Kayako Saeki (佐伯 伽椰子, Saeki Kayako?, née 川又 Kawamata) is a fictional character appearing in the
Ju-on horror franchise. In all films up to
The Grudge 2, she is portrayed by actress
Takako Fuji. Fuji did not reprise her role after
The Grudge 2, and was replaced by
Aiko Horiuchi in
The Grudge 3, while Anna Moon took the role in the web series
Tales from the Grudge. Actress Misaki Saisho played Kayako in
Ju-on: Beginning of the End and its sequel
Ju-on: The Final Curse while Runa Endo played Kayako in
Sadako vs. Kayako.
She was created by director
Takashi Shimizu. She represents a popular antagonist in
Japanese culture, the
vengeful ghost (
Onryō). She is typically characterized by long dark hair covering her pale face, unsettling wide eyes, twisted movements with crunching neckbones, and a haunting
Death rattle. She first appeared in Shimizu's short movie
Katasumi and spends the majority of the
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 in a state of intense rage, those feelings remain at the death site and kill whoever it touches.
She has proven to be a very popular character in
horror cinema, having appeared in many films and other media in various different franchises.
In the
Ju-on franchise, as revealed in the official novel written by Kei Ohishi, both of her parents were present albeit highly neglectful, causing Kayako to often feel depressed and lonely. Kayako spent most of her free time with her cat Kuro and was highly
anti-social. In the first installment of the
Ju-on franchise,
Ju-on: The Curse, Kobayashi's wife Manami [sic] remarks that she remembers Kayako from high school and that she found her "creepy". Kayako became highly jealous of Manami and even tried to curse her but failed and eventually gave up. When she attends university, she meets Shunsuke Kobayashi, with whom she falls deeply in love. After the accidental deaths of her parents which didn't seem to faze her, Kayako marries
Takeo Saeki, the only person who understands and cares for her, and together, they have a son named
Toshio (佐伯俊雄). By now, Kobayashi is Toshio's school teacher, and she falls in love with him again.
She writes of her feelings for him in the
journal she kept all her life, in both franchises this ultimately leads to Takeo finding and reading her diary. He becomes obsessed with the idea that Kayako is cheating on him with his son's teacher - or worse, Toshio could not be his son, but Kobayashi's. When she gets home that day, he violently attacks her upstairs, pushing her against the wall. Toshio is in his bedroom drawing and hears the noise and, coming outside, watches the violence which is occurring below through the banisters. Kayako tries to run away while Takeo chases her, but he pushes her down. She sprains her ankle, stumbles and falls, and has to go down their house stairs by crawling. After much effort she makes it to the front door, only to find Takeo was slowly walking behind her, watching her pain. He then snaps her neck to a 90 degree angle and crushes her throat, takes her to their bedroom and puts her in a trash bag. Kayako is still alive, but
paralyzed, capable only of her characteristic croaking noise. Takeo stares at her just sitting in a trash bag in the bedroom, then stabs her multiple times (an event that does not occur yet implied in
The Grudge). Then, he puts her body in the far corner of the attic, through an attic door in the ceiling of their bedroom closet.
After her death, she becomes an
Onryō because of the painful and torturous nature of her death. After that, Takeo kills Toshio (a witness to the murder) by drowning him and his pet cat Mar in the bathtub. He then runs to Kobayashi's house, killing Manami Kobayashi, Kobayashi's pregnant wife, and putting her
fetus in a sack. As he flies into a fit of rage on the street, Kayako appears as an
Onryō coming out from the garbage dumped nearby, and kills Takeo. Some time later, Kayako's body is found in the attic; Takeo's on the nearby street (his cause of death unknown to the police, they assume he committed suicide) and Toshio's in a closet.
Since that day, the ghosts of Kayako, Toshio and Takeo kill everyone who steps into the Saeki House (and anywhere the curse is transmitted). 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 the films feature Kayako crawling down the stairs emitting her famous
death rattle, cracking her neck around and covered with blood. Although she is usually heard emitting a croaking sound, Kayako is occasionally heard making a strange, eerie moaning instead - she is even heard speaking to Toshio (off-screen) after her death, albeit briefly, and her appearance to Kobayashi during the first
Ju-on movie.
Kayako is reimagined in the 2014 reboot
Ju-on: The Beginning of the End, where she only serves as a secondary antagonist at most, appearing in ghost form only at the end. In the film, Kayako, who was unable to conceive a child with Takeo, had a boy in white, revealed to be Toshio Yamaga, "entering" her womb, to be reborn as Toshio Saeki. Thus, her son was hers only, never wanting to spend time with Takeo, until Takeo found out the truth nine years later. Kayako was killed by Takeo, but unlike the previous films, she openly gloated Takeo's questionable fatherhood and even laughed maniacally as her head was snapped. Kayako becomes part of the curse afterward, but she never kills anyone in the film, being used as a sort of haunting by Toshio, who is true originator of the curse. Also, unlike the previous continuities, Kayako actually talks to another character onscreen, as opposed to the brief offscreen conversation with Toshio in the first
Ju-on.
In the final film in the series,
Ju-On: The Final Curse, Kayako is still a secondary antagonist, but has a more active role in killing those who fell to the curse' influence; she is the one who kills Reo, her mother, and Sota. She also manages to corner Mai at the end of the film, implying that she too will be killed by her.
Kayako appears in the 2016 film
Sadako vs. Kayako, with the
onryo from the
Ring series,
Sadako Yamamura. At the end of this film, she accidentally merges with Sadako, thus creating a new ghost,
Sayako.