Junji Ito

Junji Ito (Born July 31, 1963, Gifu, Japan) is well-known as a horror manga artist, and his representative works include the "Tomie" series and "Uzumaki". Many of his works have been made into films.

When he was little, he was fascinated by the bizarre manga of Kazuo Umezu, Shinichi Koga, and others, and started drawing his own bizarre manga. Graduated from Nakatsu High School in Gifu Prefecture, and became a dental technician after graduating from a dental technician college in 1984.

While working on a short story for "Halloween Monthly," he also worked on the serialization of "Tomie," but for some reason, the more he drew, the more his popularity declined. The more I drew, the more my popularity declined. Mr. Ito decided to temporarily suspend the serialization of "Tomie" and began to draw other "read-aloud" stories. Four years later, "Tomie" became one of his best-known works. He began to produce a series of hits, starting with "Hanging Balloon" (1994), which became one of his best-known works.

Ito recalls his twenties and early thirties as the most fulfilling time of his life as a manga artist. The appeal of Junji Ito's works lies in his drawing ability. The eerie worldview that pervades the entire work is expressed with delicate "lines" that are meticulously detailed.

According to Ito himself, he cannot allow his paintings to be too dense. Instead of relying on solid coloring, he piles lines on top of each other to darken the entire picture. If there is not enough writing to meet the deadline, he adds more until he is satisfied just before the book is published.

Sometimes he spends more than two hours on a single panel for the precision which even his peers are astonished. Tomie is a beautiful woman who regenerates and multiplies no matter how many times she is dismembered. The grotesque depiction of nature, the city, and the human body all whirl around in a whirlpool. The strange and realistic nature of this bizarre idea, which could easily be taken as a "gag manga," is probably triumph of his ability in drawing.

In 2015, he wrote the manga for WOWOW's drama series "Yami no Tomojinsha" (Companion of the Darkness). Furthermore, in the same year, the exhibition "Ito Junji Fear Aesthetic Experience Grand Exhibition" was held in Taiwan.

In 2021, "Jigokusei Remina" was selected for the Best Asian Work Award at the 33rd Eisner Awards, and "Jigokusei Remina" and "BEST OF BEST" were selected in the Best Writer/Artist category. In 2022, the English version of "Shigeto no Koiwarerai" was selected for the Best Asian Work Award at the 34th Eisner Awards. This is the fourth time Ito has won the award.