The more Japanese fiction I read, the less I expect it to explain itself. This is true whether you are reading Junji Ito or Haruki Murakami; there is a tendency to let weirdness just sort of sit out there where everyone can see it, creating a surreal feeling where you can’t really tell if you’re missing something or not. Stitches follows this pattern, with short vignettes (each one referred to as a “stitch”) making up a series of strange tales.
This book is not a manga, which threw me right away. Instead it’s text, and there are occasional illustrations to help… um, illustrate, what’s going on on the page. At the very end of the story is a single manga story written by Ito, and this was probably my favorite within the book. Fun detail: because the traditional portion of the book reads left to right and the manga reads right to left, you have to switch partway through. Sort of neat.
Stitches is another of the recent Junji Ito’s that definitely still have his style and appeal, but do not have the same gripping originality that makes you go “woah, he managed to write an entire book about spirals and it works.” Pick it up if you are a fan, as it adequately services anyone who loves his content, but if you are just checking Ito out for the first time and want to be made into a fan, try Uzumaki, Gyo, Tomie, Shiver, or Fragments of Horror first.
