Kayako Saeki (佐伯伽椰子 Saeki Kayako), née Kawamata (川又 Kawamata) born April 8, 1971 in Tokyo, Japan. She is the main antagonist appearing in the The Grudge (film series), having been portrayed 8 actresses.
Biography[]
Childhood[]
Kayako lived in a rural, quiet Japanese village with her mother and sister. Nakagawa Kawamata was an Itako, an exorcist of the Japanese culture, and deposited the demons or evil spirits from others inside Kayako. Because of this, Kayako wrote several entries in her diary in an unknown language, apart from registering about her own life.
Adulthood and afterlife[]
Kayako fell in love for an American professor, Peter Kirk, and followed him wherever he went with his friends or his girlfriend. Kayako, somehow, obtained Kirk's nail slivers and a picture of his girlfriend and him with herself in the background. She kept it all in her journal until Takeo discovered it and in a fit of rage, broke her neck with Toshio witnessing everything. Kayako was still alive and seen when Toshio was being murdered by Takeo in the bathroom. With her and his son's corpses hidden, Takeo then hanged himself in the boy's bedroom. Her body was later found by Kirk himself, who had followed her numerous letters to the address listed in the envelopes. Disturbed and feeling guilty, he committed suicide the morning after.
With the grudge curse born, Kayako made several people that entered the house her victims. Later, she showed Karen Davis, a girl who had discovered about her past what caused her death and anger through a vision. Karen, after she set the house on fire in order to stop the curse, had one last vision, of the Saeki family as if they were alive and happy after all, only to be surprised by Kayako while in the hospital, realizing that her grudge would never stop. Karen, however, kept her belief that she could detain it and resisted, until she was caught by Kayako at last.
The curse also affected Karen's younger sister Aubrey and her mother (deleted scene), and, after Aubrey asked what it really wanted, Kayako answered by causing her to be murdered exactly like she was, through Takeo's bare hands. Through Allison, an American girl that entered her house, Kayako and Toshio managed to reach an American apartment building in Chicago. With the curse affecting the whole place, only one survivor was left, a young boy named Jake. Jake resisted longer to the curse and Kayako finally killed him by brutally breaking every single one of his bones.
As Kayako kept making new victims in the building, her sister Naoko later arrived, planning to stop her death cycle, through a ritual that she learns from their mother. Somehow, Naoko obtained the diary and a sample of Kayako's blood, needed for the ceremony. However, Max, another one of the aforementioned building's residents, became possessed by Takeo, and interrupted the ritual. Rose, Max's youngest sister, drank Kayako's blood as instructed by Naoko and Kayako's spirit seemingly vanished.
While hugging Rose and promising her everything would be fine, her oldest sister Lisa was unaware that she was hugging a roaring Kayako as well, indicating that her spirit became merged to Rose's body after all. Thus indicating that both of them, or at least Lisa is still under the curse, or that the ritual, did not work as planned after all.
Kayako has a cameo in The Grudge (2020), the sidequel which happens alongside the events of the first two films. Her scene, set a few days before Karen is to arrive at the Saeki home, involves her stalking and haunting Fiona Landers, the previous caretaker, who leaves Yoko the house keys after having been unnerved by what she saw in the house and promptly returns to America, unintentionally taking the curse with her.
Trivia[]
- Kayako's story is loosely reminiscent of the myth of Oiwa, a traditional Japanese onryō legend.[1]
- In this tale, the ghost of Oiwa, a woman disfigured and murdered by her unfaithful husband, returns seeking revenge, pursuing him. According to the legend, a curse accompanies her story, and that those who retell it will suffer injuries and even death. To this day, producers, actors, and their crews continue to visit the grave of Oiwa in Tokyo before productions or adaptations of Yotsuya Kaidan, praying for her soul and asking for her blessing to tell her story once again.[2]
- In the novel, Kayako reveals the origin of her name - which came from a Korean harp named Kaya-geum.[3]
- Takashi Shimizu did not intend Kayako to have a backup story when creating the character. Studio executives insisted on the idea of a twin sister for Kayako as part of her backup story for The Grudge 2, which Shimizu-san rejected. [4] This idea likely resulted in Naoko's character in The Grudge 3.
- According to Takako Fuji, she initially expressed only anger until Takashi Shimizu asked her to release different emotions, which depics Kayako as a very sad spirit crying out for help, making her look more like a human being. "Her spirit is not at rest yet, that's why she's a ghost. (...) She wants to be heard, she wants to be understood".[5]
- Takashi Shimizu saw Fuji at the theater and, according to him, he knew she was "perfect" for his ghost, "as soon as she walked out on stage".[6]
- Takako Fuji stated in an interview while filming The Grudge 2 (the sixth time she played the character) that, at that time, she already felt "difficult sometimes to keep up the motivation, because I've played her so many times".[7]
- Fuji-san eventually passed on the role to Aiko Horiuchi in The Grudge 3.
- For the western series, her ghost make-up took two hours to complete.[8][9]
- In the Ju-on film series, very few of Kayako's face from when she was alive is seen.
- In the Grudge films, however, she is always clearly seen from the flashback of the Saeki murders. Also, only brief glimpses from the murder are shown in the Ju-on films, but never the murder itself.
- It can be assumed that, in the Ju-on series, Kayako was the one that made Toshio a ghost.
- Takeo wanted the boy to live and satisfied himself by murdering Kobayashi's unborn daughter instead.
- Although it is never clearly seen, it's implied that Kayako was stabbed to death in the Ju-on films. This was changed to her broken neck which caused the roaring/death rattle her ghost makes.
- Kayako's look changes gradually throughout the Ju-on films and between the two versions. Alive, she is shown to have bangs in Ju-on, but never does so in The Grudge.
- Kayako is reported to have been 28 years old when she was murdered in the Ju-on series.
- She is 30 at the time of her death in the The Grudge.
- Featuring a strikingly similar resemblance, Kayako makes a "cameo" appearance in an episode of Ghost Whisperer ("Horror Show") in which the the infamous scene where the ghost appears under Hitomi/Susan's sheets is recreated.
- The character is spoofed in a 2013 episode of Saturday Night Live in which Kristen Wiig portrays a mother who is drowned to death and becomes a "Korean water ghost".[10]
- The Supernatural episode "Party On, Garth" also references the ghost in the Shōjo.
- In The Grudge series, her supernatural abilities comes from ghosts and demons inside her. In Ju-on, origin of her powers is unknown.
- Kayako seems to stalk her sister Naoko in The Grudge 3 in the Chicago Apartment but never tries to attack her. This implies that, even in death, Kayako still cares for her sister and that she might have some semblance of her former humanity left in her.
- Given the nature of the curse, Kayako (and by extension Toshio) does not discriminate when it comes to cursed victims, even claiming children. Jake Kimble, a pre-teen, was eventually killed by Kayako in The Grudge 3 and likely would have killed Rose if she hadn’t sealed her in her own body, and in Sadako vs. Kayako, she and Toshio mercilessly kills the group of boys that foolishly entered the home to prank their friend.
References[]
- ↑ http://www.scaryforkids.com/oiwa/
- ↑ http://yokai.com/onryou/
- ↑ http://www.wattpad.com/3506366-kei-ohishi-ju-on-prologue-epilogue
- ↑ https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/TheGrudge
- ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwQr0a7Ks0Y
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwQr0a7Ks0Y
- ↑ http://www.horror.com/php/article-1198-1.html
- ↑ http://www.horror.com/php/article-1198-1.html
- ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hzvKwodl8Q
- ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qIdMrwimwE