Want to know some of the keys to creating blood-curdling horror stories? Keep reading because manga artist extraordinaire Junji Ito spilled the beans to The Asahi Shimbun.

In Ito’s world, aesthetic and grotesque motifs alternately emerge at dizzying speed. He also explores jealousy and lust, emotions that lead to all sorts of consequences.

Like when a beautiful woman who loves toying with men transforms into a monstrous apparition.

Ito’s works have made waves both in and outside Japan.

His gentle demeanor belies his ability to come up with gruesome tales. 

Born in 1963 in Nakatsugawa, Gifu Prefecture, Ito became a dental technician after graduating from senior high school.

Ito won an honorable mention for “Tomie” when the Kazuo Umezu Prize for rookie cartoon artists was announced in the magazine Monthly Halloween in 1986. He made his debut as a professional manga creator the following year.

Among his representative pieces are “Uzumaki” (Spiral), “Kubitsuri Kikyu” (The Hanging Balloons), “Soichi” and “Shibito no Koiwazurai” (Love Ghost).

Ito was honored with U.S. Eisner Awards on four occasions. They include the English version of “Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection.”

His creations have been translated for readers in more than 30 countries and regions.

He recently shared some of his horror tips with The Asahi Shimbun. Excerpts of the interview follow:

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Question: What do you think is unique about your manga, considering that they center on beautiful yet grotesque stories that have captured the hearts of readers?

Ito: I think what makes my manga so distinctive is that they start with everyday scenes but end up with horrific outcomes. I have pitched many body horror episodes in which humans transform from their physical appearances.

The appeal of the horror genre involves how the contrast between beauty and ugliness can be highlighted. It is an interesting challenge to explore how far I can go in depicting both beautiful and gruesome scenes.

Anatomical knowledge I obtained as a dental technician helps, too. I look at illustrated reference books and anatomical photo collections as part of my research, so I can produce more realistic images.

While working on “Namekuji Shojo” (Slug Girl), I illustrated a girl whose tongue turns into a huge slug. I applied ink to a toothbrush to place droplets on paper to reproduce the slug’s slimy pattern. I also devoted myself to creating sticky gloss and delicate contrasts of light and shade with shiny whiteout.

Q: What was your childhood like?

A: I was born in Gifu Prefecture’s Nakatsugawa and raised in a traditional wooden “machiya” row house. I was scared of the pit toilet outdoors, as well as a dark room at semi-basement level and a tool shed with a photo collection of those injured in war.

Having a gloomy disposition, I was a quiet, downbeat and nervous child with few friends. I grew up reading Kazuo Umezu’s manga that my older sisters liked. I started painting horror doodles with a pencil when I was 5 or 6 years old.

ORIGIN OF ‘TOMIE’

Q: How did your debut title, “Tomie,” which won an honorable mention in the Kazuo Umezu Prize for rookie creators, come about? (The story revolves around Tomie, a beautiful girl who drives men crazy, prompting them to kill her and cut her into pieces. She then comes back from the dead and proliferates.)

A: Though a lizard’s tail regenerates after it is cut off, people disappear once they die. When I was in the third year of junior high school, I was shocked to learn that a classmate had been killed in a traffic accident. I felt that the classmate would surely return to school the following day, and I couldn't help but wonder why he had ceased to exist.

I retraced this mysterious feeling via the revived Tomie. I wanted Tomie to be equipped with a mysterious, anonymous attraction. I thumbed through fashion magazines with gorgeous models for reference, even though I did not know even their names.

Q: Would you date a glamorous woman like Tomie, knowing her propensity to toy with men and her high-handed personality?

A: Dating her for a brief moment probably would be fine, but honestly, I prefer a woman with a comforting charm.

Q: Your creations are currently highly sought after outside Japan. Have you ever seen your titles selling poorly?

A: At the time the comic book “Chikashitsu” (Basement) was released under the “Tomie” series (in 1990), I found that the publication remained unsold at a bookstore in Nagoya.

Being curious, I could not help but visit the outlet again and again. The “Tomie” series gradually became less popular in a readers’ poll published in a monthly horror manga magazine, so I was prepared to finally bring an end to the serialized work.

I once added the title “Final” to a rough drawing to be sent to an editor. But I later changed my mind and started committing myself to crafting another single-episode manga apart from “Tomie.”

Since I love short stories, I felt encouraged and was able to make a fresh start on my career path.

Q: Aside from “Tomie,” which made a comeback afterward, can you recall how you came up with the idea for the long story “Spiral,” in which townspeople are obsessed with a range of spiral patterns in bizarre phenomena?

A: I spent my childhood in a row house so I initially weighed creating a weird story concerning people living in a row residence as long as the Great Wall of China.

But then I had second thoughts and wanted to find a far more intriguing way of depicting a row house. It was then that I hit upon the theme of spiral: combining a terrifyingly long row home with spiral patterns. I checked all sorts of books on spiral designs. That allowed me to present disasters marked by various spiral patterns in each story, such as the snail, the three semicircular canals and the curly hairstyle.

EXHAUSTED BY INNER EXPLORATION

Q: Will you share how you hit upon ideas for horror stories?

A: I jot down a note as soon as something comes to mind. I write down fragmentary storylines and concepts or draw sketches at times. It becomes problematic when I run out of ideas.

I sometimes realize some creations resemble those I previously worked on. I occasionally get stuck after finding a story’s flow is unnatural. On one occasion I eventually discovered a solution after racking my brains until I was so exhausted I had to take a bath.

Q: What are you most afraid of now, given all the hardships you’ve been through?

A: I am afraid of dying. On top of that, I had scopophobia during my younger days. What is consistent then and now is that I am afraid of myself. I hate seeing objectively what I look like through recorded videos and my recorded voice.

“Love Ghost” shows the horrors of the doppelganger, while “The Hanging Balloons” embodies how fearful it would be if one was chased by a balloon with one’s own face in the sky.

Thinking of who I am from the standpoint of others is frightful, in the face of an unfathomed, incomprehensible feeling of creepiness.

Q: Given your gentle nature, how do you feel about making spine-chilling horror manga?

A: Maybe I was already a gentleman as a child. I was even considered to be “the least disgusting boy in our class.” But in reality, I had something sordid in my mind. I have wholly released that emotion through my manga so I am clean in my mind now, too.

Q: What is your daily routine like?

A: I awake at 9 a.m. and go to bed around 2 a.m. I have shifted to digitization in my manga creation process, but I still paint on the screen of a liquid-crystal graphics tablet as delicately as on a sheet of paper.

Due to that, I have terrible lumbago. I feel the drawings done by my wife (painter and picture book artist Ayako Ishiguro) are quite good. Her style is different from mine. I have two daughters. I am permissive as a father.

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The “Junji Ito Exhibition: Enchantment” runs at the Setagaya Literary Museum in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward through Sept. 1.

The venue is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Last admission is at 5:30 p.m.

The Setagaya Literary Museum is closed on Mondays. If a Monday is a holiday, the facility will be closed the following Tuesday.

The admission fee for adults is 1,000 yen ($6.50) and 600 yen for those aged 65 or older, as well as college and high school students. Tickets for children of elementary and junior high school age cost 300 yen.

The exhibition was organized by the Setagaya Arts Foundation and the Setagaya Literary Museum. The Asahi Shimbun is a sponsor.

The special display will also be held at the Itami City Museum of Art, History and Culture in Itami, Hyogo Prefecture, between Oct. 11 and Dec. 22.

For more details, visit the exhibition’s official website in Japanese at (https://jhorrorpj.exhibit.jp/jiee/).