Kayako Saeki
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Grudge character | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Kayako Saeki | |
| Gender: | Female |
| Race: | Mongoloid/Onryō |
| Location | Tokyo, Japan |
| Family: | Takeo Saeki (husband) Toshio Saeki (son) Nakagawa Kawamata (mother) |
| Weapon of Choice: | Curse Haunting Spiritual possession |
| Portrayed by: | Takako Fuji |
Kayako Kawamata Saeki is a fictional character from the Ju-on series of Japanese-horror movies. She is played by actress Takako Fuji.
She was created by director Takashi Shimizu and can be considered somehow the main character in the series. She represents a popular villain in Japanese culture, the vengeful ghost (onryō). Typically with her long dark hair covering her face, weird movements and a haunting cackling sound from her mouth, she first appeared in Shimizu's short movie Katasumi and spends the whole Ju-On series haunting a house in Nerima, Japan. She is one of the fulfillers of the ju-on curse, which states that when someone dies amidst rage and intense wrath, those feelings remain at the death site and kill whoever it touches.
She was seen more recently in The Grudge 2 and will return in Ju-on: The Grudge 3 and The Grudge 3, the first to be released sometime in 2007 (or even 2008) and the last in 2008. She can be considered now an icon of horror movies, having appeared in 6 films (with 2 more to be released) and 1 short.
[edit] History and Origin
According to the Grudge 2, In some outskirt countryside of Japan, Kayako spent her childhood years with her mother who was a spirit exorcist, but used the young Kayako to "eat" the evil spirits she drove away from her patients. This led the child not only to be marked for the rest of her life, but made her introspective and shy enough to catch attention from all her friends from school and eventually university, where she first met Shunsuke Kobayashi (Peter Kirk in American versions), who would later become her love obsession.
Years later, Kayako married to Takeo Saeki, who seemed to be the only person who understood her and liked her despite her shy behaviour, and became mother of a little boy called Toshio. It just happened that Kobayashi had become a teacher, and precisely Toshio's, what made his meetings with Kayako happened quite often. She eventually fell in love with him again, reviving her teenager's crush on him, and started to write about her love in her journal.
One day, the aggressive husband Takeo found her diary and read it. He became obsessed with the idea that his beloved Kayako was cheating on him with his son's teacher - or worse, Toshio could not be his son, but Kobayashi's. When she got home that day, he violently attacked her upstairs, pushing her against the wall. Toshio was in his bedroom drawing and heard the noise, and hid in his closet. Kayako tried to run away while Takeo was chasing her, but he pushed her down, and she sprained her ankle, and stumbled and fell, and had to go down their house stairs by crawling. After much effort she made it to the front door, only to find Takeo was slowly walking behind her, watching her pain. He then held her head, snapped her neck, took her to their bedroom and put her in a trash bag. Kayako was still a bit alive, but was paralyzed and could only make her famous throatal noise. Takeo stared at her just sitting in a trash bag in the bedroom, then stabbed her multiple times. Then he put her in the attic through an attic door in the ceiling of their closet.
After that, Takeo killed Toshio by drowning him in the bathtub together with his pet cat. He then ran to Kobayashi's house, killing the teacher's pregnant wife and taking the fetus from her uterus and put it in a sack. In the middle of a tantrum of rage on the street when he hits the sack on the ground and pipes, Kayako appeared a ghost coming out from the garbage dumped nearby, and attacked Takeo.
Some time later Kayako was found in the attic, Takeo was found on the nearby street (his death causes unknown to the police), and Toshio was found in the closet, with his dead cat in his lap along with him.
Since this day, everyone who steps into Saeki's house gets killed by Kayako, Toshio or Takeo's ghosts. The cat, Mar, usually appears to forewarn any intruders of their impending doom. The curse is meant to repeat itself as an unending cycle, so in every Ju-on and The Grudge movies we see Kayako crawling down the stairs (with a probable exception for The Grudge 2, unless it appears in a deleted scene or an extension for the final scene) gurgling her now famous cackling sound, a death rattle, cracking her neck around and covered with blood.
[edit] Differences between Japanese and American versions
Up until now, her past and childhood are unknown according to the Japanese movies, but is explained in the Grudge 2.
While she falls in love with Shunsuke Kobayashi in Ju-on, in the Grudge her loving target is Peter Kirk, her English teacher.
The way she dies is almost equal in both storylines, with the exception of the use of the utility knife to slash her, which only appears in Ju-on, due to American violence rating. The whole scene of her crawling down the stairs, having her neck broken and being put in the attic are shown in the director's cut of The Grudge and parts of it are shown in the theatrical version.
In the US version, the teacher killed himself by jumping through his balcony in front of his "wife".
Takeo Saeki is found dead by hanging in The Grudge Director's Cut, similar to a scene of Ju-on: The Grudge 2, where Kayako appeared in the ceiling of a room and, with her hair, strangled and hanged a couple. It is unknown if he killed himself in the American version, but it is more likely that Kayako killed him instead. In the Japanese version he is killed by Kayako in a street at night, after killing Kobayashi's wife and unborn child. There's no mention of this in the American version.
[edit] See also
| The Ju-on Curse | |
|---|---|
| Directed by Takashi Shimizu | |
| Short Films: Katasumi and 4444444444 | Tales of The Grudge | |
| Juon Series: Ju-on | Ju-on 2 | The Grudge | The Grudge 2 | The Grudge 3 | |
| American Films: The Grudge | The Grudge 2 | The Grudge 3 | |
| Characters | |
| Aubrey | Karen | Kayako | Takeo | Toshio | |
| Locations | |
| Chicago, Illinois | Pasadena | Tokyo, Japan | |
| Iconic Horror Characters in Cinema | |
|---|---|
| Classic: | Creature from the Black Lagoon | Count Dracula | The Fly | Frankenstein's monster | The Invisible Man | The Mummy | Count Orlok | The Phantom | The Wolf Man |
| Modern: | The Alien | Norman Bates | Chucky | Ghostface | Jigsaw | Freddy Krueger | Leatherface | Hannibal Lecter | The Living Dead | Regan MacNeil | Michael Myers | Pinhead | Kayako Saeki | Damien Thorn | Jason Voorhees | Samara Morgan/Sadako Yamamura |
