Uramado

April 1959

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Summary

The April 1959 issue of Uramado is organized around a special feature on 淫祠邪教, imagined obscene, heretical, and sexually charged religious cults. Its contents combine illustrated crime and suspense, supernatural and historical fiction, pseudo-ethnographic accounts of secret rites, photographic nude studies, and recurring columns on actresses and popular visual culture. The issue repeatedly uses temples, shrines, hidden chambers, mountain settlements, occult societies, and charismatic religious figures as settings in which desire, coercion, punishment, and ritual become intertwined.

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The opening section establishes this mixture of pulp narrative and visual spectacle. “The Vanished Tattooed Nude” presents a heavily illustrated mystery involving a nude woman, criminal pursuit, captivity, and bodily marking. It is followed by Fujisawa Osamu’s “Nude Masterpieces,” a studio portfolio emphasizing sculptural poses, shadow, and the isolated female figure. Tōge Kōsuke’s “Secret Tales of Obscene Cults Abroad” then surveys lurid stories of occult sects, ritual sexuality, devil worship, and sensational Western literature, providing the conceptual frame for the themed issue.

The main body moves through extended works of historical fantasy, supernatural suspense, and erotic adventure. “Tickling Kannon” develops an Edo-period tale of money, deception, family obligation, and the exploitation of a young woman. “The Burning Women’s Cave” relocates the action to a mysterious mountain hot-spring district, where travelers encounter a hidden female community and an underground complex. Other stories center on supernatural vengeance, enchanted objects, secret temples, riding or possession imagery, magical cords, and cults whose doctrines transform female bodies into offerings, mediums, or instruments of authority.

Several longer contributions in the middle and later sections expand the issue’s imagined religious systems. “The Cult of Female Bodily Suffering,” “Nude Benten,” “The Golden-Cat Cult of Female Desire,” “The Sorceress of Yasaka,” and “Sacrifice to the God of Love” combine religious vocabulary with scenes of initiation, bodily ordeal, ritual display, and concealed communities. “Black-Hair Binding” and “Hair Lantern” shift emphasis toward fetishized hair, magical restraint, and ghostly or folkloric motifs. The recurring “That Scene, That Actress” column supplies a contrasting popular-culture interlude by discussing memorable performances and images of actresses.

The closing portion includes “Her Mass,” which adapts Christian ritual language to an erotic and transgressive narrative, followed by the long fantasy “Phantom Samurai: The Gecko Spell of Exorcism.” Publication information, submission instructions, and editorial notices conclude an issue whose identity rests on the fusion of postwar pulp fiction, illustrated eroticism, invented ethnography, supernatural folklore, and fascination with forbidden belief.

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Table of Contents 22 items
  1. The Vanished Tattooed Nude by Akitsu Kyōta
    11–18
  2. Nude Masterpieces by Fujisawa Osamu
    19–26
  3. Secret Tales of Obscene Cults Abroad by Tōge Kōsuke
    27–34
  4. Tickling Kannon by Enjōji Tatsu
    36–49
  5. The Burning Women’s Cave by Mizorogi Shukuko
    50–61
  6. Wheel of Vengeance Hell by Nakabayashi Setsuzō
    62–75
  7. The Goddess’s Jar by Minamimura Ran
    76–87
  8. Selections from a Heretical Temple of Lust by Suzuki Kazuo
    88–101
  9. The Riding Immortal Woman by Fujimi Iku
    102–109
  10. The Magic of the Waist Cord by Shimamoto Haruo
    110–123
  11. The Strange Cult of Loving Spirits by Iida Toyokichi
    124–149
  12. The Cult of Female Bodily Suffering by Setani Tomohachi
    150–162
  13. Nude Benten by Nakajima Yoshimi
    163–170
  14. The Sin of Falling by Ushioi Taku
    171–181
  15. The Golden-Cat Cult of Female Desire by Yagiri Jūhachi
    182–193
  16. That Scene, That Actress by Shiba Toshiyasu
    194–201
  17. The Sorceress of Yasaka by Hashizume Hikoshichi
    202–213
  18. Sacrifice to the God of Love by Kitaba Okunao
    214–227
  19. Black-Hair Binding by Odagiri Sō
    228–244
  20. Hair Lantern by Shima Fuji
    245–261
  21. Her Mass by Kurobane Shin
    262–275
  22. Phantom Samurai: The Gecko Spell of Exorcism by Kuroki Shinobu
    276–297

Highlights

  • “The Vanished Tattooed Nude” opens the issue with a densely illustrated crime narrative involving pursuit, captivity, tattooing, and the circulation of sensational images. (PDF pp. 6–11).
  • Fujisawa Osamu’s “Nude Masterpieces” presents a sustained monochrome studio portfolio built around dramatic shadow, isolated bodies, and sculptural posing. (PDF pp. 12–17).
  • “Secret Tales of Obscene Cults Abroad” surveys devil worship, secret rites, ritual sexuality, and Western occult fiction, establishing the intellectual and sensational framework of the special issue. (PDF pp. 18–25).
  • “Tickling Kannon” is an extended Edo-period narrative in which family debt, deception, religious imagery, and the exploitation of a young woman converge. (PDF pp. 27–40).
  • “The Burning Women’s Cave” follows travelers into a mysterious mountain and hot-spring community, gradually revealing a concealed female society and underground chambers. (PDF pp. 41–52).
  • “The Cult of Female Bodily Suffering” develops one of the issue’s most explicit invented religious systems, organizing female suffering and bodily discipline as doctrine and ritual. (PDF pp. 141–153).
  • “The Golden-Cat Cult of Female Desire” combines animal symbolism, occult authority, sexuality, and religious secrecy within the issue’s central cult motif. (PDF pp. 173–184).
  • “The Sorceress of Yasaka” draws on shrine and folk-magical imagery to depict a dangerous female ritual specialist and a world governed by secrecy and supernatural power. (PDF pp. 193–204).
  • “Black-Hair Binding” and “Hair Lantern” form a late pairing centered on hair as fetish, magical instrument, bodily trace, and source of supernatural danger. (PDF pp. 219–252).
  • “Her Mass” adapts Christian ceremonial vocabulary and imagery to a transgressive narrative immediately before the issue’s closing samurai fantasy. (PDF pp. 253–266).
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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