Junji Ito

Author profile

born

in Gifu Prefecture, Japan

July 01, 1963

gender

male

genre

Comics & Graphic Novels, Horror, Mystery & Thrillers

influences

H.P. Lovecraft, Kazuo Umezu

About this author

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Junji Itō Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1963, he was inspired from a young age by his older sister's drawing and Kazuo Umezu's comics and thus took an interest in drawing horror comics himself. Nevertheless, upon graduation he trained as a dental technician, and until the early 1990s he juggled his dental career with his increasingly successful hobby — even after being selected as the winner of the prestigious Umezu prize for horror manga.

The most common obsessions are with beauty, long hair, and beautiful girls, especially in his Tomie and Flesh-Colored Horror comic collections. For example: A girl's hair rebels against being cut off and runs off with her head; Girls deliberately catch a disease that makes them beautiful but then murder each...more Junji Itō Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1963, he was inspired from a young age by his older sister's drawing and Kazuo Umezu's comics and thus took an interest in drawing horror comics himself. Nevertheless, upon graduation he trained as a dental technician, and until the early 1990s he juggled his dental career with his increasingly successful hobby — even after being selected as the winner of the prestigious Umezu prize for horror manga.

The most common obsessions are with beauty, long hair, and beautiful girls, especially in his Tomie and Flesh-Colored Horror comic collections. For example: A girl's hair rebels against being cut off and runs off with her head; Girls deliberately catch a disease that makes them beautiful but then murder each other; a woman treats her skin with lotion so she can take it off and look at her muscles, but the skin dissolves and she tries to steal her sister's skin, etc.

Ito's universe is also very cruel and capricious; his characters often find themselves victims of malevolent unnatural circumstances for no discernible reason or punished out of proportion for minor infractions against an unknown and incomprehensible natural order.

His longest work, the three-volume Uzumaki, is about a town's obsession with spirals: people become variously fascinated with, terrified of, and consumed by the countless occurrences of the spiral in nature. Apart from the ghastly, convincingly-drawn deaths, the book projects an effective atmosphere of creeping fear as the town's inhabitants become less and less human, and more and more bizarre things begin to happen.

Before Uzumaki, Ito was best known for Tomie, a comic series about a beautiful, teasing and eternally youthful high school girl who inspires her stricken admirers to murder each other in fits of jealous rage. Eventually, unable to cope with her coy flirtation and their desire to possess Tomie completely, they are inevitably compelled to kill her — only to discover that, regardless of the method they chose to dispose of her body, her body will always regenerate.

In 1998, during the horror boom that followed the success of Ringu, Tomie was adapted into a movie. Since Tomie, many of his works have been adapted for TV and the cinema.(less)

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Junji Ito's Books

Average rating: 4.09 · 9,401 ratings · 511 reviews · 53 distinct works · Similar authors

	Uzumaki, Vol. 1 4.23 of 5 stars 4.23 avg rating — 2,441 ratings — published 2006 — 5 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Uzumaki, Vol. 2 4.24 of 5 stars 4.24 avg rating — 1,579 ratings — published 2006 — 5 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Uzumaki, Vol. 3 4.25 of 5 stars 4.25 avg rating — 1,468 ratings — published 2006 — 4 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Gyo, Vol. 1 3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 avg rating — 777 ratings — published 2002 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Gyo, Vol. 2 3.81 of 5 stars 3.81 avg rating — 613 ratings — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Museum of Terror, Vol. 1 by Junji Ito, Naomi Kokubo (Translator) 4.11 of 5 stars 4.11 avg rating — 385 ratings — published 2006	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Tomie Volume 1 #1 3.98 of 5 stars 3.98 avg rating — 300 ratings — published 2005 — 4 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Museum of Terror, Vol. 2 4.14 of 5 stars 4.14 avg rating — 266 ratings — published 2006	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Museum of Terror, Vol. 3 4.16 of 5 stars 4.16 avg rating — 207 ratings — published 2006	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Flesh-Colored Horror #1 4.03 of 5 stars 4.03 avg rating — 183 ratings — published 2001 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Junji Ito…

Series by Junji Ito

Uzumaki (3 books)
by Junji Ito
4.235422740524782 of 5 stars 4.24 avg rating — 5,488 ratings

Gyo / ギョ (2 books)
by Junji Ito
3.794816414686825 of 5 stars 3.79 avg rating — 1,389 ratings

Museum of Terror (3 books)
by Junji Ito
4.130536130536131 of 5 stars 4.13 avg rating — 858 ratings

Tomie (2 books)
by Junji Ito
3.9465811965811968 of 5 stars 3.95 avg rating — 468 ratings

伊藤潤二恐怖マンガCollection (1 book)
by Junji Ito
3.549019607843137 of 5 stars 3.55 avg rating — 51 ratings

More series by Junji Ito…

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Wild Things: YA G...: July 2011	51	64	Oct 28, 2012 05:22pm
Horror Aficionados : Horror Manga?	35	203	Mar 19, 2013 03:49am
The Painted Word: Manga and Anime	27	25	Apr 26, 2013 06:39am

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