JASON REMEBERS Koji Suzuki

Last year Jason went into a deep dive on the films based on Koji Suzuki’s novels.  Today he’s written the man’s eulogy, and it’s a love letter to the beyond…

In the world of Japanese horror writers, it’s hard to imagine anyone having a larger impact than Junji Ito, yet, for a time, there was another whose works were celebrated, rightfully so, for bringing new ideas and frights into the world of the spooky. In 1995, a movie started getting mentioned in almost every conversation had between horror aficionados as possibly one of the scariest films ever made. At the time though, none of us knew that it was based on a novel, released just five years earlier.

I’m not going to use this time to rehash my love for the Ringu franchise, as it should be very well known by this time. What I am here to do is to celebrate the life and works of Koji Suzuki, who we lost on the eighth of May, in the year of our lord twenty and twenty-six, at the age of sixty-eight. While he wrote many books on differing topics, it is his horror outings that we are here to celebrate, and while that bibliography isn’t as massive as many authors with an equal number of years under their wings, it’s difficult to think of many that hit upon his level of effectiveness.

As someone that worked in many differing fields in his life, it was a period spent as a teacher where he discovered a passion that would remain with him for the extent of his life, and that was terrifying his students by telling them scary stories. This carried over into the creation of his first novel titled Rakuen, or Paradise which falls under the fantasy genre with a romance backer, but it wouldn’t be until his next book, RIngu, when the world began to take notice. What followed was five sequels, four of which are available in English print editions, and a collection of short stories, including Dark Water, which was made into a very decent horror film also.

We’re not even going to touch on his collection of books on how to raise a child, a subject that he was considered an expert in.

While I stated earlier that Koji Suzuki wasn’t as well known as Junji Ito, the truth is that Ito owes a portion of that fame to Koji Suzuki, alongside several other prominent Japanese horror masters like Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Koji Shiraishi, as it was the works of Koji Suzuki that kicked open the door to the nightmarish world of Asian horror for many a person living in the west, and instilled within many of us a fear of things considered mundane before their words and images shifted reality. Consider just how much more terrifying hair was in the nineties compared to any decade that came before.

And now, he is gone. A Horror legend placed into the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In his place, his works, his words, his terrors. If you only know Ringu from the screen, I implore you to seek out the book, and then all of the available sequels. Truly allow yourself to get absorbed into this mythology, this surreal nightmare, that Koji Suzuki created. It has been often imitated, but none other have really matched the level of fear that his works create, and while I’m positive that his influence will be felt in this genre that all of us love so very much for the rest of time, I think his works will never fail to be mentioned among the list of the greats. From Shelley to Poe, from Lovecraft to Bradbury, from King to Barker, Koji Suzuki will find his name on the list of masters, and his place among the stars, where he can watch his words continue to haunt our minds and our dreams, and have us refusing to watch any strange videotapes.

Jason Kuykendall has been a horror fan since the age of two, when his mother sat him down in front of When a Stranger Calls, so she began using horror movies as a babysitter. His favorite job was a mom-and-pop video store that he worked at when he was sixteen. He runs Creepy Bat Book Review but is thinking about firing and replacing himself due to how slack he’s become in his work. He’s made of 85% tattoos, 35% compassion, and 69% spite, and he also doesn’t understand math. He won’t pet your service dog, but he really, really wants to.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.