Kazuyuki Asakawa
Kazuyuki Asakawa (浅川 和行 Asakawa Kazuyuki) is the lead character in Koji Suzuki's novel Ring, published in 1991. He is married to Shizuka Asakawa and they have a one-year-old daughter named Yoko. His best friend is Ryuji Takayama, a college professor and alleged rapist. After his wife's niece Tomoko dies and he comes across another boy who died on the same day on his motorbike, Asakawa tries to find out why, which then links him to a cursed videotape and the malevolent ghost Sadako Yamamura. After watching it, he is left with seven days to figure out how to break the curse.
In Other Media
Two onscreen adaptions of the male character of Kazuyuki exist. In the initial 1995 television film, the onscreen character of Asakawa is largely similar to the character in the book bearing only minor differences such having no children but his Shizuka being three months pregnant instead. He is played by Katsunori Takahashi.
In the 1998 television series Asakawa (played by Toshirō Yanagiba) is different here because:
- Rather than being married he is widowed, Shizuka having died three years earlier.
- Instead of a one-year-old daughter he has a son named Yoichi. However Yoichi is a toddler rather than the seven-year-old he is in the 1998 film.
- Ryuji is not his best friend but instead an occultist and possessed son of Sadako. His role is instead filled by Asakawa's assistant Akiko Yoshino.
- He is given ten days to live rather than seven.
Other incarnations
Asakawa was reimagined as a woman named Reiko Asakawa, played by Nanako Matsushima, in the 1998 film adaptation of Suzuki's book. The filmmakers felt a female character would be more appealing at the box-office for the more maternal job of going to great lengths to protect her son. It also enabled a more intimate relationship between Asakawa and Takayama. Apart from being a different sex, Reiko differs from Kazuyuki because:
- She is divorced.
- Ryuji is no longer her best friend but her ex-husband and father of her child.
- Rather than having a one-year-old daughter, she has a seven-year-old son, Yoichi.
- Time of viewing the film has changed.
- Tomoko is her niece by blood, rather than by marriage.
Other versions of Kazuyuki Asakawa are two other female characters, Rachel Keller from The Ring and Sun-joo from The Ring Virus.
- Rachel Keller, in the 2002 American remake of the 1998 Japanese film, is a single mother with a son.
- Sun-joo Hong, in the 1999 South Korean remake of the 1998 Japanese film, is a single mother with a daughter