'I DON'T WRITE horror,' says Koji Suzuki. 'I'm not interested in horror.' Quite a surprising claim coming from the man known as Japan's answer to Stephen King.
Suzuki's novel Ring sparked a boom in Japanese horror films, or J-horror. It was made into the Japanese movie Ringu (1998), then given the Hollywood treatment as The Ring (2002). Another of his books, Dark Water, was made into a movie last year.
'All over the world people think of my novel as a horror story, but I don't look at it that way,' he says. 'I just thought I was writing an interesting story.'
Suzuki wants readers to think of him more as a writer of touching stories about how a father protects his daughter from the dangers of the spirit world. In fact, the 48-year-old father of two daughters has strong views on parenthood and the importance of fathers in raising children.
'I wrote Ring in 1989 - 16 years ago. At that time I wasn't yet a success. My wife supported the family as a teacher and I stayed at home and took care of our daughter, then only two. I was a house husband - like John Lennon,' he says, laughing. 'The main theme of the book is how a father protects his daughter.'
Perhaps so. It's true that the main character, a Japanese newspaper reporter named Kazuyuki Asakawa, must solve the mystery of the cursed videotape in time to save his wife and daughter, not to mention himself. True, too, that a single mother and young daughter figure as the main characters in Dark Water.