When Sadako crawls from the television to kill Ryuuji during the climax of the film, she is wearing a white nightgown, and her hair obscures her face throughout the scene. Her skin is more discolored than white and indigo, but she fits the mold of an onryou extremely well. Her design and characteristics are clearly meant to remind the viewers of classic characters like Oiwa. While chasing Iemon in Yotsuya Kaidan, Oiwa projects herself from a paper lantern, similar to Sadako’s projection from the television. Oiwa even has a drooping eye due to her disfigurement from the poison, and this is the only part of Sadako’s face that is shown in the film. But though Oiwa’s vengeance was focused on Iemon, the fate of Dr. Ikuma, Sadako’s murderer, is unclear, though he is implied to be dead. If Dr. Ikuma were Sadako’s real father, the betrayal would carry the same resonance as Iemon and Oiwa, but even if Sadako carried out her revenge on Ikuma, she was obviously not satisfied. While this differs from Oiwa, Oiwa herself is an exception – onryou often punish people completely unrelated to the circumstances of her death. (2)
While Sadako may be the most famous character in modern Japanese horror to take on the image and characteristics of a classic onryou, she is not the only one. Only slightly less famous, and possibly a purer example of the trope, is the character Saeki Kayako of the Ju-On franchise. She not only has the indigo-tinted skin that Sadako lacks, but unlike Sadako, she does not give her victims a way to escape death. Her guttural death-rattle has become about as iconic as Sadako’s emergence from the television.
Another popular story that Ringu drew influence from is a story called Okiku and the Nine Plates. In this tale, a samurai tries to manipulate a servant girl into becoming his lover by accusing her of stealing one of his family’s ten precious plates. He offers to overlook the matter if she becomes his lover, but she refuses, and he throws her down a well in his rage. Okiku, however, seems easily satisfied: her ghost angrily counts up to nine, still looking for the tenth plate, but when an exorcist yells “Ten!” for her, she vanishes.
But in a later version of the story, the plot becomes more complex, and the samurai is a retainer plotting to overthrow the new lord of Himeji Castle. He accuses Okiku of stealing the plate so that she might help him with his plot, but she refuses, not wanting to cause trouble for her fiancé (a different retainer.) Okiku’s death is much more horrific than before, and she is tortured before being thrown into the well. At the end of the story, she rises from the well, counting to nine, to confront her killer.
(2. Other popular Japanese horror stories involving onryou contain purer examples of the trope: in a tale called Furisode, for example, a heartbroken woman curses a beautiful kimono before dying. From that point on, everyone who wears the kimono dies.)
