More from Minovsky’s Twitter on Junji Ito’s visit to TCAF 2019:
“Junji Ito: ‘Sleep is very important. Everyone get enough sleep. Many manga artists die young and it’s because they don’t sleep. Your best ideas will come to you when you’re sleeping. Please everyone get some sleep.‘”
“For awhile Junji Ito thought he would be able to balance a career as a dental technician and a manga artist at the same time. He had an understanding boss who adjusted his schedule, but he had stopped consistently sleeping and eating and lost 50 kilograms to keep up.”
“Junji Ito: ‘I’m 55, so the horror I enjoy is classic horror with a dreamy feel.’ The horror that pains him are real life tragedies like ‘terrorism and holocausts.’“
“Junji Ito [was] asked if his wife gives feedback on his stories: ‘Yes. I wouldn’t say that she knows a lot about horror, but she has a very good sense of what horror is.’“
“Junji Ito prefers short stories because he still doesn’t feel he totally knows how to write long form. If possible, he would only do shorts. With long form stories like ‘Hellstar Remina’, he once story-boarded everything before he drew a page. Now he goes ‘wherever the wind blows.’”
“Junji Ito still has a lot of anxiety about how a story will end up.“
“‘Did working as a dental assistant influence your tendency toward body horror?’ Ito laughs.”
“Junji Ito did not realize that people considered his work to be body horror until he read his own Wikipedia page. ‘Yeah, I guess that fits.’“
“While taking anatomy classes in college, Junji Ito considered the human heart to be the scariest thing in the world. The most useful thing he learned as a dental technician was how to modify his artistic tools to make it easier for him to draw like he did with his dental tools.”
“Junji Ito was primarily published in a horror magazine aimed at girls, ‘Halloween’. He would study fashion magazines to use as reference. This character [Fuchi, from “Fashion Model”] was inspired by a striking model he’d seen once that made him pause. ‘She has a fearsome power to get work.’“
“What does environmental horror mean to Junji Ito? ‘I’ve lived for 55 years now. It is clear that climate change is happening. Will we end up like Mars?’“
“Where ‘Gyo’ came from: ‘Sharks are scary. If they came onto land, they would be very scary.’“
“Junji Ito on writing comedic horror: ‘I write down every idea. Sometimes I write down little jokes. It would be a shame not to use them. I like to use comedy as a breather in-between scares. I say that, but I just want to write little jokes.’“
“Junji Ito loves, loves, loves Kazuo Umezu so much.”
“’My wife is scary. Please don’t tell her that. We share a lot of interests, we find the same things scary, there’s a lot of overlap between us.’“
“What scares Junji Ito has changed as he gets older. ‘I used to be scared of other people’s gazes. As I get older the world seems narrower. I’m still scared of cockroaches and things like that.’“
“Does having children change his perspective as a horror creator? ‘It hasn’t made my work kinder or softer. I have to take my kids to cram school and things like that, so I can’t dive as deeply into my work as I used to.’ He jokes, ‘I kind of wish they’d hurry up and grow up.’“
“’What is the scariest thing that ever happened to you in your life?’ Junji Ito: When I was a kid, I was walking with my aunt. There was a dirty old guy walking nearby. My aunt said to me “run” and it scared me a lot. We ran away. He didn’t chase after us or anything.”
“’You’re drawing today with a pen and nib, but is true that you work more digitally now?’ Junji Ito: ‘I’m fully digital these days. Drawing on paper is still much more fun for me.’ He transitioned to digital because the process is so much easier than dealing with screen-tone.”
“’In your work, cats never seem to come to any harm. Why is that?’ Junji Ito: ‘I’ve never actually thought about that. It’s a coincidence. Maybe it is because I don’t want any harm to come to my own cats.’”
“Junji Ito was asked about which of his own stories are his favorites. He answered ‘Amigara Fault’ to loud applause. ‘Hanging Blimp’ and ‘Long Dream’ are also favorites.”
“Junji Ito’s favorite horror films are ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Suspiria’, and classic ‘Hammer Horror’ productions. He first saw ‘The Exorcist’ on TV in sixth grade.”
And finally, “Junji Ito adapted Osamu Dazai’s ‘No Longer Human’ because he was to be published in a magazine for middle aged men. He needed a source material different than what flies in the shoujo magazines he is usually hired to work in, and knew Dazai appealed to an older male demographic.”
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