In the world of horror manga, few names are viewed with as much reverence — and shudder — as Junji Ito; inarguably the genre’s contemporary master. The multiple award-winning 60-year-old artist is famed for his black-and-white graphic novels and short stories revolving around body horror, supernatural terrors, societal cruelty and spiraling insanity. Ito’s magnum opus, “Uzumaki” (Spiral), explores a town’s fixation with the twisting shapes, turning a common pattern into a symbol of cosmic horror and inevitability.
The sinister beauty of Ito’s art is currently showcased at Tokyo’s Setagaya Literary Museum, until Sept. 1 in the “Enchantment” exhibition. On view is an extensive retrospective spanning a four-decade career, featuring about 600 works from childhood doodles to recent illustrations to stunning figurines, exploring his themes, evolution and sardonic take on our collective fear of death.
Despite Ito’s manga having been translated into over 30 languages, this exhibition — remarkably — is the first such showcase of the artist’s work in Japan.
I meet the artist at his favorite kissaten (traditional cafe), a short bus ride from his Chiba home, where he lives with his wife, illustrator Ayako Ishiguro, their two daughters and their cats: Tenmaru, Tamago and Ton’ichi, the latter being the wallpaper on Ito’s iPhone.
Dark, antique wooden furniture and a quietly contemplative atmosphere characterize the cafe — with improvisational jazz pianist Keith Jarrett’s album “The Koln Concert” playing in the background. “I like Jarrett, but I’m more into older jazz artists like Lionel Hampton,” Ito says, taking a bite of his cake, served with a cup of coffee by a shopkeeper clearly used to Ito’s presence.
We dive straight into the exhibition, of which body horror plays a major part. Ito’s past as a dental technician for a few years in the 1980s only enhances his ability to use the trope, often zooming in on gruesome teeth.
But why this fixation on the body?
“I believe that the human body, with its complex and incomprehensible mind, forms the basis of all horror,” Ito says. “Anxiety is an emotion all animals feel, but the anxiety felt by humans, with our highly evolved brains, is unfathomable. The human body is a symbol of that bottomlessness.”
Building on this theme, insanity as a vessel for horror is equally central to Ito’s comics. Partially as a storytelling device, he says, because an insane person allows for extraordinary behaviors. But Ito’s use of madness also functions as commentary on social psychology.
“Our minds can become distorted by us placing unreasonable expectations on others or by us striving to live up to theirs, fostering an excessive sense of inferiority. I believe a common trait among my characters is their dependency, which can spiral into insanity and psychosis.”
Though approachable and warm in person, Ito mentions his own issues with social anxiety: “I think I’ve overcome my fear of social interactions to a large extent but not entirely,” he says.
A visitor to the “Enchantment” exhibition looks up at a large print of an illustration by Ito, in Tokyo.
| Erik Augustin Palm
When he finds the diabolical fantasies he’s famed for difficult to conjure up, he summons them by bathing. “As I get older, I find myself hitting a wall more and more, so I probably wouldn’t be able to continue drawing manga without my bathtub,” he says with a chuckle.
Ito’s stories have now broken through the mainstream, too, as evidenced by last year’s Netflix series “Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre.” Produced by Studio Deen — who also made the 2018 anthology “Junji Ito Collection,” co-produced by Crunchyroll, the world’s largest anime platform — the series made a splash beyond the usual anime circles.
Fans are currently anticipating a new “Uzumaki” adaptation, delayed by the pandemic but now set to air on the hugely influential Adult Swim block of the U.S. Cartoon Network channel later this year. The enthusiasm is clear from the millions of views on the official three-minute teaser released on YouTube, and Ito reveals the first of four episodes is complete, and lives up to his expectations.
Animation also features in the “Enchantment” exhibition in several different ways. There’s a projection of the snickering, devilish boy Souichi — partly based on Junji Ito’s childhood self (“I was a little twisted back then,” he says) — and a photo booth that brings a page from “Uzumaki” to life, using the exhibition visitors’ swirled faces. Although it has been his most representative symbol for nearly three decades, Ito still favors the spiral.
“It has a charm that makes it clear why some people are obsessed with uncovering the secret of its pattern,” he says, “but unraveling it will be difficult and likely plunge one’s world into chaos.”
Ito’s eye for the grotesquely “enchanting” began to evolve while growing up in rural Gifu Prefecture, in a large, decaying house located on a hill, where the basement was connected to an underground tunnel. There, he had a traumatic encounter with cave crickets that later inspired his comics.
“The tunnel was pitch dark, and the cave crickets there were particularly scary because they jumped around so indiscriminately.” During our interview, Ito draws a sketch of his childhood home and later he sends me an additional rendering from his recent book, “The Creepy Hole Where Fear is Born.”
An illustration by Ito of his childhood home that can be found in his recent book, “The Creepy Hole Where Fear is Born.”
| Junji Ito
“My childhood home, even from the outside, scared me,” Ito says.
At the age of 4, Ito’s two older sisters lent him magazines by horror manga artists Kazuo Umezu, Shigeru Mizuki and Shinichi Koga, which, Ito claims, did not traumatize him but certainly left an indelible impression. “It just was intriguing, scary, grotesque, interesting,” he recalls.
When asked about his daughters consuming frightening pieces of pop culture, like his own work, Ito says he doesn’t “specifically prohibit anything. They have read manga that I have made, which stands in my bookshelf. But my manga containing explicit sexual scenes, I keep away from them.”
As a storyteller, Ito also looks at the absurdity that can accompany the macabre. Goosebumps triggered by a gruesome character or situation might be followed by a giggle at the same bizarre situation. Few artists fuse agony and comedy as well as Ito does, though he claims he is often aiming for understated humor.
“My comical intentions are up to my readers to perceive as they choose,” he says. “Certainly, some of my works and characters have a more obvious sense of humor than others, such as (the one about) the boy Souichi. But if it’s truly a horror story, the humor must be restrained and more veiled.”
Ito’s monochrome, bleak and highly detailed drawing style is equally important in bringing out his stories’ uncanny allure, disorienting the reader while simultaneously drawing them in.
“The vivid effect created by the contrast between black and white is just suitable for horror,” he says.
The “Enchantment” exhibition, the first large-scale retrospective of Ito’s work in Japan, runs until Sept. 1.
| Erik Augustin Palm
But even more important for his stories is Ito’s knowledge and contemplation of what fear means for humanity. He is viewed as such an authority on the subject that The New York Times recently invited him to write an essay on the topic in its current Big Ideas article series titled “What do we fear?”
In his essay, he underlines his heaviest claim: Fear is key to staying alive. We need to “devour horror stories and cultivate a resistance to fear,” Ito writes, suggesting horror prepares us with the necessary psychological and emotional armor for the unexpected and also a therapeutic blueprint for confronting existential dread.
But, I ask, is fear still so important, even in times like these with so much real human suffering on full-time display?
Ito seems to think it is. “The horror of reality is truly hopeless. But fictional, supernatural horror like my stories provide a dreamlike fear that is very different. I think that enjoying such fairy tales can be a source of salvation in times like these.”
Perhaps that’s why Ito’s work not only terrifies but also comforts, excites and embraces the reader steely enough to face it.