Sadako Yamamura

Sadako Yamamura (山村貞子, Yamamura Sadako) is the antagonist in Koji Suzuki's novel Ring and the 1998 film adaptation. She returns as the antagonist in Rasen and the protagonist in Ring 0: Birthday, and appears in the Korean and American remakes of the Ring Trilogy, although as different characters.

In the original novel, Sadako is a hermaphrodite. In both the novels and movies, it is hinted that she is the daughter of some oceanic based entity, making her a quasi-oceanic demigod.

Her name combines the Japanese words for "chaste" (sada) and "child" (ko).

Character

Sadako's character is not directly portrayed in Ring, but is expanded briefly in Rasen and to a much greater extent in Ring 0: Birthday, although there are differences in these various portrayals.

Most other incarnations share one thing in common: Sadako's need to reproduce, something she can not do herself, as she is portrayed as an intersexual. This is generally the reason why she creates the "Ring Virus", since she will "live on" in it, as long as her DNA (merged with that of the smallpox virus) still exists. In some incarnations where the "Ring Virus" is just treated as a mysterious phenomenon, and not a biological virus, she generally created it for the purpose of wreaking vengeance on humanity.

Two Sadakos

The filmed version of Ring 0: Birthday introduced the concept of two Sadakos — an idea not present in the earlier Ring books or films. The movie implies that after her mother is mocked and insulted by reporters at her demonstration, Sadako killed the reporter who started the chaos with her powers, Sadako split into two identical girls — one relatively normal, the other a violent sociopath. This second Sadako is imprisoned by her father and drugged so that she would not physically mature. The second Sadako is never seen clearly, so it's not clear just what her physical state is, only that she has the size and proportions of a child.

Both Sadakos possess psychic powers, although it is never clear whether they are the same. The "normal" Sadako exhibits, at one point, healing powers and the ability to see ghosts. She is also linked to the other Sadako, who wields more destructive powers (such as psychokinesis) and uses them to defend the "normal" Sadako when she is under distress — even if it is her own powers causing said distress.

After "normal" Sadako is murdered, the evil Sadako merges with her. This merger involves no physical contact, as the child Sadako is locked in a room when it occurs (and vanishes afterwards), and two characters watching over the nearby corpse of older Sadako witnesses only the reanimation of her corpse.

The "restored" Sadako acts like her younger, evil self, but her appearance is based on her older self, although her face is obscured by her hair and she moves mostly in shadow.

The split between the two Sadakos in the film canon is detailed in the prequel manga Ring 0.

History

Sadako's initial origin story alters between the novels and films. In the novels, she was born to Shizuko Yamamura and Dr. Heihachiro Ikuma. Shizuko had renowned psychic powers, and eventually was convinced by Dr. Ikuma to give a public demonstration. However, Shizuko bowed out of the demonstration due to migraines brought on by her powers and was labelled a fraud by the press. Shizuko eventually went into a deep depression and committed suicide by jumping into Oshima Island's volcano, which Shizuko had correctly predicted would erupt at a specific date and time. Sadako remained living with her family on the island, whilst Dr. Ikuma attempted to awaken potential psychic powers within himself by standing under waterfalls, but gained an illness and was hospitalised for many years.

At the age of eighteen, Sadako joined a Tokyo-based acting troupe and fell in love with the sound operator Hiroshi Toyama. He learnt of her powers but accepted them. Unfortunately, an early form of the curse was created in the form of a sound recording which killed four people including the troupe's director, resulting in Sadako fleeing and leaving Toyama heartbroken. Sadako visited Ikuma in hospital, only to be raped by a doctor named Nagao Jotaro. However, he discovered her darkest secret, finding she is a hermaphrodite, and possesses a man's privates. Sadako attacked him with her powers, forcing Nagao to toss her down a nearby well and he sealed her within. Foreseeing herself being reborn years later, Sadako vowed revenge on the world and died.

Her past alters in the films after the demonstration. During which, a journalist named Miyaji accused Shizuko of being a fraud. An angry Sadako killed him using her powers, giving him a heart attack, which became Sadako's main form of killing her victims in the films. At this point, Sadako split apart into two identical girls. One was kind and gentle, whilst the other was cold and destructive. After Shizuko's suicide, Dr. Ikuma moved to Izu County where he locked up the evil twin and drugged her to prevent her from aging, but allowed the good twin to live a normal life. The good Sadako joined the acting troupe like in the novels and fell in love with Toyama. However, Miyaji's wife Akiko arrived to avenge her husband. Sadako's evil twin called out of her other self, causing her to lose control of her powers and murder the doctor helping her control her abilities. The troupe members save Toyama killed the good twin, and drove to Ikuma's house to kill the evil one, only for her to escape and bond with her revived good self. Unable to recognise friend from foe, Sadako goes on a murderous rampage and kills everyone including Toyama. The good Sadako re-emerges only to be attacked by a distraught Ikuma and pushed down the well where she is trapped.

During her entrapment, a summer resort is built over the well. Using her powers, Sadako projects a series of images from her past into a cursed videotape which, when watched, kills the viewer after seven days. In the films, it is revealed Sadako survived down the well for over thirty years by sheer will but died after creating the videotape. In the second novel, Spiral, Sadako is able to resurrect herself using Ando Mitsuo, Mai Takano, and the effects of the Ring Virus as catalysts. Sadako also resurrects Ryuji Takayama and later Ando's dead son, in exchange for selling the journal of Kazuyuki Asakawa as a novel to spread her virus. In Ring 2, Sadako remains a ghost and seemingly succumbs to her fate to remain trapped, asking Mai and Yoichi Asakawa why they can escape from the well whilst she cannot.

Appearance

The most recognizable image of Sadako is a shadowy young woman whose face is hidden behind long black hair. She is often seen crawling out of a television screen, usually just after a depiction of her crawling out of a well. This appearance is typical of yūrei, a kind of Japanese ghost bound to the physical world through strong emotions which do not allow them to pass on. Specifically, Sadako is a type of yūrei known as an onryō, bound by a desire for vengeance.

Like many creatures of folklore, yūrei have a traditional appearance and follow a certain set of rules. They are generally depicted as female, although the legends also include male yūrei. They wear white clothing, which is the color of clothing that corpses are traditionally dressed with in Japan. They have long, often unkempt black hair and white faces, which comes from Kabuki theater where each character has a particular type of wig and make-up that identifies them to the audience. (Although it may also come from the fact that while Japanese women usually wore their hair in a bun, for funeral and burial, their long hair is let loose)

In addition to the standard yūrei appearance, Sadako is also an amalgamation of two famous Japanese ghosts, Oiwa and Okiku. From Oiwa, Sadako takes the single, misshapen eye. From Okiku, the style of murder, of being thrown down a well and then having the ghost rise from the well to seek vengeance.

The success of the 1998 film Ring brought the image of the yūrei to Western popular culture for the first time, although the image has existed in Japan for centuries. This image is often used in J-Horror films, such as Ju-on (and its remake The Grudge), One Missed Call and Dark Water.

Sadako is also based on the life of early-20th century psychic Sadako Takahashi, who in 1931 was studied by psychologist Tomokichi Fukurai for his book, Clairvoyance and Thoughtography^{[citation needed]}.

Powers

Sadako has a variety of psychic powers throughout all the Ring cycle books and films. The most famous is her ability to create the "cursed" video tape.

Videotape

In the films her method of killing with the video curse is not explained, but when someone is killed by it she is seen climbing out of the nearest reflective surface (the most famous portrayal of this being her crawl from a television screen) and approaching them. The corpses are discovered with looks of unearthly anguish on their faces, so it could be presumed that they "die of fright", i.e. a heart attack. In Spiral, the curse is explained in detail, and is discovered to in fact be a virus. When someone watches the cursed tape (or something else carrying the curse) some of their DNA is changed to become that of the Ring Virus (i.e. a hybrid of Sadako's DNA and that of the smallpox virus). This travels through their body and in most cases causes a sarcoma to form on one of the arteries of their heart. If the curse has not been appeased within seven days, the sarcoma detaches from the artery and clogs it, causing heart failure. Eventually, however, the Ring virus is able to infect people through means other than videotapes, such as a report detailing the events of Ring written by Asakawa which the virus had entered from Asakawa's body, a novel version of the report published by Asakawa's brother, a movie based on the novel (which Sadako was cast as herself in), and finally the Metastatic Human Cancer virus, a mutated form of the virus which escaped the Loop and plagued the real world.

Other powers

In Ring 0 Sadako exhibits a variety of abilities (mentioned above), including telekinesis, the ability to kill people instantly with psychic powers, healing abilities, ESP, and possibly the ability to split herself into two beings and merge them again.

Due to her curious new biology, Sadako also seems to be able to resurrect people (with some help from a genetic scientist) at the end of Spiral.

In Ring 2 the protagonists discover that Sadako was alive in the well for 30 years, dying shortly before she was uncovered in the previous film by Reiko Asakawa. This implies that she had remained alive until she imparted her curse onto the tape, meaning that she also had superhuman endurance and longevity, as well as inedia (the ability to live for extended periods without nourishment).

In the original Japanese films, Sadako's tapes cause their victims to have odd and malformed images when photographed. These images remain until Sadako kills the victim.

Lastly, she imparts her curse onto the video tapes, implying the ability of projected thermography.

Other versions

Park Eun-Suh

Sadako was the source for the character Park Eun-Suh from the 1999 Korean remake, The Ring Virus. She is portrayed by Korean actress Bae Doona.

Park Eun-Suh more closely resembles the Sadako from the novels. She appears to be about the same age as Sadako (19-years-old), though her age was never confirmed. She and her mother both had supernatural powers (similar to Sadako and Shizuko) and were rumored to be witches. After Eun-Suh's mother throws herself off a cliff into the sea, Eun-Suh's powers mysteriously disappear. As she grew older, she worked at a nightclub under the name "Sunny Park". Due to her powers, she was a suspect in the death of one of her co-workers.

Eun-Suh was raped by her half brother shortly before her death, during which he discovered that she was a hermaphrodite. She was ashamed (it was her secret), and telepathically threatened to kill him if he told anyone. Horrified, he strangled her until she was unconscious and dropped her in a nearby well.

Samara Morgan

Sadako was the main influence on Samara Morgan from the 2002 American remake, The Ring, and its sequel, The Ring Two. She was played by Daveigh Chase and Kelly Stables. Samara Morgan is depicted as an otherworldly little girl (Born 1970, died 1978) responsible for the creation of the cursed videotape from the American version of the Ringu story. Her usual appearance is of a girl with long, dark hair covering her face and wearing a white dress. Her personality is shown to be generally innocent but reclusive and needy. Samara possesses the power of nensha (thoughtography), capable of burning images onto surfaces and into the minds of others. Using these powers, Samara makes the cursed videotape, projecting her mental images onto a blank tape, and installing it with the power to kill the viewer within seven days. She also has other abilities such as body possession, water manipulation, and can climb out of electrical screens like television sets. In the short film Rings, a character tries to prevent Samara's escape from a television set by breaking the screen but she then tries to emerge through the screen of a video camera as the character records her appearance.

Samara's fictional history is covered through the American films. She was born to a woman named Evelyn who suspected her daughter of being born with a demon inside her, and so tried to drown her child to exorcise the demon, but she was prevented by nuns. Evelyn was sent to an insane asylum, whilst Samara was put up for adoption and then adopted by Anna and Richard Morgan (Shannon Cochran and Brian Cox), who owned a horse ranch on Moesko Island, Washington. Anna had several miscarriages in the late 1960s, and was thrilled to have a child, but as Samara grew older her powers burnt horrible images into her adoptive mother's mind, nearly driving her mad. Richard banished Samara to live in the ranch's barn, but she used her powers to drive Anna's beloved horses to suicide. At some point, Samara was taken to a psychiatric hospital but they were unable to explain how she created the images. Eventually, the family went to Shelter Mountain for a vacation, but Anna attacked Samara as she stood before an old well, suffocating her with a garbage bag and then dropping her down the well. Thinking Samara was dead, Anna then committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. However, Samara was still alive. She clung to life for 7 days alone in the well before finally succumbing to death (supposedly from hypothermia and exhaustion).

Eventually, a set of rental cabins were built near the well, one on top of it. This allowed Samara to project her visions into a VCR tape, creating the seven-day curse. In The Ring, Samara's curse kills Katie, the niece of Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts), leading the journalist to investigate the tape's origins. Rachel, her ex-boyfriend Noah Clay (Martin Henderson) and their son Aidan (David Dorfman) all watch the video. Rachel meets Richard, who warns her to stay away and then kills himself. Rachel and Noah eventually find Samara's corpse in the well and bury it, but this releases a corporeal form of Samara's spirit and she later kills Noah. Rachel destroys the original video cassette in a fit of rage, but uses a copied version of the video to continue the curse in order to save Aidan.

In The Ring Two, Samara deliberately manipulates the tape to get back to Rachel, having decided to make Rachel her new mother. After Rachel burns the tape, Samara possesses Aidan. Rachel drugs Samara and then nearly drowns Aidan to pull Samara out of his body. Samara retreats to a television set, Rachel being willingly pulled into Samara's visionary world and down the well. Rachel climbs out of the well with Samara pursuing her, but Rachel covers the seal on the well just in time.

Tabitha

Tabitha is the parody of Sadako and Samara's character in Scary Movie 3. She is first introduced at the beginning of the movie when Becka and Kathy are killed by her. Later she is shown to get into a fist fight with Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall) resulting in Brenda's death. At the end of the movie she is confronted by Cindy, George, and Cody, offering her a place in their family. She appears to accept but then rejects it and tries to kill them all with a knife. President Harris (Leslie Nielsen) knocks her down the well, Cindy and George seal it with the cover.

Others

In August 2000, The Ring: Terror's Realm was released on Dreamcast. It portrays a world where the cure to Sadako's virus resides in virtual reality. All references are primarily from Ringu.

Sadako was later spoofed in a skit in the Robot Chicken episode "Operation Rich In Spirit". She was voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar.

The Dutch metal band Thanatos released a song titled "The Sign of Sadako" on their album, Undead, Unholy, Divine. The lyrics directly relate to the character, with lines such as "One became two, then two became one" (referring to the splitting into good/evil Sadako, and subsequent remerging) and "The curse was spread and visualized/Watch the images within seven days you'll die".

Yukie Nakama, who portrayed Sadako in Ring 0: Birthday, performed the famous "Sadako crawl" in the movie Trick, in which she played Naoko Yamada.

Like many aspects and symbols of Japanese pop culture, she has also been referred to by 2ch and 4chan in memetic fanart depicting her in a more positive way. She has been called "Japan's most popular psychic ghost."

Portrayals

The Sadako, Eun-Suh, Samara, and Tabitha characters are played by a number of different actresses:

Sadako

• Rie Inō - Ring, Ring 2
• Hinako Saeki - Rasen
• Ayane Miura - Ring: Kanzenban
• Tae Kimura - Ring: The Final Chapter, Rasen
• Yukie Nakama - Ring 0: Birthday
• Ai Hashimoto - Sadako 3D

Eun-Suh

• Bae Doona - The Ring Virus

Samara

• Daveigh Chase - The Ring, also archival footage in The Ring Two
• Kelly Stables - The Ring Two

Tabitha

• Marny Eng - Scary Movie 3