Demonesses and the Men Who Abuse Them: The real tragedy of Junji Ito’s Tomie

Tomie is just one version of a story we’ve heard about women over and over about the cruel, conniving woman who “gets what she deserves” after her manipulation of a man blows up in her face. This is how the stories justify and disguise their displays of male misogynistic violence: as uncontrollable supernatural urges in response to an unknowable, distinctly female evil.