“My only two nightmares are when I become an edible object and sharks.”

“ ...you feel Junji Ito being titillated at a very basic disturbing level by his stuff.

“ I like people who get high on their own supply.

I'd asked Guillermo del Toro what kept him up at night.“I dream of zombies eating me. I jump from rooftop to rooftop, and eventually I give up because I’m too fat, and they eat me. And I dream often of sharks… My dream with sharks is I’m going to the shore, and if I make It to the shore, I’m safe.”The image above is a panel from Gyo, a startling original work of horror by the Japanese manga artist Junji Ito.In the novel, a bizarre apocalypse hits Japan: sea creatures begin to invade the land, walking on sharp, spindly legs like those a spider. Fish, giant squid, and great white sharks soon fill the streets of Tokyo, driving humanity into hiding. Eventually, they begin to die and decay, but still the nightmare doesn't end – their corpses continue to scuttle through the putrid fog without explanation. And that's all before it gets really weird. Unsurprisingly that image had a huge impact on del Toro, and turned him into a fan of Ito's work.“Ito is completely one of the masters… I like people who get high on their own supply,” del Toro tells me. “I get high on my own supply. I’m like Scarface at the end. I grab my movies and I… [del Toro snorts imaginary cocaine off the table]."“I don’t have an objective distance. I’m not postmodern. I just… [snorts again] go face in, you know? And I think Ito is the same way. In the way that you feel Dario Argento in the early movies was getting off on each murder or you feel David Cronenberg was secretly aroused by body horror – in the same way, you feel Junji Ito being titillated at a very basic disturbing level by his stuff.”And his stuff is disturbing, deeply disturbing. Born in central Japan in 1963, Ito spent his early career as a dental technician before achieving prominence in the 90s with the serialised Tomié, which ran from 1987 to 2000. Uzumaki and Gyo followed, establishing him as one of the leading talents in horror manga. Ito clearly works within the tradition of Japanese horror, but frequently incorporates influences originating in the West. The presence of Lovecraft – particularly, his vision of a disinterested universe that registers to the individual as cruel – is pervasive in his work. Similarly body horror figures heavily – his stories abound in mutilation, disfigurement, disease, and instances of the human body betraying the person it contains.