Dark Water is the English title of a book by Koji Suzuki, originally published in Japan as Honogurai mizu no soko kara (Kanji: 仄暗い水の底から; literally, In the Depths of Dark Water). The book is a collection of short stories, first published in 1996, and released in an English translation in 2004.. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Kōji Suzuki (born May 13, 1957) is a Japanese writer currently lives in Tokyo. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Kanji ( (help· info)) are the Chinese characters (Hanzi) that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名) and the Roman alphabet. ... 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...

The collection contains seven stories, and an extra plotline forming the prologue and epilogue.

Stories

• Floating Water (浮遊する水; Fuyū Suru Mizu) - the inspiration for the film Dark Water by Hideo Nakata, and its US remake by Walter Salles. It is the story of a young mother and her daughter who take refuge from a messy divorce in a run-down apartment building. The mother discovers that a small girl vanished from the building a year previously, and begins to investigate the connection between her disappearance and a series of terrifying events taking place around the flat. Both the Japanese film and the American remake are quite close to the chapter.

• Solitary Isle - a young man sets out to discover the truth behind his dead friend's boast that he dumped his girlfriend naked on an island in the middle of Tokyo bay.

• The Hold - a fisherman who beats his wife and son tries to uncover the reason bvehind his wife's disappearance, and why he has a throbbing headache.

• Dream Cruise - a young man is invited out on a mini-cruise by a couple who wish to entice him into a pyramid sales scheme. Fairly soon, bizarre things start happening to the boat.

• Adrift - the crew of a fishing trawler happen across an abandoned yacht, similar in situation to the Marie Celeste. The film rights for this story have been optioned.

• Watercolors - an amateur dramatic troupe stage a play in a converted disco, but strange things start happening on the floor above.

• Forest Under The Sea - the only story in the collection to have no real supernatural element whatsoever. Two spelunkers discover an unexplored cave, but become trapped. Suzuki here explores the emotions of regret and longing. It ties in with the epilogue story.

Dark Water is a 2002 Japanese horror film directed by Hideo Nakata, who is better known as the director of Ringu and Ringu 2, and based on a work by Koji Suzuki. ... Hideo Nakata (中田秀夫 Nakata Hideo, born July 19, 1961, in Okayama) is a Japanese film director. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Walter Moreira Salles Jr. ... Dark Water is a 2002 Japanese horror film directed by Hideo Nakata, who is better known as the director of Ringu and Ringu 2, and based on a work by Koji Suzuki. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Tokyo ) (help· info), literally eastern capital, is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan and includes the highly urbanized central area formerly known as the city of Tokyo which is the heart of the Greater Tokyo Area. ... A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, usually without any product or service being delivered. ... The Mary Celeste was a ship found abandoned off the coast of Portugal in 1872. ...

Themes

It would be an inaccuracy to describe the collection as a book of 'horror' stories, as Suzuki places very little emphasis on the supernatural aspects of the plots, although there are those aspects, to be sure. He is more concerned with the atrocities committed by humans themselves rather than by otherworldly forces. There are themes of urban decay, family troubles and domestic abuse running throughout the stories. The characters themselves are often selfish, cruel and self-absorbed. Suzuki uses these characters to explore emotions such as rage, fear and longing. His stories often take as their theme life after the Japanese economic bubble burst, as they were written shortly after that period. Urban decay is the degeneration of parts of cities and large towns usually as the result of structural economic change and its associated effects of depopulation, property abandonment, social problems, crime, and a desolate and unfriendly urban landscape. ...

The one thing that all the stories have in common is the repeated use of water imagery. Many of the events take place at sea, but even the land-based plotlines have a connection to water. In Floating Water and Watercolors, for instance, the characters are plagued by water dripping through their ceiling.