Being scared shitless is all the rage this week as Halloween fast approaches. But depending on where you are in the world, you might find your terror touchpoints coming from entirely different sources – whether you get your kicks from horror movies or the disturbing novels they originated from.
Stephen King remains king (sorry) in America for his extraordinary catalogue of influential books-turned-movies, including The Shining, Carrie and It. John Ajvide Lindqvist, meanwhile, put Swedish vampire fiction on the map with his hit 2004 novel Let The Right One In and its 2008 film adaptation. Agustina Bazterrica, an Argentinian author who has won awards for ferocious novels like Exquisite Corpse, made an international impact with 2020’s Tender is the Flesh. But in Japan, few horror authors can compete with legendary manga artist Junji Ito — who is now set for a big year on an international scale in 2023.
Taking influence from grotesque manga grandmaster Kazuo Umezu, surrealist artist Salvador Dali, Alien designer HR Giger, and more, Ito is renowned for his uncanny ability to make the skin crawl. His narratives and illustrations in manga classics like Tomie, Uzumaki and Gyo largely avoid generic monster and horror archetypes — instead focusing instead on subversions of everyday life and discomforting, Lovecraftian themes. The result is a reputation that has pervaded the boundaries of language and culture, with his work now widely translated and found in bookstores across the planet.
In 2023, Ito is set to reach new heights as both Netflix’s animated anthology series Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre and Toonami’s animated adaptation of Uzumaki are released in the year’s first quarter. With so much anticipation, there’s never been a better time to get acquainted with the man they call “the master of horror manga” than now. Read on for a primer to get stuck into at the witching hour.
The entry point: The Enigma of Amigara Fault
While it hasn’t yet been announced that this will be included in any of Ito’s forthcoming anime adaptations, The Enigma of Amigara Fault remains the ideal entry point to his work: a powerfully uncomfortable short story that is teeming with existential terror.
Following a powerful earthquake, a series of strange crevasses begin to appear in the cliff faces of a Japanese mountain range. Compelled by the mystery of their human-like shapes, scientists and journalists turn up to investigate, unable to shake the feeling that they are somehow deeply connected to the phenomenon. What are these strange cavities? Where did they come from? And why are so many people drawn to the mystery?
By the end of the story many of those answers are revealed — but it’s the terrifying images and fatalistic implications that leave the deepest mark.
Necessary reading: Uzumaki
The subject of Toonami’s new black-and-white animated series, originally due for release in 2022 but now delayed until 2023, is arguably Ito’s best work.
Over 20 hypnotic episodes, Uzumaki (literally ‘Spiral’ or ‘Swirl’ in English) explores a series of strange occurrences in a small town plagued by mysterious spirals. These manifest in a number of ways. Vortexes and tornadoes appear in the sky. Residents become obsessed with hair curls, coiled objects, and narutomaki (the squiggly pink fish cakes found in ramen). And in one particularly memorable chapter, one student finds a spiral on his back — which eventually becomes a snail’s shell as he undergoes a terrifying transformation.
Already adapted to live-action film as well as a pair of handheld video games in early-00s Japan, Uzumaki’s unsettling images and themes remain potently unnerving some 25 years on from original publication. With American saxophonist Colin Stetson (who composed the scores to contemporary horror cult classics Hereditary and Color Out of Space) on board for the music, expect these chills to be even more pronounced in Toonami’s 2023 take.
The one everyone’s read: Tomie
Tomie was Junji Ito’s debut work back in 1987, and it remains the one with the widest and most enduring cultural impact.
Inspired by the idea of lizards whose tails grow back after being cut off, the series centres on its titular succubus — the seductive Tomie. Recognisable for her billowing hair and beauty spot, her very presence has the effect of driving others to violence and insanity, often resulting in her own death. But she has a tendency for self-resurrection even from the most gruesome of demises— often in hideous new forms.
So far, Tomie has appeared in 20 full manga chapters and nine live-action films in Japan. But in 2023, one of the first chapters of the series (dating back to 1989) will be fittingly brought back to life for Netflix’s new series. “Photograph” concerns a school photography club and the controversial images they distribute to students. Other Tomie chapters like “Mansion”, “Kiss” and “Assassin”, meanwhile, are hinted at in the Japanese Tales of the Macabre poster art.
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The under-appreciated gem: The Hanging Balloons
“I had this image of a corpse hanging from its neck from a giant balloon, floating in the sky,” said Ito in an introductory video to the Japanese Tales of the Macabre series in June 2022.
He’s referring to The Hanging Balloons; the story of a town where a spate of unexpected suicides coincide with the appearance of strange balloons in the sky. It’s an appropriately Ito premise (made all the more evocative by the fact that the balloons themselves resemble severed heads), and one that even the author finds repulsive: “I would be shivering in my futon,” he told Viz last year when asked what he would do it he saw one of the balloons floating outside his own window.
Prior to the current Netflix adaptation, the story appeared in its original manga form in Viz’s 2017 English-language anthology Shiver, nestled alongside eight other short stories. Elsewhere in the tome is arguably Ito’s most famous short, The Long Dream, concerning a female hospital patient who experiences terrifying, drawn-out nightmares as she awaits brain surgery.
The deep cut: Tomb Town
Tomb Town (also known as Street of Gravestones) is a short story concerning a town where the dead turn into gravestones immediately at the point of their passing, causing all kinds of disruption. This strange phenomenon only takes place if the bodies of the dead are left alone (anyone who disturbs them meets an even more disturbing fate).
Of the stories announced for adaptation for Netflix’s forthcoming Japanese Tales of the Macabre series, neither Ice Cream Truck (the story of a series of children who are invited aboard an evil ice cream vendor’s truck) nor Tomb Town have appeared in English translation before. But the latter story has been licensed for Viz’s new Tombs: Junji Ito Story Collection, due for release on 28 March 2023. Western fans, then, will be able to embrace both its print and screen premiere within just a few weeks of each other in the new year.