Izumi Tōyama (遠山いづみ Tōyama Izumi) was a character from Ju-on: The Grudge, portrayed by actresses Misa Uehara and Mao Kobayashi.
Biography[]
Izumi is Yuji's and Yoko's sensitive daughter. She enjoyed playing her flute and was close to Yuji, who was a detective. Izumi and Yuji were once approached by a detective named Igarashi. Protective of Izumi, Yuji sent her home and from the balcony, she overheard Igarashi telling Yuji that they need him because new deaths had happened at "that house" and because he's the only one left who they can ask about it. Yuji was reluctant but eventually agreed to help them. At this time Yoko arrived and told Izumi to get inside. Later, that night, Yuji came back home in fear and panic, confusing Yoko and Izumi. They tried to help him and calm him down, to no avail. He locked himself up in the room and closed all the windows with curtains. Eventually, Yuji died from the curse, and Izumi grew up in the mourning. At school, she made friends with her classmates, Chiharu, Miyuki, Saori, Chiaki, and Ayano. One day, Izumi's class went on a school trip and made photos with their teacher, Mr. Sekine. The curse affects the photos and eerily blackens out Izumi's, Saori's, Chiaki's and Ayano's eyes, though, unlike them, it didn't affect Chiharu, Miyuki, and Sekine, what meant that they weren't it's target at the moment. The affected photos weren't placed on the students mural.
After returning from the trip, Saori told Izumi, Chiaki, and Ayano about a haunted house nearby and they visited the place. Izumi felt the curse's presence even from the outside, which Saori and the others belittled. After entering the house, Izumi felt it even stronger. The girls were hanging out in Kayako's room and Izumi was scared and uncomfortable. Eventually, she decides to leave this place and runs out of the room. She went downstairs and met Yuji in atemporal connection when he came to the house to burn it down before he died. She looks at him for a while, then runs out of the house in fear. Saori, Chiaki, and Ayano are killed by Kayako soon after and reported missing. Later, Izumi, Chiharu, and Miyuki were walking to school and discussing Sekine, when Izumi noticed a missing persons flyer asking for Saori, Chiaki and Ayano. She remembered that she ran away and left them at the Saeki house alone and started to worry about them and feel guilty. Chiharu and Miyuki called her, and she ran to them. Chiharu asked her what happened and Izumi replied that it's nothing. At school, Izumi, Chiharu, and Miyuki look at the photos from the school trip, but can't find Izumi's photos and she is upset by it. Later, they sit at the staircase and wonder why there are no photos of Izumi. Sekine walks past them and Chiharu calls him out on this. He notices upset Izumi and asks what wrong. Chiharu and Miyuki tell him that there are no photos of Izumi in the mural and ask what's up with it. He promises to look for the photos and return them later. Chiharu and Miyuki followed him to get the photos.
On her way home, Izumi comes across another missing flyer and runs away distressed. She returns home and sees a depressed Yoko looking at Yuji's picture and hears a news report about Rika's death. She goes to her room and once again feels the curse's presence and hears it's voices. She also feels that she's watched and closes all the windows with curtains and covers them with the newspaper in a futile attempt to hide and escape from ghosts. The curse gradually depresses and disturbs her just like Yoko and Yuji. Meanwhile, Chiharu and Miyuki took the photos from Sekine and go to Izumi to show them to her. They meet her and enter her dark room. Miyuki goes to open the curtains, but Izumi yells for her to stop and they see that windows are covered with paper. Izumi explains Chiharu and Miyuki that "the three of them", "Saori and the rest" were "looking in" at her, and tells that she was with them the day they disappeared. Izumi also tells them what she felt at the Saeki house and how she felt before entering. Chiharu asks if she has ESP, but Izumi says "it's not like that". Chiharu and Miyuki were disturbed by Izumi's behavior and fell under the curse's influence themselves. Yoko told them that Yuji acted the same before he died. Miyuki asked if Izumi knows about it to which Yoko replied that she didn't tell anything to her. While walking away from the apartment building, Miyuki reminds Chiharu of the photos.
They look at them and notice that Izumi's, Saori's, Chiaki's and Ayano's eyes are eerily blackened out. Chiharu got scared by it, threw the photos on the ground, and ran away in fear, while Miyuki followed her, calling for her. That night, Izumi met Yuji's ghost in her house and fell asleep in her bed. Later, she awoke and noticed that some pieces of paper were ripped out of the window. She approaches the window and peeks through a hole in a paper. Saori, Chiaki, and Ayano appear on the other side and look an her. Terrified, Izumi runs out of her room while the ghosts follow her around the house. Izumi runs into the living room and boards the door with furniture. Izumi crawls backwards away from the door as the ghosts open it and enter the room. Izumi crawls backwards and backs up against her home altar. Kayako appears from the dark altar behind her, grabs her head and pulls her in the dark, killing her. Izumi joins Yuji in the afterlife, and their faces appear in the dark in the altar.
Notes and trivia[]
- Although Izumi was in the house with the schoolgirls at the end of Ju-on: The Curse 2, her voice is never heard throughout the "Saori" segment.
- Most likely because at that moment she already escaped or Shimizu chose to introduce her in The Grudge.
- Izumi's plot is referenced in Ju-on: The Beginning of the End (Aoi, Nanami and Rina) and The Grudge 2 (Allison, Miyuki and Vanessa).
- Izumi's plot is also partially referenced in Akane's storyline in White Ghost. Akane is another sensitive schoolgirl who lost her father and friend to the curse and grows up mourning them.
- Сhronologically, Izumi is the last victim in this movie.
- Strangely, Chiharu and Hiromi do not even mention Izumi in the next film.
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