Ring (リング, Ringu) is a Japanese mystery horror novel by Koji Suzuki first published in 1991, and set in modern-day Japan.
After finding out three teenagers died at the same time and in the same bizarre manner as his niece, reporter Kazuyuki Asakawa of Daily News starts a personal investigation.
There, he finds a mysterious unmarked videotape which shows a 20-minute sequence of abstract and real scenes and ends with a text warning that the viewer has one week to live.
Desperate to avert his fate, he takes the tape and enlists the help of his old high-school friend Ryūji Takayama, now a university Philosophy Professor.
Searching for individuals with psychic photography ability, they find the record of Sadako Yamamura, a young woman who was born on Izu Oshima Island.
The doctor admitted to being infatuated with Sadako and, as if guided by something beyond himself, raped her in an abandoned cabin deep in the woods, in the process infecting her with smallpox and learning she was intersex.
Driven by the same unexplainable compulsion (which the duo later deduces as Sadako's mind control) he chokes her and throws her into a nearby well, which is beneath the lodge at South Hakone Pacific Land.
With five hours left, Asakawa races to his wife's parents' home with the tape and the VCR, choosing to unleash "an apocalyptic evil" for the sake of his small family.