ABSTRACT
Junji Itō’s horror manga Tomie presents the story of an eponymous entity who, in the form of a beautiful young woman, leads those around her to insanity and death. Yet even as she wreaks havoc in the minds and lives of her admirers, Tomie herself endures cycles of murder and rebirth, and she frames the violence she suffers as the logical consequence of male attraction to her. The manga thus reveals and, to a degree, subverts popular discourses regarding the nature of misogynistic violence. This chapter explores the manga’s negotiation of these discourses, first by situating Tomie within the genre of shōjo horror. In doing so, the chapter draws critical attention to the manga’s appeal to young women’s concerns and experiences and enables recognition of the gendered nature of horror itself. Of particular concern is the graphic depiction of the feminine body’s destruction and rebirth. Through such depictions, Tomie invokes not only the imagery but also the politics of body horror. Aligning shōjo and body horror, the chapter argues that, through the manga’s dichotomies of beauty/abjection, desire/violence, and power/subjugation, Tomie complicates narratives of gendered trauma in ways that hold particular resonance for feminist readings.
