Similar & Related Artists

*Ordered Alphabetically
Note: This list may also include endorsements and recommendations by Junji Ito.
== Junji Ito's Influences & Inspirations ==
=== Hideshi Hino ===
日野 日出志
Hideshi Hino (b. 1946) had his first manga published in 1967. In 1970, he released Zoroku’s Strange Disease (Zoroku no Kibyo), which set him on course as a horror manga artist. Hideshi Hino’s prolific creation of work exploring horror and the emotions has earned him a cult following. He continues to experiment with new forms of expression and has recently released a picture book. Throughout the years, he has published over 200 works, including 'Hell Baby' 『地獄少女』, 'Hino Horrors', 'Panorama of Hell' 『地獄変』, 'The Bug Boy' 『毒虫小僧』 and 'The Red Snake' 『赤い蛇』. He also wrote and directed two entries in the Guinea Pig series of horror films: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985) 『ギニーピッグ2 血肉の華』, and Mermaid in a Manhole (1988) 『ザ・ギニーピッグ マンホールの中の人魚』.
Hideshi Hino was born in Qiqihar to Japanese immigrant workers in Japanese-occupied Northeast China just when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II to the invading Soviet forces. His family escaped to Japan fearing retribution from Chinese civilians, so his town gathered up everybody and started to make their move to the remaining internationally governed harbors. Hino has claimed that he was nearly killed en route to Japan by his fellow townspeople during the evacuation from China. Some of his manga have been based on his life and its events; for example, his grandfather was a Yakuza and his father used to be a pig farmer with a spider tattoo on his back. Hino has depicted these in his manga many times (as in Panorama of Hell).
*Twitter - https://twitter.com/hino_hideshi
*Official Website - https://hinohideshi.com/
=== Shinichi Koga ===
古賀 新一
A Japanese horror manga artist whose representative work is 'Eko Eko Azarak' 『エコエコアザラク』, which has been adapted into a live action film series with six films, two Japanese television drama series and an original video animation. Born Koga Shinsaku ( 古賀申策 ) in Fukuoka in 1936. Started his horror manga career in 1958 in Tokyo and authors 46 series. Passed away on March 1st 2018 due to illness at the age of 81.
=== Shigeru Mizuki ===
水木しげる
Shigeru Mizuki was one of Japan's most important manga artists and historian, famous for his series about yokai such as 'Gegege no Kitaro' 『ゲゲゲの鬼太郎』, which has been adapted into anime over 6 times, and gets a new anime remake every 11 years since the extremely popular 3rd series. He researched Youkai myths from Japan, and collected them in 'Youkai Dictionaries', which also featured foreign monsters that he labeled as Foreign Youkai, this combined with the success of the gegege no kitaro manga and anime, helped make youkai popular again. He also made manga about war, based on his experiences in war.
His works often feature social commentary and satire, crime, inspirations from tales of youkai, monsters, spirits and strange events.
===H.P. Lovecraft ===
ハワード・フィリップス・ラヴクラフト
Was an American writer of weird fiction and horror fiction, who is Universally considered to be the father of modern horror. Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty at the age of 46, but is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. Among his most celebrated tales are "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Rats in the Walls", At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time. His writings are the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which has inspired a large body of pastiches, games, music and other media drawing on Lovecraft's characters, setting and themes, constituting a wider subgenre known as Lovecraftian horror.
=== Yasutaka Tsutsui ===
筒井 康隆
Multiple-award winning author, sometime actor and scenarist, whose works of Absurdist SF and commentary on the Media Landscape made him one of the Big Three of Japanese sf in the twentieth century, alongside Shinichi Hoshi and Sakyō Komatsu. He is best understood first as Japan's answer to the New Wave of the 1960s and 1970s; his later works form the basis of Japan's sf postmodernism.
*Official Website - https://web.archive.org/web/20190529043900/http://www.jali.or.jp:80/tti/en/index.htm
*SF Encyclopedia - http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/tsutsui_yasutaka
=== Kazuo Umezz ===
楳図 かずお
An author of Japanese horror and other manga, as well as a musician and actor, Junji Ito's primary inspiration and sensei. He debuted as a book manga artist in 1955, and released works in "Weekly Shonen Sunday" 『週刊少年サンデー』 and other works. Representative works include 'Drifting Classroom' 『漂流教室』, 'Makoto-chan' 『まことちゃん』, and 'My Name is Shingo'『わたしは真悟』. Works range from horror to science fiction, gag, historical drama, boys, girls, and youth, but generally known for leading horror manga.
*Official Website - http://umezz.com/
*Kazuo Umezu-Literature and Criticism - http://hangyo.sakura.ne.jp/umezz/index.htm
*Umezz News - https://umezznews.net/
===Famous Artists===
====Salvador Dali====
Salvador Dalí, in full Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domenech, (born May 11, 1904, Figueras, Spain—died January 23, 1989, Figueras), Spanish Surrealist painter and printmaker, influential for his explorations of subconscious imagery. Dalí's artistic repertoire included painting, graphic arts, film, sculpture, design and photography, at times in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays and criticism. Major themes in his work include dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science and his closest personal relationships. To the dismay of those who held his work in high regard, and to the irritation of his critics, his eccentric and ostentatious public behavior often drew more attention than his artwork.
*Salvador Dalí at the Encyclopædia Britannica
====H. R. Giger====
Hans Ruedi Giger (/ˈɡiːɡər/ GHEE-gər; German: [ˈɡiːɡər]; 5 February 1940 – 12 May 2014) was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrush images of humans and machines connected in cold biomechanical relationships. Giger later abandoned airbrush for pastels, markers and ink. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for the visual design of Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien. His work is on permanent display at the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyères. His style has been adapted to many forms of media, including record album covers, furniture and tattoos.
*Official Website
====Johannes Vermeer====
Johannes Vermeer (in Dutch, [vərˈmeːr]; in English, /vɜːrˈmɛər/ or /vɜːrˈmɪər/ vur-MEER, see below; October 1632 – December 1675), original name Jan Vermeer van Delft, was a Dutch Baroque Period[3] painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. Nonetheless, he produced relatively few paintings and evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death.
*Essential Vermeer, website dedicated to Johannes Vermeer
*Johannes Vermeer in the Encyclopædia Britannica
===Authors of works adapted by Junji Ito===
====Mary Shelley====
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (UK: /ˈwʊlstənkrɑːft/, US: /-kræft/; née Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft.
Junji Ito adapted Frankenstein, published in 1994.
*Works by Mary Shelley at Project Gutenberg
==== Edogawa Ranpo====
江戸川 乱歩
Was a Japanese author and critic who played a major role in the development of Japanese mystery fiction. Many of his novels involve the detective hero Kogoro Akechi, who in later books was the leader of a group of boy detectives known as the "Boy Detectives Club" (少年探偵団, Shōnen tantei dan). Ranpo was an admirer of Western mystery writers, and especially of Edgar Allan Poe. His pen name is a rendering of Poe's name.
Junji Ito adapted The Human Chair, published in 2007 and An Unearthly Love (also known as "A Brute's Love" or "The Love of the Brute"), published in 2008.
*Edogawa Ranpo at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
==== Robert Hichens====
Robert Hichens (Robert Smythe Hichens, 14 November 1864 – 20 July 1950) was an English journalist, novelist, music lyricist, short story writer, music critic and collaborated on successful plays. He is best remembered as a satirist of the "Naughty Nineties".
Junji Ito adapted "How Love Came to Professor Guildea" as "How Love Came to Professor Kirida", published in 2007.
*Works by Robert Hichens at Project Gutenberg
====Osamu Dazai====
太宰 治
Osamu Dazai (太宰 治, Dazai Osamu, June 19, 1909 – June 13, 1948) was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan. A number of his most popular works, such as The Setting Sun (Shayō) and No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku), are considered modern-day classics in Japan. With a semi-autobiographical style and transparency into his personal life, Dazai's stories have intrigued the minds of many readers.
Junji Ito adapted No Longer Human, published in 2017.
===Collaborators===
====Hirokatsu Kihara & Ichiro Nakayama====
木原浩勝 & 中山市朗
Authors of "Shinmimibukuro" (新耳袋), a series of contemporary ghost stories. Junji Ito adapted stories from this series into Mimi's Ghost Stories (Mimi no Kaidan, ミミの怪談).
Junji Ito also collaborated with Hirokatsu Kihara on Kai, Sasu (怪、刺す).
====Nagasaki Takashi====
Writer of Rasputin the Patriot (憂国のラスプーチン, Yuukoku no Rasputin), the Kafkaesque autobiography of a diplomat who compares himself to Grigori Rasputin, and what happens after he gets caught up in a political purge during the early 2000s, illustrated by Junji Ito.
====Kaoru Sawada====
Wrote two novelizations of works by Junji Ito, Gravetown (墓標の町, Bohyou no Machi) and Gentle Goodbye (緩やかな別れ, Yuruyaka na Wakare).
== Kanako Inuki ==
犬木 加奈子
She has been called the "Queen of the Horror Manga". She began to publish in the 1990s boom in the horror genre in the Japanese manga market, becoming one of the leading authors. Her work is characterized by a rich style of terror, influenced by folklore, tradition and the moralizing ironic humor. Debuted in "Shojo Friend - Kazuo Umezu Special Issue"『少女フレンド・楳図かずお特集号』 in 1987 with「おるすばん」
*Twitter - https://twitter.com/inukikanako1121
== Shintaro Kago ==
駕籠 真太郎
A Japanese guro manga artist. He debuted in 1988 on the magazine COMIC BOX. Shintaro Kago's style has been called "fashionable paranoia". He has been published in several adult manga magazines, gaining him considerable popularity. Many of his manga have strongly satirical overtones, and deal with grotesque subjects such as extreme sex, scatology and body modification. He has also written Sci-Fi non-guro manga, most notably Super-Conductive Brains Parataxis (超伝脳パラタクシス Choutennou Paratakushisu) for Weekly Young Jump. Many of his shorts are experimental and bizarre. He frequently breaks the fourth wall, and he likes to play with the page layout in extreme ways, mostly for comedic effect.
*Official Website - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
*Blog - https://kagosin.exblog.jp/
== Suehiro Maruo ==
丸尾 末広
A Japanese manga artist, illustrator, and painter, often mistaken for Junji Ito. Many of Maruo's illustrations depict graphic sex and violence and are therefore referred to as contemporary muzan-e (a subset of Japanese ukiyo-e depicting violence or other atrocities.) Maruo's nightmarish manga fall into the Japanese category of "erotic grotesque" (エログロ; "ero-guro"). The stories often take place in the early years of Showa Era Japan. Maruo also has a fascination with human oddities, deformities, birth defects, and "circus freaks." Many such characters figure prominently in his stories and are sometimes the primary subjects of his illustrations. Though most prominently known for his work as a manga artist, Maruo has also produced illustrations for concert posters, CD Jackets, magazines, novels, and various other media. Some of his characters have been made into figures as well. Though relatively few of Maruo's manga have been published outside Japan, his work enjoys a cult following abroad.
*Official Website - http://www.maruojigoku.com/
*Blog - https://suehiromaruo.tumblr.com/
*Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/maruosuehiro/
== Noroi Michiru ==
呪みちる
Was influenced by Hino Hideshi's Zouroku no Kibyou. College dropout. Debuted as a gag mangaka, but after publishing "Tokei Yashiki no Shoujo" in 1998 he started writing horror manga instead. He has been writing short horror comics mainly for girls' horror magazines and ladies' comic magazines.
*Blog - http://noroimichiru2011v.blog.fc2.com/
== Daijiro Morohoshi ==
諸星 大二郎
Japanese manga artist. He grew up in Adachi-ku, Tokyo. He is well known for SF comics, allegorical comics and horror/mystery comics based on pseudohistory and folklore. The indirect influence by Cthulhu Mythos also appears here and there in his works. He debuted as a manga artist when his submitted piece was published in the magazine COM in 1970. In 1974, he attracted attention by receiving two best-new-artist-awards from youth-oriented magazines Big Comic and Weekly Shonen Jump. He then continued to rapidly release many unique pieces--such as the Mud Men series, Ankoku Shinwa, the Yokai Hunter series, the Shiori to Shimiko series--that often took references from ancient history and folklore, and giving readers a peculiar aftertaste. He received Grand Prize of the 4th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in the year 2000 for Saiyu Yoenden (The Monkey King and other Chinese Legends), and was chosen as recipient of the Award from the Ministry of Education in the Art Encouragement Prizes in 2014. His manga Yokai Hunter was featured in Junji Ito Exposition Enchantment as one of the manga that influenced Itohttps://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fi-went-to-the-junji-ito-exhibit-in-japan-yesterday-v0-iye6r4j6kpyc1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D4032%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dac63534ed4fa53f7ab554143276c115877a57e71
*Daijiro Moroshi Museum Archive - https://web.archive.org/web/20170313181043/http://book.geocities.jp/yasukenyan/
*Article - http://goinjapanesque.com/14770/
== Tsunezo Murotani ==
ムロタニツネ象
Tsunezo Murotani (b. 1934) made his debut in 1953 with historical manga, and went on to primarily produce historical manga and ‘gag’ (humorous/slapstick) manga. With the 1959 release of a thriller about a man who became a fly (Fly-Man from Hell), he made his first foray into horror manga. In 1967, he released his best-known work, Hell Boy (Jigoku-kun), which is still in print today and has remained a favourite in Japan for generations.
*Public Works - https://www.mangaz.com/authors/detail/1156
== Go Nagai ==
永井潔
A Japanese manga artist and a prolific author of science fiction, fantasy, horror and erotica. He made his professional debut in 1967 with Meakashi Polikichi, but is best known for creating popular 1970s manga and anime series such as Cutie Honey, Devilman and Mazinger Z. He is credited with creating the super robot genre and for designing the first mecha robots piloted by a user from within a cockpit with Mazinger Z, and for pioneering the magical girl genre with Cutie Honey, the post-apocalyptic manga/anime genre with Violence Jack, and the ecchi genre with Harenchi Gakuen. In 2005, he became a Character Design professor at the Osaka University of Arts. He has been a member of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize's nominating committee since 2009.
*http://old.sfwj.jp/member/NAGAI-GO.e.html
*http://www.mazingerz.com/GO.html
*http://www.cjas.org/~bchow/gonagai/
== Masaaki Nakayama ==
中山昌亮
A horror manga artist, and author of the series Fuan no Tane (Seeds of Anxiety) and PTSD Radio.
*Twitter - https://twitter.com/ahogamirubutan3
*Blog - https://ameblo.jp/m-nakayama1966/
== Ochazuke Nori ==
御茶漬海苔
Ochazukenori (b. 1960) began creating manga as a child, and made his professional debut in 1980. Initially focusing on sci-fi manga, Ochazukenori first ventured into horror with The Horror Mansion (Zangekikan). He is known for his depictions of splatter and gore, and for psychothriller narratives that portray the hidden madness lurking in the human psyche. Ochazukenori has also created films based on his manga, including The Blinds (Blaindo) and The Horror Mansion (Zangekikan). Other manga titles include Mayoko-chan, TVO and Dictionary of Darkness (Ankoku Jiten).
*Twitter - https://twitter.com/ochazuke0412
*Official Website - http://ochazukenori.nobu-naga.net/
== Kawashima Norikazu ==
 川島のりかず
Real name Hanichi Kawashima (かわしま はんいち), this mysterious mangaka appeared and disappeared from the long-established horror manga publishing company Hibari Shobo (ひばり書房) where they produced 19 horror comics from 1983 to 1988 notably "Her Frankenstein" (フランケンシュタインの男) and Junior High School Murder Case (中学生殺人事件). "Her Frankenstein" was re-printed in Japan in 2022 with a recommendation by Junji Ito.
== Katsuhiro Otomo ==
大友 克洋
A Japanese manga artist, screenwriter and film director. He is best known as the creator of the manga Akira and its animated film adaptation. Akira was instrumental in the surge in popularity of manga outside Japan, especially in the United States. The manga has won several awards, including the Kodansha Manga and Harvey Awards. 
== Hiyodori Sachiko ==
ひよどり祥子
Also known as Uguisu Sachiko (うぐいす 祥子). She made her debut in "petit princess"『プチプリンセス』 with a gag comic "Tokumei joshikō nama Sachiko"『特命女子高生サチコ』. After publishing funny comics in the magazine "Mystery Bonita" 『ミステリーボニータ』, she began serializing horror comics in the magazine "Horror M" 『ホラーM』.
*Blog - http://blog.livedoor.jp/uguisu_sachiko/
== Yōsuke Takahashi ==
高橋 葉介
A prolific Japanese horror manga artist who is known for his works Mugen Shinshi 『夢幻紳士』, his representative work about Detective stories in early Showa era, and Gakkō no Kaidan 『学校怪談』, a collection of horror stories. He made his professional manga debut in 1977, and has had stories published in the manga anthology series Petit Apple Pie 『プチアップル・パイ』.
*Media Arts Database (Archive) -https://web.archive.org/web/20160305102601/http://mediaarts-db.jp/mg/authorities/4023
== Gou Tanabe ==
田邊剛
A Japanese manga artist most known for adapting the literary works of authors H.P.Lovecraft, Anton Chekhov, and San'yūtei Enchō.
*Dark Horse Website - https://digital.darkhorse.com/contributors/4146/gou-tanabe
*Penguin Random House Website - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2147097/gou-tanabe
== Hideo Yamamoto ==
山本英夫
A Japanese manga artist best known for the manga series Ichi the Killer (which was adapted into a live-action film in 2001 by Takashi Miike) and the series, Homunculus. Recurring themes in his manga are crime, sexual deviations, and the human mind.
*Media Arts Database - https://web.archive.org/web/20160304053243/http://mediaarts-db.jp/mg/authorities/5524