Born: July 31st 1963 in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan.

Married to: Ishiguro Ayako (painter and manga artist).

Notable Wicked Works: Tomie, Gyo, and Uzumaki (all of which have theatrical releases).



Inspirational Influences: Kazuo Umezu, Hideshi Hino, , and Shinichi Furuka.

Favourite Novelists: Yasutaka Tsutsui and H.P. Lovecraft.

He Fears: Ghosts.

Beastly Beginnings: Ito was drawing by age five, and already had the knack for horror, even at such an early age. He drew mostly horror manga, but also enjoyed creating gag manga as well. The first manga he ever read was given to him by his older sister, and was written by the macabre mangaka, Kazuo Umezu. From there he worked on his passion in his spare time, and began taking it seriously while working as a dental technician. As his work was often stressful and demanding, he put more effort into doing his passion, horror manga, full time.



First Frightening Publications: In 1987 while the magazine Gekkan Halloween was relatively new he submitted his first published work titled Tomie hoping to win the coveted Umezu Award (titled after his favourite mangaka, and horror master, Kazuo Umezu). That year no winner was declared, so he shared the award with the other published candidates. He serialized Tomie as a series in Gekkan Halloween, and continued to produce manga for them, as well as other magazines such as Shougakukan’s Big Comic Spirits Weekly and Nemurenu Yoru no Kimyo na Hanashi (Strange Tales of Sleepless Nights).



How He Writes: Before he begins the writing process he draws inspiration from daily life. He picks out the peculiarities he comes across and exaggerates them. If he creates something interesting he will run with it, and add the horror later on. Occasionally he’ll draw inspiration from a frightening dream. Once the concept is created he draws up the plot. He tries not to plot out the whole story from the beginning, but rather creates ideas that grow with time. He’s admitted that he doesn’t enjoy coming of age stories, so he tries to avoid anything that is too drama oriented.



How He Draws: Ito loves to draw extremes, whether it be extreme beauty or extreme ugliness. He doesn’t consider what will scare the reader, but rather takes enjoyment from the process and creates something he likes. With time his drawings become more and more complex until there are finished, becoming horrifying masterpieces. He doesn’t want to create work that is “fashionable” or “trendy”, so he purposely uses a style that is rough looking. Fun Fact! While Ito was still an amateur his mother and sister helped him by shading his work. His mother still helps him, along with his wife.



His Advice for Working Mangakas: “Keep your own point of view, but always welcome advice from others.”

His Inspiration for Uzumaki: It came to be through the idea of a tall tower where strange occurrences would happen to its residents. He figured he could make the tower even taller if it was in a spiral. Ito believes that spirals are symbolic of infinity. The different stages of the spiral were directly inspired by the mysterious novels of Lovecraft.



His Inspiration for Tomie: Ito was inspired by the idea of regeneration, specifically the phenomenon of lizards regenerating their tails. The story evolved into a person returning to life like nothing ever happened.

His Inspiration for Gyo: Ito took direct inspiration from Spielberg’s Jaws. He loved how the essence of fear was captured through a man-eating shark, so he evolved it into a man-eating shark who could travel not only in the sea, but also on land.

Where is He Now? Ito continues to create manga, but has since branched out, working with video game companies, as well as creating gag manga for fun side projects. In 2008 he published Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu, a tale about living with two peculiar cats. More recently he was also working alongside Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro on the video game reboot of Silent Hills (which has since been canceled). As well as Konami, Ito also collaborated with Nintedo last year for their Kowapoke feature on the Pokemon website.



My Thoughts on His Work



I stumbled across Uzumaki years ago, and was instantly entranced by the spiral. His work is unparalleled, being incredibly detailed and morbidly creative. He captures the Japanese horror genre perfectly by being so off-the-wall and bizarre. He creates an amazingly tense atmosphere through a slowly progressing story that climaxes with a grotesque and horrifying conclusion. Every October I find myself drifting to his work, mostly reading short stories from his Kyoufu Collection. If you’re a lover of horror, you can’t afford to miss his work, it’s just too good.

Sources



http://fuckyeahjunjiito.tumblr.com/post/55163529496/the-junji-ito-interview-a-conversation-with-the

https://nostroblogs.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/junji-ito-entretien-avec-un-maitre-de-lhorreur/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHmE-u5LR2o

http://www.78magazine.com/issues/03-01/arts/junji.shtml