About
Junji Ito (Japanese: 伊藤 潤二 Hepburn: Itō Junji, born July 31, 1963) is a Japanese horror mangaka. Some of his most notable works include The Enigma of Amigara Fault, daily line Tomie, a series chronicling an immortal girl who drives her stricken admirers to madness; Uzumaki, a three-volume series about a town obsessed with spirals; and Gyo, a two-volume story where fish are controlled by a strain of sentient bacteria called "the death stench." His other works are Itou Junji Kyoufu Manga Collection, a collection of different short stories including a series of stories named Souichi's Journal of Delights, and Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu, a self-parody about him and his wife living in a house with two cats. In 2006, Junji married Ishiguro Ayako (石黒亜矢子), a picture book artist. As of 2013, they have two children

He was inspired from a young age by both his older sisters' drawings and the work of Kazuo Umezu. Ito first began writing and drawing manga as a hobby while working as a dental technician in the early 1990s. In 1987, he submitted a short story to Gekkan Halloween that won an honorable mention in the Kazuo Umezu Prize (with Umezu himself as one of the judges). This story was later serialized as Tomie.

In addition to Kazuo Umezu, Ito has cited Hideshi Hino, Shinichi Koga, Yasutaka Tsutsui, and H.P. Lovecraft as being major influences on his work. The universe Ito depicts is 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. Some of the recurring themes of Ito's work include body horror, seemingly ordinary characters who begin to act out of irrational compulsion, the breakdown of society, deep-sea organisms, and the inevitability of one's demise.

Film director Guillermo del Toro cited on his official Twitter account that Ito was originally a collaborator for the video game Silent Hills, of which both Del Toro and game designer Hideo Kojima were the main directors; however, a year after its announcement the project was canceled by Konami, the IP's owner. Ito and Del Toro would later lend their likenesses to Kojima's next project, Death Stranding.

In 2019, Ito received an Eisner Award for his manga adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Wikipedia



Extra
► Cat Diary (Junji does comedy!)
► The Enigma of Amigara Fault
► The Fashion Model
► The Thing That Drifted Ashore
► Tomie (of course)