Junji Ito was born in the Gifu prefecture of Japan in 1963. He was inspired from a young age by both his older sisters’ drawings and the work of Kazuo Umezu. Ito first began writing and drawing manga as a hobby while working as a dental technician in the early 1990s. In 1987, he submitted a short story to Gekkan Halloween that won an honorable mention in the Kazuo Umezu Prize (with Umezu himself as one of the judges). This story was later serialized as Tomie.

In addition to Kazuo Umezu, Ito has cited Hideshi Hino, Shinichi Koga, Yasutaka Tsutsui, and H.P. Lovecraft as being major influences on his work. The universe Ito depicts is cruel and capricious; his characters often find themselves victims of malevolent unnatural circumstances for no discernible reason or punished out of proportion for minor infractions against an unknown and incomprehensible natural order. Some of the recurring themes of Ito’s work include body horror, seemingly ordinary characters who begin to act out of irrational compulsion, the breakdown of society, deep-sea organisms, and the inevitability of one’s demise.

He is married to Ayako Ishiguro (石黒亜矢子) of whom they have two children.