Tomie Kawakami, better known mononymously as Tomie, is a character from the Japanese horror manga and film series of the same name created by Junji Ito. Tomie was introduced in Ito's 1987 manga Tomie, which was published in Monthly Halloween, a shōjo magazine. She later appeared in two subsequent manga written by Ito, nine feature films, and a novel.
Tomie is a malevolent, regenerative entity with the unexplained ability to cause anyone, particularly men, to be instantly attracted to her. These actions inevitably lead to violence, usually resulting in the murder of Tomie herself (allowing her to replicate herself), or others. Rather than being one singular person or entity, it would be better to describe Tomie as a type of creature, seeing as each copy of Tomie is its own independent individual.
Tomie was written and illustrated by Junji Ito. Ito was inspired to create Tomie by the phenomenon of lizard tail regeneration. Ito's initial concept for the manga was to depict the strangeness of a girl who was nonchalantly attending school, but in reality was dead. He further explained that the original concept was that for some reason a dead person would come back to life and visit their former friends as if nothing had happened. As he developed the story, Ito established that the titular character would be a mean-spirited girl because he believed it would be more interesting if the manga featured someone that wasn't likable.
He noted that the proliferation of Tomie was created while writing a serial storyline, which helped greatly to convey the concept of regeneration.
In 1998, during the casting process of the first film adaptation, Ito picked actress Miho Kanno for the role and coached her for the audition.