Reading Junji Ito’s ‘Army of One’ in the Age of Isolation

A lesson in connection, horror, and fishing wire.

I haven’t read manga in a long time.

My early teen years were spent feverishly tearing through shōjo series, such as Fruits Basket and Tokyo Mew Mew, all borrowed from my school’s library. I remember proudly showing my aunt how to read them – “you go from right to left…” - when I visited for dinner a few times.

But those dappled panels couldn’t be further from Junji Ito’s work.

Disturbing and unflinching, Ito crafts horror that explores simple concepts – beauty versus bloody mutilation, deep fascination with the unknown, the grimly unexplainable in the midst of normality.

My first experience of reading Junji Ito was through one of his short stories: The Enigma of Amigara Fault. Much like the ill-fated victims urged to find the person-shaped hole in the mountain ‘made for them’, drunk on compulsion and folding themselves into moaning, fleshy masses – I was entranced.

In the vein of most psychological horror, Ito’s stories unwrap themselves like an unwelcome present. There’s a cold, unnerving weight under each detail revealed: a dark shape at the corner of a panel, the shaking hands of a previously infallible neighbour.