Junji Ito

From Uzumaki

I think Japanese horror has some advantages for a Western reader. Japan has a huge tradition of horror stories, with its own vast bestiary and mythology. If you are American or European, you have had plenty of exposure to our horror tropes and styles and modes, but Japanese ones are likely to be fresher and rawer. I think this has something to do with the international success of some Japanese horror movies in recent years.

But it’s not just down to new ideas or new slants: as Takashi Miike showed in for instance Audition, there is also a confidence at switching modes or styles, and a willingness to take things further than we are used to. There is no one better at this than Junji Ito, creator of the best, scariest, most memorable horror tales I have seen in any medium. I want to talk about some of his work here.

Gyo is a two-volume story, or series of episodes, starting with a walking fish. As Tom Ewing points out, he extends this start beyond anything you might expect, to a genuinely apocalyptic level, stretching it with a perversely twisted but kind of logical imagination, willing and able to take things past any limits that would trammel lesser talents. This volume runs from sort of silly at the start – I mean, a walking fish is not actually that threatening – through creepy to a couple of dynamite shock-thrill moments (including one that would make one of the most unforgettable audience-scream scenes in the history of movies, if anyone could do it justice) through disturbing and extreme.

The second volume comes with a couple of unrelated bonus stories, by the way, the longer of which (pictured) probably disturbed me and haunts me still, a few years on, more than any other horror tale ever – it starts with some human-shaped tunnels into a mountainside, shapes that some people become convinced are made specifically for them to enter.

His lengthiest single storyline – again, this is episodic in the telling – is Uzumaki, a three-volume set of tales where the supernatural threat is basically abstract, almost conceptual. A town sees various horrible events based around spirals: people turning into snails, spiral holes growing in heads, whirlpools and tornados, bodies deforming, entwined snakes… He finds and plays with more variations on this motif than I would have thought possible, leading up to reconfiguring the whole town and then revealing what is behind these bizarre manifestations. The only other creator it reminds me of is Charles Burns when he delves deepest into body horror.

I also highly recommend the three volumes called Museum of Terror: around 400 pages each, the first two collect stories based on a beautiful young woman called Tomie (right), whose admirers become so obsessed with her that they end up killing her – or trying to, as this seems impossible, at least permanently. The third volume is various short stories, and a few images stay with me powerfully – there were genuinely moments here when I paused for several seconds before turning a page, steeling myself because I knew something really terrifying was surely ahead; and other moments that made me recoil with an “Oh fuck!”

There are lots of positive things to say about Ito generally: he’s original in his basic ideas, the breadth of his imagination is exceptional, he is willing to take things to shocking extremes, he can juggle tone with immense skill, he draws superbly, and he narrates visually with force and careful pacing. But all of this is just in service to one thing: he makes by far the scariest fucking stories I have ever seen, and if you like horror at all, you really need to sample him.