Uramado
April 1961
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Issue Details
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 4
- PDF pages
- 210
Summary
The April 1961 issue of Uramado combines illustrated erotic fiction, bondage photography, sexual and psychological commentary, crime and historical narratives, reader-oriented miscellany, and international reportage. Its formal contents reveal an editorial design that alternates between explicitly sadomasochistic material and the magazine’s broader interest in taboo sexuality, unusual behavior, popular psychology, crime, and sensational cultural subjects. The opening fiction, The Torture-Device Maker, is heavily illustrated and follows an elderly craftsman obsessed with constructing devices for restraint and punishment. It is interrupted by other features and resumes later, giving the early portion of the issue a deliberately serialized rhythm within a single number.
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Table of Contents 24 items
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Summary
A long illustrated and photographic erotic narrative about a maker of torture devices, moving between historical Edo settings and modern staged scenes of captivity, bondage, sexual punishment, and masochistic desire.
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Hanging Torment
Summary
A photographic portfolio documents women bound and suspended by rope in staged scenes of physical restraint and torment.
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The Devil's Lips
Summary
An illustrated erotic fantasy follows a narrator’s obsessive fascination with Akemi, a strip performer whose body—especially her thighs—becomes the focus of escalating bondage, humiliation, and coercive encounters.
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The Cursed Breasts
Summary
Set in the Edo period, this illustrated erotic crime narrative depicts a woman’s striking breasts becoming the center of voyeurism, sexual exploitation, public scandal, and official pursuit.
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Temptation to Masochism
Summary
An essay on the temptation of masochism examines how submission, humiliation, cruelty, and fascination with authority can emerge in everyday life, drawing on psychological observations, historical anecdotes, reported cases, and fictional or cinematic examples. It also considers the shifting relationship between powerful and vulnerable people and the cultural representation of masochistic desire.
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Toraji Should Be Bound
Summary
A grotesque supernatural erotic narrative follows Sadako, Toraji, and others through encounters involving uncanny powers, coercion, captivity, bodily violence, and sexualized restraint, with accompanying discussion and imagery from a related film adaptation.
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Possessed by Sound
Summary
A confessional-style male narrative traces the protagonist’s lifelong erotic fixation on sounds, quietness, and sensory impressions, connecting these experiences to childhood, family relationships, desire, shame, and encounters with women.
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Memorandum of Inoue Chikugo-no-Kami
Summary
A historical erotic narrative about Inoue Chikugo-no-Kami’s persecution of Christians, featuring arrests, interrogations, torture, bondage, and sacrificial religious conflict in an Edo-period setting.
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Hungry Eyes Shine on the Stairs
Summary
A crime-and-captivity story follows the pursuit, restraint, interrogation, and punishment of a woman amid stairways, hidden rooms, police involvement, and voyeuristic erotic tension, accompanied by dramatic illustrations.
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Strange Tales
Summary
A feature examining the aesthetic, grotesque, erotic, and fetishistic dimensions of Edogawa Ranpo’s detective fiction also includes a reader-style vignette about romance involving handcuffs.
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The Rough Rope and Black Hair Composition
Summary
A photographic portfolio presents a woman posed in varied outdoor and studio-style scenes bound with rough rope, emphasizing the visual composition of rope against her body and long black hair.
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The Binding Curse of Princess Teru
Summary
An eight-part illustrated historical supernatural tale follows Princess Teru and other figures through curses, enchanted images, captivity, rope binding, burial, and ritualized punishment in an Edo-period setting.
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Shōji and Woman
Summary
A photographic feature presents a male subject posed in elaborate rope restraints against shōji screens and within a traditional Japanese interior, emphasizing the visual composition of staged bondage scenes.
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The Strange Island of Female Guardians
Summary
An illustrated serialized erotic narrative follows female students and a teacher on a remote island where women exercise authoritarian control through military discipline, captivity, rope restraint, and corporal punishment. Its wartime setting and recurring episodes frame female domination as a historical fantasy.
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Uramado Town
Summary
A miscellany of Uramado Town briefs surveys films, television, crime and prison news, sensational incidents, investigative reports, and other topical cultural items.
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Black-Hair Confession
Summary
Shima Fuji’s serialized confession follows a narrator’s intense fascination with women’s black hair, weaving erotic attraction, family memories, social encounters, and hair-care imagery into a personal narrative.
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The World Beneath the Skirt
Summary
An erotic reportage-style feature depicts men observing and exploiting women’s legs, feet, footwear, and sleeping bodies in trains, streets, and other public or semi-public settings, accompanied by explicit illustrations of voyeuristic and fetishistic encounters.
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Uramado Miscellany and New Film Introductions
Summary
A miscellaneous editorial section combines sensational news and sexual-interest reports with introductions and reviews of contemporary films, including erotic, violent, and historical productions.
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The Underground Organization of Neo-Nazism
Summary
A serialized fictional narrative follows a violent neo-Nazi underground organization whose recruits undergo ideological indoctrination, coercive training, restraint, torture, and sexualized disciplinary scenes amid conspiratorial political activity.
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Roundtable: Remembering the Artist Seiu
Summary
A lively roundtable commemorates the artist Seiu through personal recollections of his character, career, paintings, stage work, photography, and influence on Japanese erotic and bondage imagery.
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Reader Short Reviews
Summary
A reader-review section gathers responses to recent magazine content, assessing erotic paintings, photographs, fiction, and editorial features while reflecting on the publication’s direction and standards.
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The Garden of Ecstatic Cruelty 4: Prayer of the Female Slave
Summary
The fourth installment of a serialized sadomasochistic narrative follows women drawn into relationships of captivity, erotic devotion, coercion, punishment, and ritualized restraint, with extended scenes of rope bondage and psychological domination.
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Ecstatic-Cruelty Photo Collection
Summary
A photographic portfolio presents staged erotic scenes of a woman subjected to rope bondage, immobilization, positional restraint, and suspension in a studio setting.
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Selected Illustration Masterpieces from Earlier Uramado Issues
Summary
A retrospective portfolio revisits selected illustrated features from earlier Uramado issues, presenting fictional and sensational scenes involving rope bondage, captivity, punishment, supernatural motifs, and historical erotic fantasy.
Highlights
- The Torture-Device Maker opens the issue with a heavily illustrated narrative about an elderly craftsman devoted to constructing specialized implements of restraint and punishment; the story later resumes after an interruption by other features. (PDF pp. 6–10, 46–53).
- Hanging Torment, photographed by Yoshida Hisashi, is a stark black-and-white bondage portfolio centered on a nude woman restrained by her wrists overhead. (PDF pp. 11–14).
- The Devil's Lips combines first-person masochistic fantasy with extensive erotic illustration and establishes the issue's sustained interest in humiliation, fetishism, and sexual submission. (PDF pp. 16–23).
- The Cursed Breasts uses an Edo-period crime and punishment narrative to connect sexualized bodily imagery with public restraint, criminality, and historical cruelty. (PDF pp. 24–33).
- Temptation to Masochism by Kuroda Shirō is an extended essay relating cruelty and submission to psychology, hierarchy, sexual behavior, contemporary society, and examples from international cinema. (PDF pp. 34–45).
- The Rough Rope and Black Hair Composition is an extended photographic sequence emphasizing coarse rope, black hair, kneeling and reclining positions, and the visual aesthetics of restraint. (PDF pp. 95–102).
- The World Beneath the Skirt, installment three, treats voyeurism, women's clothing, exposure, and the erotic significance of looking beneath conventional dress. (PDF pp. 150–159).
- The Underground Organization of Neo-Nazism shifts the magazine into international reportage, discussing postwar extremist networks and clandestine political organization. (PDF pp. 166–171).
- A roundtable remembering the artist Seiu provides retrospective discussion of an important figure in Japanese erotic and punishment imagery and connects contemporary Uramado culture with an earlier artistic lineage. (PDF pp. 172–179).
- The closing sequence combines the extended narrative The Prayer of the Female Slave with a bondage-photo collection and reproductions of notable illustrations from earlier Uramado issues. (PDF pp. 182–210).
Contributors
Named contributors represented in this issue:
