all…

Our story begins with young Tomoko home alone on a hot autumn night. She goes down to get a glass of Coke before she is overwhelmed by fear, unwilling to turn around and face some unknown fear. When she does, her story ends. We then jump to a cab driver some distance away, waiting at a red light. Soon, a young man on a motorbike pulls along beside him. The rider then collapses on the ground and the taxi driver goes out to help him, the young man struggling to get his helmet off. After the taxi driver goes to call the police at a payphone (showing how old this book is), the young man is dead with a look of terror on his face.

About a month later, Kazuyuki Asakawa, a reporter, decides to take a cab ride home. As the cab pulls up to a red light, the taxi driver, the same one from just a few pages ago, begins to tell Asakawa about what happened to the young man at this same intersection that fateful day. It’s interesting to note how the taxi driver seems to remember every detail of what happened perfectly, as if it has etched itself into his mind. Asakawa goes home to his wife and young daughter, and begins to think. His niece, the daughter of his wife’s sister died about the same time. Yes, this is the young Tomoko our story started with. This story will not leave Asakawa’s mind and soon he begins looking to these two deaths, soon finding two more that happened at roughly the same time. And finds connections between all four victims. He doesn’t believe that there’s some supernatural happening, even as he talks with another reporter who saw the other two young people pulled from the car with the same look of terror on their faces. This memory is also carved into his mind palace. Asakawa continues to look and find more and more connections between these four, thinking that perhaps a new virus has appeared on the scene, talking about AIDS and how it was such a mystery for so long. His investigation leads him to a cabin in Hakone, where these four teens spent a weekend together. There, he tracks down a video tape that shows him disturbing images. These aren’t just images, however, as he feels things, physically and emotionally, as he watches the tape. The tape ends with a curse that whoever watches it is fated to die in one week, unless… And then there’s something recorded over the rest of the charm, preventing him from saving himself. Getting a strange phone call, where no words are spoken, Asakawa flees the cabin with the tape and returns home.

He soon recruits an old friend from high school named Ryuji into this investigation, given how unique he is. Of course, Ryuji is no saint, having really become friends with Asakawa after confessing that he raped a young women one night. Which makes for a very strange relationship. Asakawa shows Ryuji the video, who seems to just take it in stride, not believing in the curse. However, he does enjoy a good mystery. While Ryuji was watching it, Asakawa made a copy of the video, so Ryuji could watch it at again and study it. They begin their joint investigation, trying to track down what information they can from the video. One of the scenes is of a volcano erupting and Asakawa finds that it by flipping through a book of them. In another scene, a woman is talking in a dialect that neither man knows, but Ryuji (being an assistant professor) shows the part to someone and discovers that it’s a dialect spoken on Izu Oshima. While meeting up to discuss what they’ve found so far at Ryuji’s place, Asakawa meets Mai, who seems to be Ryuji’s lover. While not important in this story, she does become important in other ones, so it’s good to mention her now. The one bomb that Ryuji has to drop is about the video. After watching it several times, he seems to come across something interesting. The video can be divided into two different types of scenes: realistic and abstract. This is important, as during the realistic scenes, the camera blinks. And by camera, I mean person. The realistic parts are not recorded, they are memories from someone. A woman, from what the old lady says in the video, who will give birth to a son. Now, we’re moving on to more supernatural things. While Asakawa was sure it was just a virus, after watching the video for the first time, he believes that this is supernatural, but the fact that this might be some find of spirit photography makes him balk.

At this point, two important things happen. The first is that Asakawa’s wife and daughter watch the video, starting a clock for them. The second is the visit to a museum of a doctor who investigated psychic phenomena. The doctor died two years ago, which seems to coincide with a massive increase unsolicited letters and videos set to newspapers and media nationwide, mentioned earlier in the book, and had a huge amount of records left behind. Going through these records, they find the name that will haunt everyone who reads this book: Yamamura Sadako. That’s right, she’s here. This leads Asakawa and Ryuji to Izu Oshima and our story really kicks off.

They travel to Izu Oshima and learn about Sadako’s mother, Shizuko. Shizuko was a fairly talented psychic, predicting an eruption of the volcano seen in the film. She met a married man, traveling with him, and having Sadako out of wedlock with him. However, after failing a test in public, Shizuko went home and later killed herself. When she turned 18, Sadako left Izu Oshima and went to Tokyo to join a theater group. But, this becomes a dead end, as no one knows what happened to Sadako.

Another reporter, roped into this investigation, chases down leads in Tokyo, finding the theater group, and does talk with people who knew Sadako, all those years ago. They talk about how beautiful she was but how distant she was, how eerie she was. And, again, everyone has strong, clear memories of her. There’s two things of note in this part of the investigation. One of the members of the group found her in a room, thinking the TV was on, only to find it was unplugged but was sure he saw lights through a window. The other is how a director got drunk one night and said he was going to go visit Sadako. The next day, he seemed pale and unwell, dying that day from sudden heart failure. The same thing that killed Tomoko and her friends. Pieces are falling into place.

The final lead comes from Sadako’s father. He got sick and was put in a sanatorium, where they used to put people with tuberculosis, syphilis, and smallpox. For those of you who doesn’t know, Smallpox is the first disease to be fully exterminated by mankind. In the current times of the pandemic, this seems like a distant dream, doesn’t it. But, this will tie into a point I want to make later. Just, hang on, okay? Ahem. Anyway, they find that there’s only one doctor left from this old sanatorium, who has the distinction of being Japan’s last smallpox patient, being infected by one of his while there. So, Asakawa and Ryuji, hunting the last lead they have on Sadako, hoping to find her so she will release them from the curse, track him down. And immediately recognize him from the video. Towards the end. When they confront him about what he did to Sadako, which is interesting given how they don’t really know what happened to her, he gives up. He tells them how Sadako was visiting her father at the sanatorium while he was dealing with smallpox and went with him into the forest. There, for some reason, he raped her. During the assault, she bit him on the shoulder, breaking the skin. And this is where we find out that Sadako was a hermaphrodite or intersex or not really female. While she had breasts, and even a vagina, she also had a pair of testicles. No, I’m not making that up. Perhaps disgusted, perhaps driven by the fever, or perhaps driven by Sadako herself, he threw her into an old well that was there in the forest. Where was this sanatorium and the well? Hakone. Exactly where the cabin and resort was built.

With only hours to spare, Asakawa and Ryuji make their way to the cabin and start exploring, having bought equipment for excavation. There they find the well, capped and covered by the cabin, directly beneath the TV and VCR in the cabin. They get into the well and start pulling out water, with Asakawa the one to find the skull of Sadako. And his deadline comes and goes. And he’s still alive. Thinking they’ve figured out what Sadako wanted, they remove her remains and go their separate ways, with Asakawa going to Izu Oshima to return her remains to her family and Ryuji going back home to get back to all the work he’s missed over the last week.

But, there’s a twist! They didn’t solve the charm! And Ryuji feels the same fear that killed the others in the beginning of our tale. As he starts to die, he tries to get ahold of Asakawa, to tell him that they’re failed, but in the time before cellphones, he couldn’t get ahold of him. Instead, he calls Mai, who hears him scream as he dies. Later, she calls Asakawa to give him the news, and Asakawa is stunned. He thought they solved it but they haven’t. And he has less than a day to figure out what to do to save his family. So, he thinks back to what he did differently than Ryuji, what he could have done that saved him but not his friend. And the specter of Ryuji gives him a hint: back when Asakawa was first investigating the deaths, he thought it was a virus. And what do viruses want to do? To replicate. To spread. To infect more hosts and reproduce. And this curse, made of Sadako’s power and the smallpox virus’ will to spread, wants to do the same thing. So, make a copy. Show it someone. Have them make a copy. And you’ll survive. So, Asakawa grabs his VCR and goes to his wife’s parents’ place, telling her that they need to do something important… And that is where this part of the story ends.

Now, when I first read this, I didn’t pick up on as much as I did this time around. Why? Because when I first read it, the world wasn’t (still) in the grip of a global pandemic. And the points made in this book almost scream out now, how viruses want to spread. How they need to, to survive. And that’s what the video is, a psychic virus, born from a death curse, born of hate and evil, and the will to infect others. But, there’s something else that I picked up on. Did you notice how I mentioned how clear everyone’s memories were of important events? That’s something interesting, isn’t it? It’s like Sadako never wanted to be forgotten but never really made friends. And perhaps it’s why she wanted to become an actress, so everyone would see her. Of course, the rest of the series explores these themes, but the seeds are here, in this first book. As for what I wanted to talk about, especially relevant these days? Viruses mutate. They look to counter-act what we do to stop their spread. Normal viruses usually mutant to be less harmful but that’s so they spread easier. That’s why the cold and the flu are so hard to put down, because they’re mutated towards communicability at the cost of lethality. Today, a virus has spread all over the world, because of stupidity and ignorance. As much as people would like to compare this with the 1918 pandemic, they don’t quite allow for direct comparison. Why? Because the Blue Flu, as it was called by some, burned itself out. It targeted the young and healthy (ages 20-40, who are usually not as effected by diseases) and killed them in not days but hours. Now, that is the problem with Sadako’s virus: eventually it would dead-end because either everyone had seen the video or would be dead. So, what would a virus do in that situation? It’s very simple:

Mutation.

Rating: 5 out of 5
Suggestion: If you like the movie, the Japanese one, this book will still give you something new to enjoy.