Glossary
Onryō
The vengeful spirit of Japanese tradition. Female, wronged, and not open to negotiation.
An onryō is a vengeful ghost in Japanese folklore and theatre, usually a woman who died wronged, and whose rage is neither proportionate nor negotiable.
The figure is centuries old, appears throughout kabuki and noh, and reaches film long before the 1990s: Kwaidan (1964) and Onibaba (1964) are the classical cinema versions.
What the J-horror cycle did from 1998 was fix a visual grammar for it: long black hair over the face, white clothing, wet surfaces, and a movement that is smooth and wrong at the same time. Sadako's walk in Ringu was filmed with the actress moving backwards and the footage reversed.
The important structural difference from a western ghost is that an onryō cannot be reasoned with, cannot be laid to rest by uncovering the truth, and does not restrict itself to the guilty. Working out what happened does not save you.
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