Nureki Chimuo Archive

Ichimura Masako’s butt is seated on the bicycle saddle.

More than resting, she clings to the saddle. More than clinging, it would be more accurate to say the flesh of her butt, tightly encased in her pants, digs in slightly.

Every time Ichimura Masako pedals with force, that flesh of her buttocks moves and sways right before my eyes.

It moves so tantalizingly, as if her butt alone were a separate living thing.

I’m riding astride the rear cargo rack of the bicycle she’s pedaling.

Her constantly moving butt is right in front of my eyes because I’m behind her.

I’m wearing a backpack.

Inside are about thirty rolled up posters designed by the Public Relations Department to boost morale.

Several were hand drawn by me. All were hand-drawn, however.

My job was to paste those posters on bulletin boards inside and outside the factory buildings, which stood in rows.

Before Ichimura Masako came to the Public Relations Section, I would carry a bucket of paste and a brush, ride my bicycle alone, and spend the whole day putting up posters.

“Hey kid, I’ll help you with that job. I like riding bicycles.” She volunteered. After getting the section chief’s permission, she started riding off with me on the back of her bicycle.

The bucket containing the paste and brush was tied to the front of the handlebars.

Back then, women, young and old alike, all wore “monpe” for their lower bodies, loose-fitting, baggy pants that flared around the hips.

Amidst these women, her appearance in trousers created a startling sense of dissonance. I believe the color was either dark navy or black.

She was probably nineteen or twenty. Her legs were slender and long.

It was an era when such a physique alone could label someone “non-traditional.” These trousers clearly showed the slenderness and length of her legs.

To my eyes, she looked dazzlingly, eerily beautiful and erotic.

When we reached the slightly wider main street inside the factory, she pedaled while turning back to me and said, “I’m going to speed up, so hold on tight to me!” I hesitated.

How could I possibly wrap my arms around the waist of such a beautiful woman from behind?

Then, “Ready? Here we go!” She suddenly shifted her hips, floating them in the air.

Then she tensed her lower body and began pedaling with fierce momentum.

The force nearly sent me tumbling backwards.

Panicking, I wrapped both arms around her waist and held on tight.

Her belly was soft.

Pressing my face against her back, I caught a pleasant scent. I felt her warmth.

As she lifted her body, pedaling as if standing, my hands slid down to grip her lower abdomen. And her butt pressed against my face.

I felt like I was dreaming.

Entering the narrow road between factory buildings, she slowed the bicycle’s speed.

Relieved, I released my hands from her body.

Her buttocks settled back onto the saddle, and right before my eyes, they moved teasingly up and down, up and down.

Putting up posters outdoors, which I hadn’t particularly liked before, became enjoyable after Ichimura Masako joined us.

She preferred riding her bicycle around the vast factory grounds, covering about a square kilometer, rather than doing detailed, meticulous work at a desk.

She continued to accompany me on my poster-hanging work after that.

Sitting behind her on the bicycle she pedaled, I was enveloped in a dreamlike, sweetly erotic world. I forgot the reality of living side-by-side with death.

That sensation was something I experienced for the first time in my life.

Did I ever experience sexual pleasure greater than the ecstasy of riding that bicycle with Ichimura Masako? I don’t think so.

I probably shouldn’t be writing this, given that I’ve worked stripping naked over five thousand women and binding them with ropes, but just now, my true feelings slipped out.

But she didn’t come to the Public Relations Section to help with poster-posting.

She’d been pulled straight from the factory site office to be the lead actress in the “Public Relations Theater Troupe.”

I think she was still a trainee, or perhaps had only just joined the troupe.

She probably wasn’t a star or an executive, but her track record of having been part of the Takarazuka Revue was undeniable.

I once saw a Takarazuka program from that time that she showed me.

Looking back now, it was a flimsy pamphlet, shoddy in both paper and printing, typical of the times. But sure enough, her photo was there, among the other troupe members, toward the back of the pages.

In that black-and-white photo, her eyes were slightly upturned at the corners, her features sharply defined and well-proportioned. She was indeed beautiful.

It wasn’t the name Ichimura Masako; she went by a different stage name.

“Beautiful,” I murmured, admiring that small portrait. It wasn’t flattery, it was my genuine thought. She possessed the sharp, refined beauty typical of Edo-style elegance that I personally favored.

“Really? Beautiful?” She smiled, looking pleased.

The Public Relations Troupe performed plays for the industrial warriors once or twice a month using the stage at the Welfare Hall, and Ichimura Masako played the heroine each time.

As she delivered her lines, she would sway her body somewhat exaggeratedly and wave her arms and legs about. It wasn’t exactly skillful, but her very presence was simply dazzling.

Her lines, while free of accent, had a peculiar quirk in their intonation.

I was only fifteen, but a child’s intuition when encountering art and performance is surprisingly accurate.

Ten or fifteen years later, as an adult, I sometimes revisit the same work and am surprised to find my childhood impression was spot on.

Even now, I believe a child’s intuition and discernment shouldn't be underestimated.

It wasn’t exactly skillful, but Ichimura Masako’s flamboyant, showy acting was nevertheless a hit with the audience of industrial warriors.

She was young and beautiful, possessing a sensual allure that seemed to emanate from her proportions, moving her entire body with a slightly exaggerated, supple flexibility. Sighs of admiration even rose from the audience.

She performed in the war-mongering play titled, “For the Peace of the Orient.”

The script was written by Keiichiro Suzuki, the deputy chief of the Public Relations Division who considered himself the leader of this troupe.

It was a flimsy play depicting a quasi-romantic scene between a Japanese soldier occupying a village somewhere on the Chinese mainland and a young woman from that village.

When I say “a flimsy play,” I don’t mean that I, now eighty years old, recall it as flimsy. Rather, I, who was fifteen at the time, felt it even during rehearsals, “What a shoddy, shallow play this is!”

A village girl, crying after having her food stolen by Chinese soldiers, is rescued by a young Japanese soldier (played by the self-proclaimed handsome Katsuben actor, Shintaro Yoshioka) and the two fall into a faint love.

The girl has an elderly mother (played by Otoshi Yamakawa, a former onnagata from the Goro troupe) and a younger brother (a role I played). Their father had been killed by Chinese soldiers.

The retreating Chinese army was pursued, and the Japanese forces were soon to advance from this village.

The girl, the handsome soldier, and their tender romance ended in just three days, with their farewell scene as the climax. During that time, slogans like “Japan is fighting for peace in the Orient!” were inserted incessantly, making it a shallow, tedious play depicting a Japan-China friendship in a flimsy way. Yet the audience gave a thunderous applause.

This was because Ichimura Masako, playing the Chinese girl, wore a so-called “Chinese dress” with slits on both sides reaching above her knees.

Under the Chinese dress, she wore only white bloomers.

(Of course, underwear like panties didn’t exist back then.)

It was a floral patterned outfit that accentuated her slim waist and clearly showed the curves of her chest and hips.

There was a scene where the handsome Private First Class, played by Shintaro Yoshioka, who had gone out on reconnaissance, was shot by enemy soldiers and returned wounded. The girl bravely tended to him.

Ichimura Masako gave a passionate performance.

She performed so passionately it made me jealous.

Discovering Private Yoshioka crawling back like an insect after being shot in the leg, the daughter tenderly tends to his wounds.

She moves about the stage, standing, sitting, and kneeling.

Each time, the sides of her Chinese dress split open, revealing her thighs and white bloomers.

The audience, filled with industrial warriors, was overwhelmingly male. Their applause and cheers were only natural.

Neither the actors nor the audience questioned the unnaturalness of the Chinese villagers conversing fluently in Japanese with the Japanese soldiers.

As long as it looked entertaining, that was probably enough.

In that sense, it surely provided entertainment for the hearts of the workers laboring day and night under harsh conditions, offering them momentary comfort, and that likely contributed to increased productivity.

This play, “For the Peace of the Orient,” was for some reason well-received. Requests came from various factories, and it was performed repeatedly many times.

Not only from Kameari, but also from military supply factories in the Saitama area. The actors and staff would pile into the beds of trucks and head out.

The author and troupe leader, Deputy Chief Suzuki, was extremely proud.

In the play, Deputy Chief Suzuki portrayed the commander of the Japanese military unit with great dignity and pride. For Suzuki, who was well-built and always walked with his chest puffed out, it was truly the perfect role.

Early in the play, there was a scene where a brother and sister embraced joyfully after the brother rescued his sister, who had been attacked by Chinese soldiers and was in danger, with the help of a Japanese soldier.

“Don’t hold back, go ahead and hug me, boy,” Ichimura Masako said. I wrapped my arms around her back and clung to her with all my might, though I don’t actually remember the sensation very clearly.

It should have been an unforgettable, deeply moving experience, a sensual encounter during my sensitive adolescence. Yet somehow, only a vague memory remains.

Shouldn’t the memory of her body, held so tightly, with such forceful contact on stage, be more vivid in my mind?

What I remember clearly now is still her butt, wrapped in her pants, bouncing and swaying as we sat close together, straddling the bicycle seat.

More than the touch itself, it’s the heat of my desire back then, the desire to not touch. No, the inability to touch, the fantasy I held tightly in my chest, that remains more strongly etched in me now.

Truthfully, I wrote at length about my memories with Ichimura Masako precisely because I wanted to write about that butt on the saddle.

I don’t know if it was necessary to write so extensively about the sensuality and allure of that butt on the saddle.

Was this chapter about Ichimura Masako too long, just to write about that butt on the saddle?

Did I bore the readers?

I’m not confident.

But the fact remains, for sixty-five years, it has lived on in my mind, unforgotten.