Japanese novelist Koji Suzuki, whose best known creator is the  Ring  books and horror icon Sadako , passed away over the weekend on May 9. He was 68. First reported by Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun , Suzuki was born May 13, 1957. His literary was the standalone 1990 novel  Rakuen (or Paradise in the west), followed by  Ringu  (aka  Ring ) the following year. The novel sparked a J-horror boom and became a TV movie in 1995, followed by a theatrical one three years later. It was the latter version that became a hit in the west, praised at the time for its more subtle, restrained form of horror as slashers were dominating the screen. And it’s because of that interest in the 1998  Ring  that we got western remakes of The Grudge  and  Dark Water, the latter based on a Suzuki short story. Throughout his career, Suzuki wrote several standalone books and short stories, with his final work being the 2025 novel Ubiquitous .…