Tonight I came across the story of the REAL LIFE inspiration for RINGU (The Ring), which tells of a young woman named Sadako Takahashi (this is the English ordering of her name - the article gives the Japanese ordering) from whom Ringu's Sadako Yamamura gets her name. She was the test subject of Tomokichi Fukurai, an assistant professor of psychology at Tokyo University who was interested in supernatural stuff. Several of his prior lady guinea pigs provide the groundworkings for several other characters in the Ring lore.

It's an interesting read that shows the parallels between Koji Suzuki's work of fiction and real world fact. It's a story that I'm amazed I haven't heard before, since I'm a pretty big fan of all things Ringu, except for the two American films (a topic for another time perhaps.)

No, actually, unlike NIGHTMARE ON ELMSTREET, nothing about the material prompted me to do any outside research - it was actually an article about a 2 year old who developed leukemia as a result of the Hiroshima bombing named Sadako Sasaki that I stumbled across earlier tonight while trying to confirm the spelling of Sadako Yamamura's name for a review that I was typing up for an unrelated movie on Hulu (go figure.) In turn I was curious if the story of this little girl was where Suzuki lifted the name Sadako from, which of course lead me to the real inspiration, Sadako Takahashi! Unfortunately, unlike Takahashi's story, Sasaki's story is fairly sad (and moving as well, which is why she has a STATUE commemorating her!)

In a vaguely related note, you can (probably) expect to see a review of ROOM 6, the movie that prompted me to do all this research, to appear here in the coming days.

Enjoy your weekend! Because I might not, since I'm still packing for my big move next week. pfft.