All-Women Roundtable

Translation

Talking About the Pleasure of Being Tormented
An All-Women Masochists’ Roundtable

Participants:
Saijō Midori, 22, model
Hamamura Eiko, 28, company secretary
Hasebe Yumi, 29, beautician
Fukamizu Takayo, 31, housewife
Moderator: Editorial Department
Location: Satsuki-sō restaurant, Bunkyō Ward

EXPERIENCES OF BEING TIED FOR THE FIRST TIME

Moderator: With the exception of Saijō-san, all of you are people with whom we have corresponded until now, so today is the first time we have actually met face to face. Although you are meeting one another for the first time, you share what might be called the feeling of masochism. I would like you to speak freely, as though you were meeting friends of ten years’ standing. Opportunities like this are rare, so today I hope you will really let yourselves go.

Moderator: Hamamura-san has come from Kyoto and Hasebe-san from Sendai especially for this meeting. As moderator, I could not be more pleased. So perhaps Saijō-san can begin. Everyone already knows you through your photographs.

Saijō: Me? As I said earlier, today I came to listen to everyone else’s stories. Please ask someone else first.

Moderator: If you retreat from the outset, we will never have a roundtable. Saijō-san, apart from being tied as a model, have you truly had no other experience?

Saijō: No. I have nobody to do it with.

Moderator: The first time, when I brought out the rope, you were trembling. I could practically hear your heart beating.

(General laughter.)

Saijō: I was frightened. I thought something might be done to me.

Moderator: You were almost pitiable. But in my experience, someone who gives such a clear outward reaction is the best kind of subject. A model who mechanically puts her hands behind her back with a blank expression because it is merely a modeling job stays stiff until the end. There is no sensuality at all. Saijō-san showed the changes in her emotions with her whole body. There was a genuine freshness to it, and the photographs came out well. These days you have become accustomed to it, so perhaps some of that sensuality has disappeared.

Saijō: After I was tied for the first time, my back hurt so badly that I finally had to take two or three days off from my other work.

Moderator: I did not tie you that tightly. There were no rope marks at all. It was probably anxiety about something unknown, making you tense your body and nerves more than necessary. Still, you did not dislike it, did you? You came back again immediately.

Saijō: That was business.

Moderator: No, there was evidence besides that that you did not dislike it.

Hamamura: Evidence? What do you mean?

Moderator: You left unmistakable physiological evidence of your feelings behind. After Saijō-san went home, while we were putting away her underwear, we found it there, on her panties.

Saijō: Really, please, not in front of everyone.

Moderator: Look, she has gone red.

(General laughter.)

Hasebe: If she felt that way, it is only natural. In my case, the man was someone I disliked so much I wanted to bite him, but I became aroused anyway.

Fukamizu: Was that the first time you were tied?

Hasebe: It was when I was attending beauty school, not long before graduation. I wanted good marks. I was terrible at beauty exercises and had very little confidence. There was an instructor I particularly disliked, and he ended up tying me.

All: How did he do it?

Hasebe: He told me, “You are hopeless at beauty exercises. With marks like that, I cannot give you a graduation certificate.” I was still very innocent and started crying. Then he said, “There is no need to cry. Stay after school and take an hour of special training from me every day.” That day he made me continue until I was completely exhausted. All the while he stood there watching. Whenever I grew dizzy with fatigue and tried to sit down, he would say, “Do not rest without permission. Continue until I tell you to stop.” He kept me going until my knees were trembling.

Fukamizu: That instructor was quite a sadist.

Hasebe: He was. Until then I had never noticed anything like that. I became so exhausted that even speaking was difficult. Then he said, almost as an order, “You must be tired. I will massage you. Lie down on that couch.” Somehow, without consciously deciding to, I found myself lying on it. The massage was the trick. I was already tired, and once he began massaging me I gradually drifted into sleep.

I fell into a strange state. When I suddenly opened my eyes, my clothes had been opened at the chest and my skirt had been removed. I was still lying on the couch. I tried to get up and discovered that my hands and feet had been tied and I could not move. I became frightened and tried to cry out, only to discover that I had been gagged as well.

Saijō: And did the teacher do anything to you?

Hasebe: I would like to say that is an indelicate question, but actually he did nothing. I later heard that he was impotent. He told me, with an extraordinarily happy expression, “Simply tying a woman like this and looking at her is enough to give me an erection.”

Moderator: Sadists who are impotent are surprisingly common. I have a friend who is forty-six and has never known a woman sexually. It is enough for him simply to collect bondage photographs. According to him, a bound woman is a work of art more beautiful than any ordinary beauty.

Hasebe: Even after he did that to me, I suddenly found myself liking him.

Fukamizu: Did he tie you often after that?

Hasebe: He awakened the masochistic blood that had been sleeping inside me. After that, sometimes I actively sought out being tied myself. But eventually another teacher discovered us. I graduated soon afterward, and he left the school, so that was the end of it.

Hamamura: Ordinary women would never understand stories like these. They would simply call us perverts and despise us. I work for a respectable company as the president’s secretary, so I am already in a position where I could easily be misunderstood. I therefore divide my daytime and nighttime lives completely. At the office I behave as though I know absolutely nothing. Sometimes men talk about tying women. I become so excited my breath nearly stops, but I pretend not to understand. On days like that, as soon as I get home it feels as though all the blood in my body suddenly reverses direction. I cannot sit still.

Moderator: Hamamura-san, do you currently have a partner?

Hamamura: Not at all. If you know anyone suitable, perhaps you could introduce me.

Moderator: I find that difficult to believe. A beautiful woman like you without a partner?

Hasebe: At present I am completely idle too.

Moderator: Really? I find that equally hard to believe. Of course, with ordinary tastes it would be easy enough to find somebody, but perhaps your nerves have become too luxurious.

Hasebe: Not luxurious. Perhaps we are premium goods outside the normal specifications.

(Laughter.)

HOW WE WOULD LIKE TO BE TIED

Moderator: What kind of bondage best fits your masochistic feelings? In other words, what kind of treatment allows you to experience the greatest pleasure in being tormented? Put simply, in what kind of bondage are you most aroused?

Fukamizu: Recently there are more bondage scenes in films. There was one actress in a recent film whom I thought was very good. And in “Inazuma,” the scene in which Nobuko Otowa’s geisha is tied by Ichirō Sugai was especially good. When I see scenes like that, I identify with them and suddenly become desperate to be tied myself. After seeing that film, on the way home I stopped at a waiting house and had my husband tie me.

Hasebe: We say “bondage” as though it were one thing, but there is a difference between punishment or torture and doing such things consensually as sexual foreplay. When I see or read punishment and torture scenes in films and novels, I become so excited that I shiver. But I would not want those things actually done to me. Even if I were tied so completely that I could not move at all, I would want intercourse afterward. I have never experienced bondage involving real violence.

Moderator: In Hasebe-san’s case, the first man was impotent, and that has probably created a particular pattern in your subconscious. Fortunately, you have not gone further into the abnormal realm. I think that is a good thing. As masochism goes, yours may be the safest kind.

Hamamura: That would never be enough for me. I need rough male violence. I want to be beaten and physically tormented severely. I am completely abnormal.

Moderator: In Hamamura-san’s case there certainly does seem to be a somewhat more extreme tendency. Even so, in actual experience you have apparently not gone nearly as far as your imagination. For you, merely being tied is not enough. A certain degree of sadistic aggression from the partner is necessary. Have you ever actually been treated very badly?

Hamamura: In reality, not nearly as badly as I would like.

Moderator: Listening to all of you, it is clear that each of you has developed masochistic tendencies to a considerable degree.

Fukamizu: Being tickled is the hardest thing for me. I can tolerate being hit surprisingly well. Recently my husband and I had an argument over a misunderstanding and I genuinely made him angry. He tied me and tickled me. It was so agonizing that I could not endure it. Finally I had an accident without consciously intending to. I urinated in the middle of the tatami room. I was ashamed and began to cry. Afterward my husband seemed far more embarrassed than I was.

Hamamura: Well, you really got it that time.

Moderator: Your husband can certainly be severe.

Fukamizu: Please excuse me.

(Laughter.)

MASOCHISM AND THE EXCITEMENT OF TATTOOING

Moderator: Let us change direction. I would like each of you to tell us something you have kept in reserve, something you cannot ordinarily tell anyone and might never have another chance to talk about. Hamamura-san, what happened with that tattoo you mentioned before? This is a perfect opportunity, so please tell everyone.

Hamamura: That is embarrassing.

Moderator: As I said earlier, everyone here is as much a masochist as you are. I expect the others will eventually tell stories just as remarkable.

Hasebe: Exactly. There is no point becoming shy now. I would very much like to hear about the tattoo.

Moderator: Psychologically speaking, people attracted to tattooing often have masochistic tendencies. There is pleasure in enduring that pain. How was it for you, Hamamura-san?

Hamamura: When the needles first went in, it simply hurt, and enduring it took all my strength. But by the second and third sessions, as the design gradually approached completion, merely seeing the needles, ink, and tattooing tools was enough to make me feel as though I might become sexually aroused. After that, with every individual needle prick, indescribable pleasure became mixed completely together with the pain until I was almost intoxicated with delight.

Moderator: Tattoo artists tell me that women tolerate tattooing better than men. Since women are masochistic by instinct, perhaps that is only natural.

Hasebe: Hamamura-san, where did you have yours done? If you would not mind, could you show us?

Saijō: I have never seen a tattoo on a woman. I would love to see it.

Moderator: After the stenographer has finished, the bath is ready, so perhaps when you all bathe later you can show them. Is that all right, Hamamura-san?

Hamamura: This has turned into quite a situation.

Moderator: Since everyone is going to see the real thing later, I suppose there is no harm in explaining. Hamamura-san’s tattoo is rather difficult to see. It is on the lower abdomen and is only about fifteen centimeters square. If she simply covered the front with a hand towel, you would not be able to see anything else.

(Laughter.)

Hamamura: Please do not say things like that. I was hoping I could pretend innocence and escape.

Fukamizu: What made you want to get a tattoo?

Hamamura: The desire probably began when I was in my second year of girls’ school. At the time tattooing had become fashionable among some of the older girls. They were harmless little tattoos, crosses, X marks, or one’s initials in Roman letters. Naturally they were placed where other people would not immediately see them, under the breast or on the inner thigh. I had a cross put just above my lower abdomen.

I thought that when I grew older and had more pubic hair it would become hidden.

(Laughter.)

It made me extremely happy. Secretly I was delighted. Every day I would take out a mirror and admire it. Then one of our maids discovered it, and I truly thought I would die of shame.

The maid promised not to tell anyone, and eventually she drew me into a homosexual relationship. She taught me various things, and little by little I was pulled into what the article calls the “Lesbos swamp.” That was how I finally became such an abnormal woman.

Eventually the maid left. My family never learned my secret. After graduating from women’s college I married almost immediately, but there had never been any real love in the marriage and it failed. More than that, my body, already shaped by abnormal desires, could never have been satisfied by ordinary married life. I divorced in less than three months.

For the five years since then I have enjoyed an easy single life. When the mood takes me I do not care what social class a man belongs to. But to tell the truth, I suspect my journey through masochism will continue without a full stop all the way to the grave. I have still never met someone capable of pleasing me completely. So now I sometimes tie my own body and imagine torments so severe that they take my breath away. At other times I prick my own skin with needles or apply burning moxa to my thighs and lower abdomen so that I can savor self-inflicted pain.

Moderator: Hamamura-san, you are also a kind of abdominal narcissist. A number of masochistic elements meet there.

Hamamura: As I said earlier, I have an abnormal attachment to my abdomen. When I was a girl I used to shut myself secretly in my room, undress, and become intoxicated by looking at myself. When I looked at the softly rounded swell of my own abdomen, I sometimes felt like crying because I loved it so much. It seemed terribly erotic to me.

Moderator: That is not unique to Hamamura-san. Everyone has some degree of narcissism, and narcissism contains many masochistic elements.

Hamamura: My introduction has become very long, but ultimately I have never found anyone capable of satisfying me. Perhaps such a person exists and I simply have not met him. Because of that, I gradually learned to become intoxicated by self-torment. I began pricking my body and burning myself with moxa. Then I thought, if I am going to damage my skin anyway, why not have a tattoo? That way I could experience both the pain of the needle entering my body and the masochistic pleasure of deliberately spoiling my beautiful abdomen at the same time.

Moderator: Actually, you sent me a photograph a little while ago and I saw it. The fine-line work is remarkably good. It is a peony with a butterfly. I had not realized there was such a skilled tattooist in Kansai.

Saijō: Perhaps I should get something like that too.

Hamamura: You must not. If you did, you could never work as a model again.

Fukamizu: Earlier you said that people with tattoos are masochists. There is a man near my house who shows his tattoo openly, even in summer, and he certainly does not look masochistic.

Moderator: You cannot judge masochistic tendencies from outward appearance. They emerge in unexpected places. Someone may see blood and become deliberately defiant or swaggering precisely because inwardly he is intoxicated by the pain. The psychology of masochism is complicated.

Hamamura: That is certainly true.

Moderator: Fukamizu-san, do you have any special story for us?

Fukamizu: No, nothing. The story about being tied that I told earlier is about all I have.

Hasebe: Come to think of it, I have already told my own special story as well.

Moderator: You have escaped neatly. Unfortunately, we are out of time, so we shall end here. Thank you very much, everyone, for all your stories.