Junji Ito and the Spiral Into Horror
Junji Ito is an award-winning Japanese manga creator and cult favorite writer and artist in the horror genre who has been gaining a lot of international renown and mainstream popularity these last few years, winning over audiences all over the globe, even from those who wouldn’t normally read manga.
Influenced by the great Japanese horror creators before him like Kazuo Umezu and Hideshi Hino, and also western influences such as HP Lovecraft, HR Giger, and Salvador Dali, Junji Ito would go on to create some of the most horrific nightmarish images and stories ever committed to ink and paper! He is a master of body horror, suspense and other disturbing supernatural phenomena but at the same time he perfectly captures the ordinary fears and anxiety of everyday people — be it about struggling with uncontrollable acne or dealing with the inevitability of death.
Uzumaki is probably his most famous work, first published from 1998–1999, containing some of his most iconic imagery that has become synonymous with his name. The multi-chapter story revolves around a small town called Kurouzu-Cho where high school student Kirie and her recluse boyfriend Shuichi begin to witness strange occurrences that seem to be related to a particular pattern: the spiral.
The citizens themselves, one way or another, become paranoid or obsessed about spirals. For example, Shuichi’s parents both die from suicide under the influence of this spiral curse. His father’s body is found impossibly contorted into a spiral shape inside a circular coffin and his mother stabs herself in the ear after discovering that the cochlea inside the human ear is the shape of a spiral.
Other cases of spiral obsessions or strange happenings includes Kirie’s own hair being possessed by deadly spiral curls that hypnotizes who ever sees it; a slowpoke of a student with a growing spiral on his back eventually turning into a human-sized snail, and an attractive classmate with a scar on her forehead that grows into a spiral vortex which ends up completely engulfing her like an imploding black hole.
By the story’s end, time itself is affected by the spiral curse and the whole town eventually succumbs to the evil of the spiral. Kirie and Shuichi, the last remaining survivors of this mysterious calamity, accept the futility of their hopeless situation and decide to embrace until their bodies have wrapped each other like a twisted spiral.
The Meaning of the Spiral
Junji Ito’s inspiration to use the spiral pattern in Uzumaki came from a desire to subvert the usual cheerful representation of spirals in media which he would often see marked on character’s cheeks in Japanese comedy cartoons. Ito wanted to draw it in a different way that could be used in horror, inspired by the atmospheric work of HP Lovecraft, being taunted and terrorized by something so abstract and mysterious.
One Uzbekistani artist and art curator described the spiral in art as…
“…the rhythm of life. It characterizes the creative vital force of human and society, a symbol of unity of generations, spiritual and moral growth of man. It means the life order, the symbol of continuity, development, motion, and journey into the unknown.”
Vincent van Gogh’s famous “Starry Night” painting, with its surreal swirling night sky and flame-like cypress tree in the foreground, seems to make this connection between life and death, heaven and earth, and finite and the infinite. The cypress tree, for example, traditionally symbolizes death, but for van Gogh death was not ominous at all.
In a letter he wrote to his brother, he said: “Looking at the stars always makes me dream… Shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.”
Van Gogh painted the Starry Night from memory while confined in an asylum for his deteriorating mental health. The following year, he died from a gun shot he inflicted on himself two days earlier.
For Junji Ito, spirals might very well be symbolic of infinity, as he revealed in an interview. This is definitely reflected in the eternal nature of the spiral curse in the last pages of Uzumaki, with the constant cycle of destruction and reconstruction, death and rebirth.
Yes, the spiral pattern is mysterious, abstract and even terrifying, but it is something intricately tied to human existence, whether in life or in death. The fictional horror of Uzumaki’s spirals and its effect on the townspeople has its own reflection in our sometimes dreadful reality, where mental illness affects one in four people in their lifetime, seizing individuals in their own kind of spiral.
The Spiral of Depression
Junji Ito’s stories typically begin with the ordinary but are quick to descend into madness of a supernatural and monstrous kind, ending too often with mysteries left unresolved. From the opening chapters of Uzumaki to its bittersweet conclusion, there is always a sense of dread, both physically and existentially. The character of Shuichi particularly reflects the dreadful effect the spiral has upon the people’s emotions and behaviors.
After the death of his father in Chapter 1, Shuichi gradually looks more and more starved and sleep deprived with his hair growing shaggier and longer, his cheekbones becoming more pronounced from malnutrition, and dark swollen circles have formed under his eyes due to insomnia. Throughout the story, he seems to be in a constant state of fear and paranoia, showing erratic manic behavior and, of course, the signs of depression.
According to the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or DSM-5 for short), physical symptoms for depression include:
- tiredness, exhaustion, lack of energy
- disturbed sleep patterns
- moving or speaking more slowly
- restlessness and agitation
- changes in appetite and weight
- and lack of self-care
Psychological symptoms include:
- persistent low mood or sadness
- loss of interest or enjoyment of life
- emotional numbness
- feeling hopeless or helpless
- constantly anxious or worried
- irritable and intolerant of others
- low self-esteem
- indecisiveness
- and lack of motivation
We can clearly see that Shuichi has many of the traits and symptoms of depression which leads him to withdrawal and isolation from friends and society itself. In the later chapters, Shuichi eventually enters a catatonic state, obsessively repeating the phrase: “this town is going mad.”
In the 21st century, depression has become an epidemic. Over 300 million people are suffering worldwide, making depression the leading cause of ill health. And it’s no longer a phenomenon that happens in mid-life, at any age depression can hit with the average age for the first onset of depression happening in the early teens.
Depression is very much like a spiral, like falling into a black hole that sucks the joy out of living and leaves you unable to function normally. It’s a constant experience of feeling hopeless, helpless and worthless, which can persist for weeks, months or years, interfering with daily life; affecting how you feel on the inside and how you live your life on the outside.
Psychologists and mental health professionals have often described depression as a downward spiral, with thoughts, emotions and behaviors spreading and reinforcing each other. This spiral can come in different forms.
There’s the Thought/Emotion Spiral where you’re in the grip of negative thoughts, which sends your emotions plummeting. This has the effect of making your thinking even bleaker and your mood sinks lower as a result.
There’s the Social Spiral. You feel down so you don’t go out much, so now there’s nothing distracting you from your low mood and you’re less likely to reach out for support and you end up feeling even more down.
Then there’s the Physical Spiral where you’re exhausted, your body hurts and this makes you feel low and sluggish. You can’t summon up the energy to do anything physical to give yourself an endorphin lift so your mood spirals further down.
And lastly there’s the Pessimistic Spiral. You’re expecting the worst to happen. As a result you believe that whatever you do won’t make much difference to the situation, so you give up. You feel helpless and sink into despair. Like Shuichi, you find yourself at the bottom of the pit, at the very end of the spiral, where time has just stopped, and the feeling of dread and hopelessness is eternal.
The Upward Spiral to Happiness
The good news is, a spiral doesn’t have to only go in one direction. Thankfully, there can also be an upward spiral, that can lift you out of depression and raise the quality of your life with happiness and fulfillment. According to positive psychology — a fairly new branch of psychology that cultivates happiness, emotional development, and personal growth — depression can be overcome by increasing positive emotions in order to trigger the upward spiral and get onto the path of flourishing. So it happens, that when you feel good, things are more likely to go well.
A few ways to increase positivity in our emotions and mental well-being includes:
- practicing gratitude
- savoring the moment
- acts of kindness
- connecting with loved ones
- developing your strengths
- mindfulness meditation
- physical activity
- and generating optimism
The practice of gratitude, for example, produces serotonin, which leads to an improved mood, which can help motivate you to further positive action. This can trigger the upward spiral out of depression.
In the end, instead of a spiral downfall into a life of feeling empty, through positive psychology we can be lifted and carried by the upward spiral that can lead us to a life of happiness, meaning and purpose.
Before Junji Ito became a manga creator, he worked in dentistry. One day, he had to make the fateful decision to either continue in his promising career as a dental technician, or fully embrace his awesome talents as a horror manga artist and storyteller. Thankfully for us, he chose to pursue his passion for writing and illustrating original comics, and, as one critic put it, traded the real life horror of dentistry for that of horror fiction. He found his happiness, meaning and purpose, and so can we.
Whenever a spiral or powerful mysterious force enters into our life, not unlike the one that came upon the town of Kurouzu-Cho, it’s up to each individual how that event will shape us. If we let negativity get the better of us, we can end up looking like this girl, completely drained and consumed until nothing is left. Or, with a little positivity, we can truly overcome any challenge and fulfill our fullest potential.
“The spiral is the rhythm of life. It characterizes the creative vital force of human and society, a symbol of unity of generations, spiritual and moral growth of man. It means the life order, the symbol of continuity, development, motion, and journey into the unknown.” (Shakhnoza Karimbabaeva)
