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Sun & Moon

March 1977

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Cover of Sun & Moon, March 1977

Issue Details

PDF pages
118

Summary

The inaugural March 1977 issue of Sun & Moon introduces itself as a magazine “seeking love,” but its real editorial center is the lived practice of SM. Unlike the historical, literary, and pseudo-sexological mixture of 1950s magazines, this issue is built heavily around contemporary participants, domestic photography, first-person reports, instructional discussion, and accounts of couples trying to incorporate SM into their relationships. It preserves elements of the older “abnormal sexuality” tradition, yet its tone is more practical, confessional, and participatory.

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The opening editorial, “Like the Sun and Moon,” explains the publication’s purpose through complementary opposites. Sadist and masochist, husband and wife, domination and submission are imagined as paired forces that acquire meaning in relation to one another. This relational framing is important. The magazine is less interested in diagnosing isolated perversion than in showing how compatible inclinations might be brought together.

The issue’s first major feature is a roundtable presented as a record of “practical” sexual exchange. Participants discuss spanking, restraint, implements, pain, pleasure, and the negotiation of SM within relationships. Photographs accompany the conversation, including demonstrations of impact and bodily positioning. Although the language is informal and sometimes sensational, the article treats experience as something that can be discussed collectively rather than hidden behind fictional villains.

A long first-person confession titled approximately “My Wife’s Breeding Diary” or “A Husband’s Record of Raising His Wife” examines the transformation of a marriage through SM. The narrative describes discovery, experimentation, bodily discipline, and the gradual formation of complementary roles. It is framed as testimony, but it also carries the structure of erotic fiction, leaving the boundary between documentary account and constructed fantasy uncertain.

The issue repeatedly returns to spanking. One article presents a woman’s confession concerning buttocks striking, while photographs isolate marks, implements, and bodily response. The focus on impact expands the magazine beyond rope and situates SM within a broader field of sensation, discipline, and ritualized punishment.

Another major feature, “Two Years of SM with My Teacher,” recounts a relationship organized around training, authority, and repeated practice. The word “teacher” gives the relationship a developmental structure: one person possesses knowledge, while the other learns how to inhabit a submissive role. This is characteristic of Sun & Moon, which often presents SM not as an innate tableau but as something cultivated through experience.

The serialized photographic report “A Red Persimmon Left on a Branch” follows a couple or small group through a staged rope encounter in a Japanese room. The images show kneeling restraint, floor bondage, chair bondage, and the gradual adjustment of rope. The accompanying commentary presents the scene as an event with conversation, hesitation, correction, and changing positions rather than as a single frozen photograph.

The issue also includes an article on the film The Barbarian Girls, using stills from an imported exploitation movie to examine foreign representations of restraint, violence, and female suffering. The film feature demonstrates how specialist readers were learning to compare domestic SM imagery with international cinema.

A rope-instruction column explains a behind-the-back upper-body tie, using photographs and commentary to discuss placement, visual effect, and control. The article is not a modern safety manual, but its technical focus shows rope becoming teachable craft rather than merely a symbol of capture.

Several confession pieces foreground wives’ perspectives. “My Wife’s Past,” “A Married Couple’s SM Play,” and related accounts explore jealousy, shame, arousal, and the uncertain relationship between marriage and role play. They repeatedly ask whether SM strengthens intimacy, reveals hidden desires, or simply provides theatrical form for tensions already present within a relationship.

The later photographic portfolios display a wide variety of amateur models and restraint styles. Pregnant women, middle-aged women, fuller-bodied models, wives photographed in domestic rooms, and reader-submitted models all appear. This differs markedly from a polished commercial glamour aesthetic. The magazine makes ordinary rooms and ordinary bodies central to its visual identity.

The first issue also includes foreign SM photographs, reports on overseas publications, bondage drawings, and discussions of the historical development of SM magazines. One essay, “The Collector of Humiliation,” surveys older publications and photographic albums, explicitly placing Sun & Moon within a lineage running through Kitan Club and later specialist magazines.

For readers of Kinbaku Today, the inaugural issue is valuable because it captures the movement from print fantasy toward amateur practice. The magazine still inherits the coercive scenarios and gender assumptions of earlier SM culture, but it increasingly asks how rope, spanking, role play, and submission function inside actual relationships. Its pages are part instruction manual, part confession booth, part amateur photo album, and part social laboratory.

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Table of Contents 27 items
  1. Camera Hunt: Ecstatic Inverted Suspension by Roppongi Kaoru
    3–5
    Summary

    A photographic portfolio documents a bound woman being maneuvered through dramatic inverted suspension and other rope-restraint positions, emphasizing the spectacle of the staged scene.

  2. Pleasure Is Right There
    6–7
    Summary

    A sequence of staged erotic photographs depicts a woman restrained in domestic and bedroom settings, including sensory restriction and tightly bound poses presented as scenes of erotic pleasure.

  3. Inaugural Editorial: Like the Sun and Moon by Editorial Department
    8–9
    Summary

    The inaugural editorial introduces Sun & Moon as a specialist magazine devoted to unconventional sexuality, erotic imagination, SM culture, and perspectives excluded from mainstream society, while inviting readers and contributors to help develop its ongoing project.

  4. The Lifestyle of the Aesthetic Type: Practicalists’ Roundtable
    10–16
    Summary

    A roundtable of experienced SM practitioners discusses their lifestyles, relationships, experimentation, and practical techniques, including bondage, needle play, photography, and the role of specialist magazines. The participants also reflect on marriage, secrecy, and balancing SM interests with domestic life.

  5. Confession of a Buttocks-Whipping Enthusiast by Kasai Rokurō
    17–21
    Summary

    An autobiographical confession by Kasai Rokurō describing his strong interest in whipping and other forms of corporal punishment, including encounters involving restraint, role-play, and the direction of a female partner, accompanied by staged erotic photographs.

  6. Two Years of SM with My Sister-in-Law by Ōno Seiya
    22
    Summary

    Ōno Seiya recounts two years of SM involvement with his sister-in-law, presenting a secret and emotionally complicated relationship centered on erotic experimentation, restraint, and changing sexual roles.

  7. Relay Camera Hunt: A Red Ripe Persimmon Left on One Branch by Seta Kaiichi
    23–34
    Summary

    A photo-reportage follows an editor’s staged bondage sessions with a married couple, combining interviews, role-play dialogue, and extensive images of rope restraint, humiliation, and changing SM dynamics.

  8. Barbarian Girls: 8mm Home-Movie Introduction
    35–40
    Summary

    This feature reviews and introduces the 8mm erotic home movie The Barbarian Girls, presenting its fetishized bondage, punishment, and sensational imagery as an imported film attraction.

  9. Rope-Tying Classroom by Roppongi Kaoru
    41
    Summary

    A practical lesson demonstrates the “behind-the-back A-form” tie, explaining rope placement and tension while illustrating the completed restraint on a model.

  10. Confessional Memoir: My Wife’s Past by Tashiro Masashi
    42–44
    Summary

    A confessional memoir recounts the narrator’s wife’s past in the nightlife business and his subsequent use of rope bondage, punishment, and staged photographs in their relationship, ending with a return to their present domestic life.

  11. Overseas SM Photo Introduction, Part One
    45
    Summary

    The first installment presents overseas SM photographs, chiefly depicting Black women in fetish clothing and staged scenes of bondage, domination, and sadistic display.

  12. Overseas SM Photo Introduction, Part Two
    46
    Summary

    The second installment continues the overseas SM photo feature with additional images from a specialist Bizarre magazine, emphasizing Black female subjects in posed bondage and sadomasochistic scenes.

  13. Pregnant-Woman Bondage by Nakamiya Sakae
    47–54
    Summary

    An erotic reportage by Nakamiya Sakae describes a married couple’s escalating bondage photography centered on the wife’s pregnancy, including rope restraint, blindfolding, gagging, and staged domestic scenes. The accompanying photographs document varied kinbaku positions and the husband’s controlling role in the sessions.

  14. Pregnant Beauty
    55–58
    Summary

    A photographic portfolio presents a pregnant model in a series of rope-bound, blindfolded, seated, standing, and floor-based poses, emphasizing the visual display of pregnancy through staged restraint.

  15. Female Slave by Y.Y.
    59–62
    Summary

    This photographic feature portrays a woman as a female slave through a sequence of staged rope-bondage scenes, including restrained floor and seated positions overseen by a male participant.

  16. The M-Woman Awaiting Torment
    63–66
    Summary

    A photographic bondage feature depicts a woman restrained in a succession of seated, standing, and floor positions, emphasizing her anticipation of torment, physical helplessness, and shame.

  17. Training a Young Wife into an M-Woman by N.
    67
    Summary

    A staged photographic sequence presents the discipline and transformation of a young wife into an M-woman through elaborate rope restraint and controlled submissive poses.

  18. A Rope Doll in a Straitjacket by Murai
    68–69
    Summary

    This photographic portfolio shows a rope-bound woman posed like a doll, including tightly wrapped torso and limb configurations, blindfolding, and other forms of immobilization.

  19. Illustrated Bondage of a Voluptuous Female Body by Kawasaki R.
    70
    Summary

    A photographic feature presents a woman in a series of tightly rope-bound poses, documenting Japanese kinbaku techniques and the visual aesthetics of immobilized bodies.

  20. The Inclinations of a Masochistic Woman by Shinozaki Keiko
    71–75
    Summary

    In a first-person erotic reportage, a woman recounts how encounters with older authority figures and later partners deepened her masochistic desires, submissive role, and interest in bondage and discipline.

  21. Special Project: Collection of Works by Taga Kin
    76–77
    Summary

    This special illustrated portfolio presents ten staged erotic scenes involving bondage, restraints, suspension, coercion, and sexualized punishment.

  22. Bamboo Torment Image by Taga Kin
    78–81
    Summary

    An illustrated feature presents bamboo-based restraint devices and positions, combining practical explanations with staged photographs of their use in bondage scenes.

  23. Pregnant-Woman Bondage by Nakamiya Sakae
    82–95
    Summary

    A camera-report feature follows a staged bondage photography session involving a pregnant model, including editorial dialogue, specialized restraints, posing, and the production of images for an SM publication.

  24. The Pillar and Us by Uraga Mieko
    96–97
    Summary

    A confessional narrative by a married woman describes incorporating a structural pillar and household settings into the couple’s consensual bondage and marital SM practices.

  25. New Year Reflections: Seeking Better Material by Kawamoto Ryūji
    98–104
    Summary

    Kawamoto Ryūji’s New Year editorial reflects on the difficulty of obtaining fresh, compelling material, discusses changing SM readership and publishing conditions, and calls for more distinctive contributions and participation.

  26. Dream-Filled Nightlife by Oka Jun
    105–113
    Summary

    An extended personal and instructional feature on domestic and marital SM presents bondage scenarios, handmade restraint equipment, role-play, and staged photographic scenes as ways for couples to explore erotic fantasy and everyday sexual life.

  27. Sun & Moon Correspondence
    114–118
    Summary

    The magazine’s correspondence and community pages combine editorial notices, reader and contributor communications, group introductions, submission requests, publication information, and previews of forthcoming material.

Highlights

  • The opening editorial “Like the Sun and Moon” defines sadism and masochism as complementary positions whose meanings emerge through relationship (PDF pp. 8–9).
  • A practical roundtable brings several participants together to discuss spanking, restraint, implements, pain, and erotic response (PDF pp. 10–16).
  • “A Woman’s Confession of Buttocks Striking” presents impact play through first-person memory and photographs of marks and implements (PDF pp. 17–21).
  • “Two Years of SM with My Teacher” frames submission as a learned practice shaped by authority, repetition, and training (PDF p. 22).
  • “A Red Persimmon Left on a Branch” documents a domestic rope session through successive positions and commentary (PDF pp. 23–34).
  • The rope photographs show kneeling restraint, chair bondage, floor ties, torso wrapping, and progressive adjustment rather than only finished poses (PDF pp. 24–34).
  • A feature on The Barbarian Girls uses imported exploitation cinema to discuss foreign images of cruelty and restraint (PDF pp. 35–40).
  • A rope classroom explains a behind-the-back upper-body tie and presents rope as teachable craft (PDF p. 41).
  • “My Wife’s Past” turns confession, jealousy, marriage, and erotic memory into a sustained narrative (PDF pp. 42–44).
  • Foreign SM photographs introduce leather costume, female domination, whipping, and imported fetish aesthetics (PDF pp. 45–46).
  • A pregnant-wife bondage report presents pregnancy as part of a couple’s erotic narrative rather than excluding it from SM representation (PDF pp. 47–52).
  • “The Collector of Humiliation” examines older SM publications and photographic albums, linking the magazine to earlier print traditions (PDF pp. 33–41).
  • Numerous amateur portfolios feature wives and reader models in ordinary Japanese rooms, emphasizing domestic participation over studio polish (PDF pp. 55–69).
  • The issue includes rope, chains, gags, spanking, chair restraint, floor bondage, and improvised household settings as parts of one practical repertoire (PDF pp. 55–69).
  • The debut issue establishes Sun & Moon as a participatory magazine built from couples’ testimony, instruction, reader photographs, imported media, and amateur experimentation (throughout PDF pp. 8–118).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue:

Kinbaku Today
Kinbaku Today is an independent online journal dedicated to the study, practice, and cultural history of Japanese rope bondage. Blending essays, translations, interviews, and archival research, it explores kinbaku not simply as technique, but as a living dialogue between history, performance, and human connection.
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