ITO Junji was born July 31, 1963 in Gifu-ken, Japan. As a child, he was fascinated by the manga of UMEZU Kazuo, possibly Japan's most influential horror manga-ka.
In 1987, while working as a dental technician, Ito submitted a short story to SONORAMA Asahi's shojo horror manga magazine Gekkan Halloween ("Monthly Haloween"), and won an honorable mention in their "Kazuo Umezu Award' (judged by a panel including Umezu himself). This was the beginning of his manga career, which has produced many works with a stong sense of horror and the absurd, including multiple volumes of the Tomie series, about an immortal, regenerating girl whose beauty drives men mad. His work has appeared in horror magazines, such as Gekkan Haloween and Nemurenu Yoru no Kimyo na Hanashi ("Strange Tales of Sleepless Nights"), and mainstream publications such as Shogakukan's Weekly Big Spirits.
Ito's influences include manga artists UMEZU Kazuo, HINO Hideshi and FURUKA Shinichi, sci-fi author TSUTSUI Yasutaka, and American horror author H.P. Lovecraft.
Shamelessly bastardized from the "About The Author" found in the back of Uzumaki.