Disillusioned
with the economic “miracle,” the pundits have all but dismissed
Japan as a world financial center. However, popular Japanese culture
remains vibrant—Japanese animation, fashion, and design have had
a global impact. Any American eight year old is savvy about Pokemon
or Yu-gi-oh and the demimonde of prepubescent monster gaming.
Generation Xers have a fondness for Play Station and Speed Racer—and
who doesn’t know Godzilla?
Japanese popular literature is often only translated when it reaches
mythic status. Yukio Mishima and Junichiro Tanizaki remain staples
of modern Japanese literature in English. In America, known living
Japanese authors are essentially limited to Banana Yoshimoto and
Ryu Murakarami: both winners of prestigious literary prizes. In
contrast, American “entertainment” fiction instantly finds a Japanese
audience in translation. Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Sidney Sheldon—their
movies and books have a loyal following in Japan.
Given its impact on global entertainment, it is especially odd
that
Koji Suzuki’s
book,
Ring, has waited over twelve years for an English
translation. The Japanese movie (made in 1998 for a mere $1.2
million USD) found a world wide cult following as well as spawning
a successful franchise of films. DreamWorks’ Americanized version
was a hit for the studio, earning $135 million in the US alone.
The internet is rife with rumors for a possible American sequel.
Entertaining movies do not always make great books, and vice versa,
but usually the book is published first. Suzuki’s story, translated
by Robert B. Rohmer and Glynne Walley, sounds initially like the
stuff of urban legend. Four kids in a cabin in the woods find
a mysterious video of disturbing images. They watch the tape and
are warned that they will die in exactly one week unless they
perform a certain action. They fail to do so, and the four healthy
teenagers die of heart failure. A reporter, Kazuyuki Asakawa,
and uncle to one of the dead teenagers, finds the tape. Unfortunately
for Asakawa, the instructions that could save his life are not
on his tape: he has one week to unravel the mystery.
While the film
was mostly popcorn fodder for the Blair Witch aficionado, Suzuki’s
book is deceptively complex, which makes for a fun but more substantial
read than the average horror paperback. Rather than just a paranormal
who-dun-it, it is also an oblique discussion of social ills, and
is far more nuanced than the films. Rather than an ancient and
primordial evil, Suzuki depicts Sadako, the auteur extraordinaire
of the video tape, as society’s forgotten bastard offspring. Suzuki
paints in shades of grey which results in something more than
a mere set piece of good versus bad.
For much of the novel, the deaths of the teens, and then the tape
itself, is treated as organically occurring disease. His first
reaction? “ ‘A virus that causes sudden heart failure? Come on.’
He climbed the stairs, muttering to himself, ‘a virus, a virus.’”
When he visits that cabin in the woods, he wears rubber gloves
and drinks straight whiskey (rather than water) to protect himself
from germs. The leitmotif of disease echoes throughout the book:
evil is the symptom of a sick society as much as it is of a disturbed
mind.
Suzuki depicts the protagonist as a grab bag of conflicts and
weaknesses: Asakawa is a good man, but self-serving. We experience
his glee when he catches the first whiff of a story; with “the
buoyance of a child on a treasure hunt,” he starts his search.
He had skipped his niece’s funeral claiming deadline pressures,
but given the opportunity to nose through the dead girl’s things,
he deftly takes advantage of the family connection. Asakawa at
one point has to reassure himself. “But it was for a good cause—defeating
evil. . .Sorry.”
One of the most successful parts of this book is the friendship
between Asakawa and Ryuji Takayama, a philosophy professor who
becomes his sidekick. Again, good and evil are not polar opposites:
the line blurs. In high school, they became friends when Ryuji
confided to Asakawa about raping a college girl. Asakawa clearly
loathes Ryuji as much as he admires him: “Set a thief to catch
a thief. What do I care if Ryuju ends up dead?” Asakawa is jealous
of Ryuji’s brilliance: indeed, it is Ryuji’s meticulous detective
work that unlocks the logic behind the landscape of Sadako’s troubled
mind.
Asakawa and his obsessions are a snapshot of Japanese notions
of masculinity—Suzuki has written extensively on the issue of
modern paternity and childrearing in Japan. Unlike the film versions
in which Asakawa mysteriously becomes a single mother, Asakawa
ruminates on his role in society as father, protector, and provider.
Thus Sadako’s hermaphroditism, in which none of society’s roles
fit, was another cause of her anger toward society.
Extended metaphors and weighty themes aside, even with Rohmer
and Walley’s sadly substandard translation, the novel is intelligent
entertainment. While the economic bubble may have collapsed,
Ring
is an indication that Japan as an entertainment center still has
much on offer to the world.
Yuki Allyson
Honjo. "Blurring the line between good and evil." The International
Herald Tribune-Asahi. Saturday-Sunday. June 28-29, 2003. Pg.
30. 
