Hideo Kojima and Junji Ito reveal which books and manga shaped them as creators

Death Stranding and former Metal Gear Solid series director Hideo Kojima and iconic horror manga artist Junji Ito recently met up to share their influences, particularly the manga and books that had a formative impact on them as creators. The video and text interview were featured on Japanese news site AERA dot. 

Fans will probably be aware that Kojima and Ito have known each other for a while. They were both going to be working on Silent Hills (the game that got the infamous P.T. demo) alongside Guillermo Del Toro, however the project was later scrapped (Source: Del Toro’s X account). Eagle-eyed players may also have noticed Ito’s cameo in Kojima’s Death Stranding, and seen occasional tweets from the veteran game director praising Ito’s manga. In the video interview, Kojima reveals that the two have known each other for a long time, recalling that he met Ito not long after he moved to Tokyo after the 1995 Kobe Earthquake.  

Both Ito and Kojima were born in 1963 and thus watched many of the same TV series as children, such as Ultraman and Kamen Rider. The discussion quickly switched to the books that had a significant impact on them growing up. Kojima mentions that discovering famous Japanese novelist Kobo Abe in junior high school had a profound impact on him. “What particularly inspired me was The Woman in the Dunes,” he adds, referencing Abe’s well-known 1962 novel about a man who becomes the prisoner of a woman living in a house inside a sand dune (the book has been translated into English).  The story’s claustrophobic setting and messages about the human condition contained inside a sci-fi-like story impressed Kojima: “Abe’s method of twisting time, space and the environment to enclose something human in it was a fresh surprise.” “The story has a surrealist flavor” agrees Ito. 

Back when Kojima got to explore Criterion Collection’s closet (and understandably looked like he never wanted to leave), among his picks was Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1964 adaptation of The Woman in the Dunes. “I’m a Kobe Abe fan so I watched it after reading the book” he explains in the video. “(It’s) a really good movie.”  

Unsurprisingly, Ito reveals that the first manga he ever read was horror, namely Miira Sensei by renowned horror manga artist Kazuo Umezu, which tells of a schoolgirl whose mummified nun teacher wants to drink her blood. This prompted him to read “all kinds of bizarre manga.” He was particularly impressed with Umezu’s 1968 manga Butterfly Grave- praising the entire story’s development and composition “I was shocked by how perfect it was.”  

He describes Umezu, as well as Shinichi Koga (best known for Eko Eko Azarak/ The Wizard of Darkness) and Hideshi Hino (Hino Horrors) as horror manga artists who were big influences on his work. Ito also got into reading Sci-Fi and states that Taku Mayumura’s 1985 novel “24-hour intruder” is still among his favorite books (as a side note, Mayumura’s sci-fi novel “Administrator” is available in English). Ito was particularly impressed by the illustrations in the novel, which were drawn by Takashi Yorimitsu. 

“He (Yorimitsu) had a considerable influence on my manga. At the time, most of the illustrations in children’s books were cartoonishly deformed like those of Tezuka Osamu but Yorimitsu’s drawings were very realistic and sexy,” Ito explains, referencing Yorimitsu’s depictions of women. Kojima notes that he can see the similarity in the beautiful girls that Ito draws. 

Kojima goes on to describe Ito’s horror manga as having a literary feel like that of Stephen King’s novels. Ito adds that he works in a haphazard way, explaining that unexpected ideas often come to him when he is trying to work out the story’s flow and resolve problems in the narrative. 

If you want to find out more about Ito’s manga and inspirations, please see our interview with him last year about WORLD OF HORROR– a roguelite RPG inspired by his work.