Sadako

Sadako carries two very different cultural memories. One belongs to Sadako Sasaki, the young girl who folded paper cranes in postwar Hiroshima and became an international emblem of peace. The other belongs to the horror film Ringu, which gave the name a gothic afterlife in the late nineties. The kanji behind it often include sada, a character associated with chastity or steadiness, plus the feminine suffix ko. Its sound is soft and unhurried, three light syllables with no hard edges. The name's ko ending marks it as mid-century Japanese, rarely given to girls born today. Solemn, storied, resonant.