I’ve recently been reading Junji Ito’s autobiography, Uncanny: The Origins of Fear. It’s been a really illuminating read. If you’re a fan of his horror manga and want to find out more about him and his creative process, I highly recommend it.

One fact that I discovered while reading the book has really stuck with me. It’s about Junji Ito’s editor, Toshiyasu Harada. I hadn’t known anything about him until I picked up the book. In the book Ito tells a story about submitting a story to Harada that included a character with very long neck that was bullied for possessing this physical characteristic.

“When he saw it*, Harada told me not to draw it in a way that punched down. He wanted to convey to me that it didn’t matter if the characters and story were fiction, it wasn’t right to include discrimination and abuse without justification.” – Junji Ito, Uncanny: The Origins of Fear

And Junji Ito didn’t fight his editor, he listened to him and took his input – for years. I believe that Harada’s moral influence is an important reason as to why Junji Ito’s work has resonated with so many people and stuck around for so long. Because his stories punch up and not down, and don’t have ableist messaging, they’ve endured in the public imagination and acquired a steady base of fans.

I think it’s honestly really cool to learn about the people behind the scenes who help shape the art that we love. And it’s lovely to see the obvious respect Ito has for his editor. A good relationship between an editor and an author is symbiotic like that; two creative minds work together to try and present the best possible art to the world. Art that doesn’t perpetuate tired systems of bigotry.

Learning about this kind of stuff makes me fall in love with writing all over again.

* the submitted manga concept