Uramado (“Rear Window”) was an influential Japanese SM and erotic-literary magazine published from the mid-1950s into the mid-1960s. It began in January 1956 under the title Kappa as a successor to Amatoria, then adopted the name Uramado with the September 1956 issue. Under the editorial direction of Suma Toshiyuki, better known as Minomura Kō, the magazine gradually shifted from true-story material toward the more literary, visually ambitious form he favored. Nureki Chimuo later became editor-in-chief in 1961.
The magazine occupied an important bridge between the first generation of postwar “abnormal” publications and the more explicitly SM-focused magazines that followed. Its pages combined erotic fiction, bondage illustration, photography, essays, confession, crime and punishment imagery, and experimental visual narratives. It published important Japanese artists including Muku Yōji, Harukawa Namio, and Ishizuka Yoshiyuki, while also giving unusual prominence to Western fetish art. Beginning around 1961, its “Published in Magazines Overseas” feature introduced readers to work associated with artists such as Gene Bilbrew, Eric Stanton, John Willie, Ruiz, and Jim of Switzerland. This made Uramado a particularly important site of exchange between Japanese kinbaku imagery and international fetish culture.
