Since the 1999 release of the movie Tomie, based on his comics about a beautiful girl of the same name who instills such jealousy in men that she is murdered by them, only to be reborn from the scraps of flesh which remain, Junji Ito has found increasing popularity at home in Japan and overseas, and following the release of Tomie, a total of seven movies and five made-for-TV specials have been adapted from his work. Despite the fact that Ito is currently ubiquitous in the Japanese horror movie scene, his comics remain somewhat scarce even in Japan and his success comes only after 12 years of publishing comics, more than five of which were spent while also working as a dental technician.

Born in Gifu prefecture in 1963, Junji Ito gained an interest in horror comics as an elementary school student when his older sister lent him her Umezu Kazuo horror comics. Receiving inspiration from Umezu and his older sister's comic-drawing hobby, Ito began to draw his own stories. After graduating from high school, Ito attended a vocation dentistry college in Nagoya and worked as a dental technician.

In 1986, Nemuki's Halloween Monthly established the Umezu prize for horror manga, and Ito was motivated to enter the contest. In 1987 Ito won the Umezu Kazuo prize with Tomie and subsequently made his debut in the monthly. Ito's early comics are said to show the clearly the influences of Umezu and his own older sister. Despite having made his debut as a published comic artist, Ito continued to work as a dental technician for several years, juggling both professions. Eventually he decided that pursuing both careers simultaneously would result in his early demise, so he chose to stick with comics.

Ito has said that he likes to write stories which allow him to expose the monster hidden in the ordinary, and fans of his work will know that his surreal drawings are anything but ordinary, featuring horribly disfigured humans and chilling portents drawn in great somber detail. Most of the time, things start out ordinarily before he introduces something truly grotesque - and then lets his characters and readers squirm as they try desperately to resolve whatever blight has been set upon them before they are overwhelmed by the horror. And as with many Japanese comics, Ito's characters rarely escape unscathed, if they escape at all. Junji Ito is also well known for eschewing any sort of scientific explanation for the strange events in his comics, concentrating his efforts instead on simply making the horror as visceral and disquieting as possible.

The 1990s saw a boom in horror comics in Japan, with magazines springing up to meet the demand and several comic authors making their mark. Throughout this period during the early 1990s, Ito was published in Halloween Monthly, Bizarre Tales of Sleepless Nights and Nemuki and in 1997 published a four-part comic called The Tragic Story of the Giant Black Pillar in Shougakukan's Big Comic Spirits Weekly special issue, Manpuku! His relationship with Big Comic Spirits Weekly (a thick publication aimed primarily at a young teenage male audience) has since become more regular, with Ito publishing Uzumaki in Spirits starting in 1998 and again running a series in Spirits in 2001 with Gyo.

In addition to Uzumaki, 1998 also saw Ito publish Burial of an Evil Doll in Comic Gon's second issue and help to bring the first Tomie movie to the big screen. 1999 was another busy year, with the release of Tomie, the conclusion of the Uzumaki series and the decision to adapt Uzumaki into a movie and to make a sequel to Tomie, Tomie Replay.

The Uzumaki movie and Tomie Replay were released in 2000 along with five made-for-TV specials (Long Dream, Hanging Balloons, Demonology, The Conversation Room, The Face Burglar) adapted from his new The Horror World of Junji Ito Collection, which gathered together his 10 years of comics written before 1997 into a 16 volume set. More movie adaptations of his work were released in 2001, of widely divergent quality, with Lovesick Dead and Tomie: Rebirth finding some positive reception but Oshikiri and Kakashi largely failing to impress his fans or audiences in general. From November 12th of 2001, an entirely new comic series called Gyo, about an apparent invasion by fish that have grown legs, started in Big Comics Spirits Weekly.

Despite the number of movies adapted from Junji Ito's comics and the current release of many of his individual comics in the Horror Collection, it would be a mistake to assume that Ito has gained widespread popularity in Japan. Gyo, his most recent comic, is being published second last in the 300+ page Spirits Weekly, his horror collection is only available new at specialty stores or by mail order, much as it is in the United States, and Japanese audiences are still largely unaware of his movies despite the quarterly nature of their release.

Junji Ito

References:
Jigokuyu Junji Ito Fan Site
Big Comics Junji Ito Interview
CinemaScape Review Database
Seeing Japan through Comics
Junji Ito @mutagene.net

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