JAPANESE HORROR | JUNJI ITO

The Back Alley

Caution: Contains elements of horror that may be unsettling for some readers

Ishida, a young working professional has just moved into a room in a boarding house. As he takes a stroll outside of the house, he notices a tall wall with barbed wire on top, blocking off the alley next to the house.

During dinner, Ishida meets Shinobu, the landlady’s daughter, who doesn’t say much even though he tries to chat with her.

As he goes to bed that night, Ishida hears children playing in the alley. Annoyed by the noise, he leans out to shush them, but to no avail.

Frustrated, he climbs onto the wall for a better look, but he sees nothing. It was just an empty dark valley.

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The next day, Shinobu helps him to unpack his belongings. He tells Shinobu about the strange incident last night. She convinces him that it was the echo from the numerous alleys in the area.

Sometimes one would hear sounds that seem closer than they are. She hears it all the time.

She cautions him against risking his life again, but he dismisses her warning as overly cautious.

The following night, he hears someone in the alley calling to Shinobu.

As days pass, he meets a former boarder who recounts a grisly discovery in the closed-off alley: three decomposing children’s bodies and eerie stains resembling children on the wall.

Those three stains would come out of the wall at night and move within the alley like shadows.

Ishida is skeptical, but the former boarder insists he check for a hidden window in his room, which he later finds hidden behind the bookcase.

He climbs out of his room with rope down into the alley below, he sees the stains and a few decomposing bodies hidden in a locked steel hatch.

As he tries to climb back up to his room with the rope, Shinobu stabs him and he falls back into the valley.

Shinobu reveals her sinister secrets — as a child, she had imprisoned three children in the hatch, leading to their demise.

Her father found the bodies when he looked into the hole, he probably knew it was the doing of Shinobu, he quickly seals off the alley with a tall wall.

After making the room hers, Shinobu’s bad deeds get worse. She tricks two classmates she hates into coming over and kills them in the alley. She also kills her dad when he nags her about it.

Everyone she kills becomes a stain on the wall in the alley. They’d come out at night and curse at her, but they can’t reach her in her room. Shinobu enjoys watching them in their torment from her window.

When Ishida dies from his injuries, Shinobu goes down to get rid of him. But the rope breaks and she’s stuck in the alley.

As the sun sets, the stains turn into shadows, and Shinobu is now trapped with them.

My Interpretative Reflection

It’s a natural protective instinct of parents to protect their children but some would take it to the extremes and that’s when it would be the cause of tragic consequences.

The father’s efforts to conceal Shinobu’s wrongdoing reveal the lengths people will go to shield their loved ones even when they may have committed serious crimes.

By turning a blind eye to injustice and sweeping problems under the rug, he had inadvertently enabled Shinobu’s continued wrongdoing, allowing her to carry on without consequence.

He becomes complicit in her crimes, that ultimately leads to his own demise.

Available on Netflix

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Source The Back Alley | Junji Ito Wiki | Fandom #11 | 伊藤潤二『マニアック』 (ji-anime.com) 伊藤潤二『マニアック』 各話情報 #11 | 株式会社スタジオディーン (deen.co.jp)