Hole in the Wall
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE STORY THE ENIGMA OF AMIGARA FAULT, WRITTEN BY JUNJI ITO
Author Junji Ito has been at the forefront of the horror manga scene for decades, since his story now known as Tomie began serialization in the manga magazine Monthly Halloween. Among his most popular stories is the one-shot The Enigma of Amigara Fault, released at the end of the much longer Gyo. Despite being completely unrelated to the predominant story, it has garnered just as much fame due to its unsettling premise and incredible art, and yet it has kept out of my radar until today. I deeply regret passing on it for so long, as upon reading, it feels like the quintessential Junji Ito story alongside Tomie and Uzumaki.
The premise is as follows: an earthquake causes these holes in the mountain to be formed in the shape of humans, and crowds form due to this overwhelming feeling growing that these holes are the silhouettes of people who live nearby, carved and created specifically for them. As a sense of dread fills these people, their mind pulls them towards these crevices, dragging them into the holes until they become stuck. With no way to go back, they can only move through the holes, with every involuntary movement forcing them deeper throughout, despite the shape of the gap slowly morphing these people as they go through. While it is left ambiguous if it kills anyone who traverses, anybody who makes their way into the fault comes out the other side, morphed and twisted into a worm-like abomination at the mercy of the mountain.
This story brings forward a lot of interesting ideas and thoughts. It could be determined as a story about predetermined fate; it is apparent that these holes were formed long ago, and not by anything natural, so were the people who saw themselves in the fault doomed to this fate? How could they be cursed far before they were born? There was no way to predict this outcome, nor many preventative measures to be put in place to protect those who saw themselves in the mountain. Shown when Owaki attempts fruitlessly to prevent Yoshida from entering her hole by piling it with stones to keep her out, there was nothing that could prevent this ending for her. What was there to stop people from turning on their TV that day and seeing these holes? What if the one that belonged to them was not shown on screen, would something still pull them to that site? With the apparent thousands that showed up to the fault, it must be the case. Their fate was sealed the second the earthquake struck, a reckoning that would spare no one. While the holes appeared to be man-made, there is no way for people to create such meticulous, deep crevices, indicating the presence of something more powerful, and likely omnipotent. It knew that this day would come, and that these people would be at the end of the line.
It is also an insight into compulsions, and the urges that can drive people to do the worst things imaginable at times. Everyone gets compulsions and intrusive thoughts, the scratches in your mind that tell you to do these unthinkable actions, usually to the detriment of yourself or others; have you ever gotten the idea in your brain to swerve in the middle of the road? Or, standing near a cliff or on a high building, the impulse to see how it would look from the other side of the railing, and from halfway down, quickly moving further away? Typically, these are easy to control. It is not often you hear stories of people doing these things on a whim, actions like this often being more premeditated. This one-shot explores the concept of how far our compulsion can drive us. These people are driven by this force that is telling them to enter these holes, and that they were created for them specifically. Also called a “death drive” by Sigmund Freud, this self-destruction is coming from somewhere deep inside these people - the essence of them wants to be harmed and maimed. There is no explanation as to whether this is coming from some previously formed psychological harm, or if this is something new arising from deep inside. All we know is that, with a complete absence of any proper enemy or external force, the morbid curiosity of these people, or something from deep within these people, has pushed them to destroy themselves.
With an idiosyncratic style and a fascination for body horror and the damage that can be dealt to the human psyche, Junji Ito has established himself as the preeminent horror manga author. It’s hard to argue why when you dive into his stories such as this one or Uzumaki, either; while authors such as Kazuo Umezu blazed the trail and directly influenced him, and have written classics of their own as well (Orochi, The Drifting Classroom, God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand) nobody has such a distinct and visceral style as Ito. Creating horrors that we have never seen before while offering up a deep dive into the fucked-up psyche of the characters placed in these strenuous situations, nobody does it better.