- Takeo Saeki
Takeo Saeki (佐伯 剛雄 "Saeki Takeo") is a
fictional character created byTakashi Shimizu for the "Ju-on /The Grudge " saga. He is depicted by long-time veteran actor Takashi Matsuyama.Character history
Takeo Saeki is an illustrator working in Nerima,
Japan when he meets Kayako Kawamata. He falls in love with and marries her, eventually fathering her child, Toshio.As evidenced in the "Ju-On"
novelization , Takeo Saeki is very possessive and jealous of anyone who steals Kayako's attention; when his wife says she likes a particular actor on TV, he gets very angry.One day, he finds Kayako's diary and reads it. He is struck by uncontrollable rage when he learns that Kayako is in love with a man named Shunsuke Kobayashi (who was already happily married to his pregnant wife Manami Midorikawa), Toshio's school teacher and Kayako's first love back in college. He becomes obsessed with the idea that Kayako is cheating on him, and that Toshio is Kobayashi's child.
When Kayako gets home, Takeo attacks his wife, breaking her neck and slashing her with a utility knife, then hiding her body in the attic. As seen in the American remake of the first 'Ju-On' movie, he drowns Toshio along with his beloved black pet cat Mar. Takeo runs to Kobayashi's apartment and kills Manami (小林 真奈美 "Kobayashi Manami") and takes her premature baby. He then calls Kobayashi by using the bloody phone booth, saying he would be leaving him to raise Toshio because he thought 'up until now, he had raised him in his place'. Then after hitting the dead female fetus around in a sack, he falls on some garbage bags, one of them actually heading towards him and containing Kayako's dead spirit who eventually kills him on that street.
From that day on, the Saeki family household becomes an infamous landmark. Once anyone enters, they are either be killed by the spirits of Takeo, Kayako or Toshio, or disappear within Kayako's clutches.
Differences in interpretations
In the American remake, Takeo is instead hung by the neck inside the house. It is implied that he hung himself. However, in the Director's Cut version of the film, he is seen hanging by Kayako's hair, implying that she was responsible for his death, thus making him the first victim of the curse.
In the "Ju-on" novel, his death differs once again - he is killed when Kayako's ghost stabs him in the back with a knife.
External links
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Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
