Junji Ito’s Followers (10,661)

Junji Ito

Born

in Gifu Prefecture, Japan

July 31, 1963

Genre

Manga, Horror, Mystery & Thrillers

Influences

H.P. Lovecraft, Kazuo Umezu ...more

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Junji Itō (伊藤潤二)
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 Junji Itō (伊藤潤二)
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. ...more

Combine Editions
Junji Ito’s books

Average rating: 4.14 · 357,703 ratings · 39,628 reviews · 274 distinct works • Similar authors

	Uzumaki 4.44 avg rating — 55,843 ratings — published 2000 — 27 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. 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: Spiral into Horror, Vol. 1 4.39 avg rating — 25,954 ratings — published 1998 — 25 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. 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 4.13 avg rating — 25,768 ratings — published 1987 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. 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 3.88 avg rating — 22,229 ratings — published 2002 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. 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
	Shiver: Selected Stories 4.34 avg rating — 17,357 ratings — published 2015 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. 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
	Fragments of Horror 4.10 avg rating — 14,534 ratings — published 2014 — 25 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. 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
	Smashed 4.15 avg rating — 13,190 ratings — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. 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
	No Longer Human by Junji Ito (Adapter), Osamu Dazai 4.27 avg rating — 11,947 ratings — published 2019 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. 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: Spiral into Horror, Vol. 2. 4.32 avg rating — 11,753 ratings — published 1999 — 21 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. 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
	Remina 3.69 avg rating — 13,654 ratings — published 2005 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. 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

4.40 avg rating — 104,021 ratings

Junji Ito Collection (8 books)
by

Junji Ito,

伊藤潤二

4.18 avg rating — 50,007 ratings

ハロウィン少女コミック館 (14 books)
by

Junji Ito,

伊藤潤二

4.11 avg rating — 36,457 ratings

Gyo (2 books)
by

Junji Ito,

Yuji Oniki (Translator)

3.96 avg rating — 37,723 ratings

Tomie (3 books)
by

Junji Ito,

伊藤潤二

4.10 avg rating — 34,722 ratings

More series by Junji Ito…

Quotes by Junji Ito (?)

“I am a horror maniac who prefers to stay at home.”
― Junji Ito

tags: horror, life

205 likes

“Spirals.... this town is contaminated with spirals.”
― Junji Ito, Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror, Vol. 1

tags: insanity, spirals

60 likes

“Kirie, did you know that female mosquitoes are the only ones who suck blood? And only when they're carrying a batch of eggs. They need the blood so their eggs will develop and...”
― Junji Ito, うずまき [Uzumaki]

16 likes

See all Junji Ito's quotes »

Polls

Frankenstein in February

Which book inspired by or adapting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: The 1818 Text should we read in February 2023?

This poll will open at 12:01 am Eastern time on Monday, January 2,
and will close at 11:59 pm Eastern time on Monday, January 26.

Frankenstein by Junji Ito

4 votes, 66.7%

Madame Frankenstein by Jamie S. Rich

2 votes, 33.3%

Victor LaValle's Destroyer by Victor LaValle

0 votes, 0.0%

The Monster of Frankenstein by Gary Friedrich

The Monster of Frankenstein from Marvel

0 votes, 0.0%

6 total votes

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Junji Ito’s Followers (10,661)

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