What Is Venus in the Blind Spot About? Story-by-Story Guide

What Is Venus in the Blind Spot About?

Venus in the Blind Spot is a horror manga anthology — a collection of standalone short stories — by Junji Ito, published by VIZ Media (the US publisher) in August 2020. It collects 10 stories with no continuous plot connecting them. Think of it as a sampler platter of Ito’s range as a horror storyteller.

The collection spans body horror (horror focused on graphic physical transformation or mutilation of the human body), psychological dread, folk horror (horror rooted in rural traditions and superstitions), and literary adaptation. Two of the stories are adapted from works by Edogawa Ranpo, one of Japan’s most celebrated mystery and horror writers, and one story (How Love Came to Professor Kirida) is adapted from British horror writer Robert Hichens. The book also includes The Enigma of Amigara Fault, arguably Ito’s most famous short story, and a rare autobiographical piece about his relationship with horror manga pioneer Kazuo Umezu.

At 272 pages in hardcover, it’s a substantial volume that gives you a wide look at what Ito does best — taking ordinary situations and warping them into something deeply unsettling. Most readers finish it in a few sittings. Whether you’re new to Ito’s work or looking to fill gaps in your collection, this anthology covers a lot of ground in a single book.

A note on content intensity: Junji Ito’s art is graphic. Several stories in this collection contain disturbing imagery — extreme physical distortion, body mutilation, and unsettling transformations rendered in highly detailed black-and-white illustration. If you’re sensitive to graphic horror imagery, be aware that stories like The Licking Woman and The Human Chair push into territory that many readers find genuinely difficult to look at. This is part of what makes Ito’s work powerful, but it’s worth knowing before you open the book.

Every Story in the Collection (Spoiler-Free Overview)

Here’s what you’ll find inside, story by story. No major spoilers — just enough to help you know what you’re getting into.

The Enigma of Amigara Fault

After a massive earthquake, human-shaped holes appear in the exposed rock face of a mountainside. Each hole seems to match a specific person’s silhouette perfectly — and the people who find their hole feel an overwhelming compulsion to enter it.

This is arguably Junji Ito’s single most famous short story, and for good reason. The horror comes not from a monster or a villain but from an impossible, inexplicable phenomenon that taps into something deeply primal — the kind of dread that comes from something vast and unknowable, not a creature you can fight or escape. You can’t explain why the holes are there, you can’t explain why people feel drawn to them, and yet the logic of it feels horribly inevitable.

The story originally appeared as a bonus chapter at the end of Gyo Vol. 2 (Gyo is another Ito horror series, about fish with mechanical legs invading land), so if you already own that book, you’ve read this one before. But its inclusion here means you can experience it without buying Gyo, and you get nine other stories alongside it.

The Sad Tale of the Principal Post

A family moves into a newly built house, but something is wrong with the central pillar. This story draws on Japanese architectural folklore — specifically the tradition surrounding the hashira, the main structural post of a home. What should feel like a fresh start in a new house slowly curdles into something deeply wrong. It’s a slow-building piece that turns domestic comfort into quiet horror.

An Unearthly Love

The first of two Edogawa Ranpo adaptations in the collection, based on Ranpo’s “A Brute’s Love.” A woman named Kyoko enters into an arranged marriage with the handsome Kadono, who proves to be a kind husband. But she begins to suspect he is hiding something, and follows him to discover he is secretly devoted to a beautiful anatomically correct porcelain doll he keeps locked in the storehouse. What she does about it — and what that costs both of them — is the story’s gut punch.

The story explores obsession in its most disturbing form — not with another person, but with an object that can never reciprocate. Ito’s art transforms Ranpo’s prose into something viscerally uncomfortable — Kadono’s devotion to the doll becomes something you can see etched into every frame on the page.

Venus in the Blind Spot (Title Story)

This is the original Junji Ito story that gives the collection its name. Three men in the Nanzan UFO Research Society become increasingly obsessed with Mariko, the beautiful daughter of club founder Professor Shono. One day they discover they are unable to see her when she is physically close to them — they can hear her but she is invisible to them. The story eventually reveals her father has been surgically installing computer chips in the brains of club members to prevent them from looking at her.

The title plays on “blind spot” as both a visual phenomenon and the men’s inability to truly perceive Mariko as a person rather than an object of obsession. What makes this story distinctive is the way Ito blends science fiction with body horror — the premise sounds almost clinical, but the execution is anything but. The visual medium lets Ito show you the disorientation of being unable to see someone you know is standing right in front of you, and he takes full advantage of that freedom here.

Billions Alone

Bodies begin turning up sewn together with fishing line — and the victims are always people who were together in groups. As the bizarre killings spread, the safest move seems to be total isolation, and Ito wrings real dread out of that premise: the ordinary comfort of company quietly turns into a death sentence. It’s one of the collection’s most unsettling ideas — Ito turns simple togetherness into the thing to fear.

How Love Came to Professor Kirida

Adapted from British author Robert Hichens’s 1900 horror story “How Love Came to Professor Guildea,” this story follows Professor Kirida, a celebrated writer who despises love in any form. He becomes haunted by what appears to be the obsessive, unwanted attentions of a ghost. The story inverts the conventional horror of unwanted presence — the terror here is being loved rather than being hunted.

It’s the most unusual story in the collection in terms of structure and atmosphere. Where most of Ito’s work relies on visual shock and physical transformation, this one builds dread through an abstract, suffocating emotional presence. Some readers find the framing device unwieldy, but the central concept — that love itself can be a form of haunting — is genuinely unsettling.

The Human Chair

Based on Edogawa Ranpo’s famous short story of the same name, this one follows a craftsman who hides himself inside a chair so he can be physically close to the people who sit in it. Ranpo’s original is psychological horror — the dread comes from the concept itself and the uncomfortable intimacy it implies. Ito takes that concept and pushes it into body horror territory, making you see and feel things the prose version left to your imagination.

Keepsake

A samurai named Ishikawa Toyoji remarries after the death of his first wife, Lady Suzu. Nine months after her burial, a baby’s cry is heard from inside her tomb — she has given birth posthumously. What unfolds is supernatural horror and body horror entwined, and the central concept is the kind that lodges in your brain and refuses to leave.

The Licking Woman

A woman appears in a small town who secretly licks people, delivering a poison through her tongue that causes rapid deterioration and death if not treated. What starts as a disturbing mystery escalates with increasingly grotesque imagery. The concept is bizarre enough to almost be funny — until Ito’s detailed artwork makes you realize just how nightmarish the reality would be.

This is one of the most viscerally horrifying stories in the collection, and it closes on a deeply unsettling note.

Master Umezz and Me

The only non-fiction piece in the collection. This autobiographical story told in manga format is about Ito’s admiration for Kazuo Umezu, a pioneering horror manga creator whose influence on Japanese horror comics is comparable to Stephen King’s influence on American horror fiction.

It’s a warm, personal piece that feels completely different from everything else in the book. You get rare insight into Ito as a person — his influences, his early experiences with horror manga, and the way Umezu shaped his artistic vision. It’s a lovely counterpoint to the horror surrounding it, and it gives you context that makes the rest of his work richer.

The Edogawa Ranpo Connection (and Robert Hichens)

Two stories in this collection — An Unearthly Love and The Human Chair — are adaptations of works by Edogawa Ranpo. A third adaptation, How Love Came to Professor Kirida, is based on a story by British author Robert Hichens rather than Ranpo, though it shares the same spirit of literary horror reimagined through Ito’s visual lens.

If you’re not familiar with Ranpo, he is one of the most important figures in Japanese mystery and horror fiction. His pen name is actually a Japanese phonetic rendering of “Edgar Allan Poe” (the American horror and mystery writer), which tells you a lot about the kind of stories he wrote.

Ranpo was active from the 1920s through the 1960s, and his work laid the groundwork for the mystery and horror genres in Japan. His stories blend psychological tension with disturbing physical imagery and the bizarre — exactly the kind of raw material that plays to Ito’s strengths as a visual storyteller.

What makes these adaptations fascinating is seeing how Ito transforms prose horror into visual horror. Ranpo’s stories (and Hichens’s, in the case of Professor Kirida) work through suggestion, implication, and the reader’s imagination. Ito’s versions make those same premises concrete — you see the obsession made flesh, the chair with someone lurking inside it, the ghost’s suffocating presence. The body horror Ito adds isn’t gratuitous; it’s a genuine reinterpretation that changes how these stories hit you.

If you enjoy these adaptations, Ranpo’s original stories are available in English translation. Reading the source material and then seeing what Ito did with it gives you a deeper appreciation for both artists.

Who Should Read This Collection

Junji Ito beginners — If you’ve heard of Ito but never read his work, this is one of the best places to start. Because it’s an anthology of standalone stories, you get a sampler of his range without committing to a longer series. You’ll quickly discover which flavors of his horror appeal to you most.

Short horror fans — If you love short fiction that delivers a complete, self-contained horror experience in a few pages, this collection delivers that ten times over. Each story has its own premise, its own tone, and its own kind of dread.

Readers who already own Gyo — Gyo is Ito’s horror series about fish on mechanical legs invading land. If you own it, you’ve probably already read The Enigma of Amigara Fault as the bonus chapter at the end of Vol. 2. This collection gives you a convenient standalone version of that story plus nine others you likely haven’t read.

Fans of body horror and psychological horror — The collection covers both ends of the spectrum and everything in between. Some stories are viscerally physical, others are more cerebral, and the best ones manage to be both at once.

One thing to know: if you want a single connected narrative with recurring characters and a building plot, this isn’t it. Venus in the Blind Spot is an anthology — each story stands completely alone. For that longer-form experience, look at Uzumaki (Ito’s most acclaimed full-length series, about a town consumed by spiral-related madness), Tomie (connected stories about an immortal girl who drives people to obsession and murder), or Gyo instead.

How It Compares to Other Junji Ito Collections

If you’re trying to figure out where Venus in the Blind Spot fits in Ito’s catalog — or deciding which collection to grab first — here’s how it stacks up.

Vs. Shiver — Shiver is also a short story anthology, so the format is identical. The main difference is that Venus in the Blind Spot is slightly more thematically varied and includes the Edogawa Ranpo and Robert Hichens adaptations, which give it a literary dimension Shiver doesn’t have. Both are strong collections, and you honestly can’t go wrong with either as a starting point.

Vs. Fragments of Horror — Fragments of Horror is a shorter, more experimental collection. The stories tend to be briefer and more abstract — they’re interesting but can feel less satisfying if you want fully developed narratives with clear setups and payoffs. Venus in the Blind Spot is more accessible overall and has greater variety in tone and subject matter. If you’re already hooked on Ito’s short-form work after reading Venus and want to explore further, the three-book set that bundles Lovesickness, Deserter, and Fragments of Horror together is a smart way to get three distinct collections covering different periods of Ito’s career in one purchase — and it costs less than picking them up individually.

Vs. Uzumaki, Tomie, and Gyo — These are full-length, continuous horror stories, not anthologies. Uzumaki follows an entire town consumed by spiral-related madness across multiple volumes. Tomie is a series of connected stories about an immortal girl who drives people to obsession and murder. Gyo is a nightmare about fish with mechanical legs invading dry land. If you want a sustained narrative with escalating tension across hundreds of pages, those are the ones to pick. Venus in the Blind Spot is for when you want variety and bite-sized horror instead.

Vs. Deserter — Deserter is another Ito story collection, released in 2022. Like Venus in the Blind Spot, it gathers standalone stories showcasing different facets of Ito’s imagination. Where Venus has the Edogawa Ranpo and Robert Hichens adaptations as its unique hook, Deserter draws from a wider span of Ito’s career, pulling in stories that were previously hard to access in English. If Venus in the Blind Spot is your first Ito anthology and you find yourself wanting more of his short-form work, Deserter is the natural next step (grab it solo, or as part of the three-book set mentioned above) — the two collections cover different stories with no overlap, and reading them back to back gives you a thorough picture of what Ito can do outside of his longer works.

Venus in the Blind Spot sits comfortably in the middle of Ito’s catalog. It’s not his most famous work — that distinction belongs to Uzumaki, his most acclaimed full-length horror series — but it’s a strong, well-rounded collection with several standout stories. The Enigma of Amigara Fault alone makes it worth picking up, and the literary adaptations give it something no other Ito collection offers.