Kitan Club

April 1963

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Summary

The April 1963 issue of Kitan Club combines photographic bondage portfolios, fetish illustration, psychological essays, first-person testimony, erotic fiction, travel writing, correspondence, and an unusually extensive community section. Its opening visual program occupies a substantial portion of the issue. The first gravure sequence presents inverted posing, overhead wrist restraint, tightly compressed floor bondage, outdoor gagging, and rope arrangements emphasizing posture and physical strain. A full-page illustration gallery follows, with Shima Takashi, Claude Koga, and Taki Reiko depicting a woman dancing in a cangue, wire torture, an avant-garde artist contemplating bondage imagery, bee torment, a restraint apparatus for whipping, the final moments of a female castle ruler, imagined female seppuku, and cigarette torture. A second photographic group turns to compact rope bondage, chains and padlocks, staged abdominal cutting, female physical domination, and gagged kneeling restraint.

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The principal prose section begins with Hayashi Yumio’s essay “Religious Hallucination and Masochism,” which treats visions, faith, persecution, sacrifice, and suffering as intertwined psychological and cultural phenomena. Gotanda Chūtarō’s “The Humiliation of Machiko” shifts into fiction centered on coercion, voyeurism, and forced exposure, while Mutsu Ryō’s autobiographical “The Dark Generation” recalls wartime suspicion, police interrogation, imprisonment, and physical abuse. Takagi Nobuo’s “In the Prison of Beautiful Tastes” adopts the form of an abnormal or investigative story, moving through urban nightlife and encounters with fetish communities.

The middle of the issue alternates between confession, serial fiction, and specialized case material. Ichijiku’s account of enemas presents medical experience as the origin of a persistent fixation. Yukitoshi Haruka’s “Brothers, Apostles of the Sadistic Story” follows two men through an exoticized adventure involving bondage and captivity. Shorter pieces discuss childbirth enemas and intoxicated female behavior before the issue returns to longer works concerning masochistic devotion, female seppuku, troubled marriage, domination, and punishment. The continuing novel “The Wife of the Cross” and the feature on conversations addressed to God reinforce the issue’s repeated association of pain with confession, ritual, guilt, and transcendence.

The later pages widen the magazine’s geographical and social range through a Sardinian travel account, a prisoner’s bondage recollection, speculative fiction, the continuation of “Yellow Sex,” an essay devoted to feet, an interview concerning women’s sumo, and a reader’s account of acquiring pregnancy photographs. The final section is dominated by letters, personal notices, exchange requests, club information, editorial replies, and advertisements for photographs, books, prints, and specialized materials. This back matter makes the issue a record of an active readership as well as an anthology, revealing how private fantasies, personal testimony, collecting, and correspondence were woven into Kitan Club’s editorial culture.

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Table of Contents 39 items
  1. Opening Gravure: Inverted Rope Pose
    6
  2. Opening Gravure: Overhead Wrist Restraint
    7–8
  3. Opening Gravure: Compact Floor Bondage
    9–10
  4. Opening Gravure: Long-Haired Model in Rope Restraint
    11–12
  5. Opening Gravure: Outdoor Gagged Bondage
    13
  6. Dancing in a Cangue by Shima Takashi
    14
  7. Wire Torture by Claude Koga
    15
  8. Avant-Garde Artist by Claude Koga
    16
  9. Bee Torture by Claude Koga
    17
  10. Restraint Device for Whipping by Claude Koga
    18
  11. The Final Moments of the Lady of the Castle by Shima Takashi
    19
  12. Fantasy Image of a Woman Cutting Her Belly by Taki Reiko
    20
  13. Cigarette Torture by Shima Takashi
    21
  14. Second Gravure: Compact Rope Restraint
    22
  15. Second Gravure: Woman in Chains
    23–24
  16. Second Gravure: Staged Abdominal Cutting
    25–26
  17. Second Gravure: Folded Floor Bondage
    27
  18. Second Gravure: Female Physical Domination
    28
  19. Second Gravure: Gagged Kneeling Restraint
    29
  20. Religious Hallucination and Masochism by Hayashi Yumio
    34–39
  21. The Humiliation of Machiko by Gotanda Chūtarō
    40–45
  22. The Dark Generation by Mutsu Ryō
    46–49
  23. In the Prison of Beautiful Tastes by Takagi Nobuo
    50–59
  24. Confession Concerning Enemas by Ichijiku
    60–69
  25. Brothers, Apostles of the Sadistic Story by Yukitoshi Haruka
    70–81
  26. The Childbirth Enema by Suga Chiyo
    82–83
  27. The Intoxicated Woman by Hōda Fujihito
    84–91
  28. A Masochist’s Love by Nakayasu Hiromichi
    92–98
  29. A History of Girls’ Seppuku by Taketani Jūzō
    99–105
  30. The Wife of the Cross by Shibasaki Shigeko
    106–117
  31. Murmurs to God by Aruta Matado
    118–121
  32. A Visit to Sardinia by Sudō Ritsuo
    122–125
  33. A Prisoner’s Bondage Story by Hanada Ichirō
    126–143
  34. Somewhere in the Universe by Saji Asazō
    144–151
  35. Yellow Sex, Continued by Yoshino Mayumi
    152–165
  36. Feet by Hinomiya Tōru
    166–169
  37. Interview with a Female Sumo Wrestler by Okahira Yoshio
    170–173
  38. Acquiring Photographs of Pregnancy by Senuma Shirō
    174–177
  39. Reader Communications
    178–192

Highlights

  • The first gravure sequence presents inverted posing, overhead wrist restraint, compact floor bondage, outdoor gagging, and close studies of rope placement. (PDF pp. 6–13).
  • The illustrated gallery by Shima Takashi, Claude Koga, and Taki Reiko depicts cangue restraint, wire torture, whipping equipment, insect torment, female sword combat, seppuku fantasy, and cigarette torture. (PDF pp. 14–21).
  • The second gravure sequence features compact rope positions, heavy chains and padlocks, staged abdominal cutting, female domination, and gagged restraint. (PDF pp. 22–29).
  • Hayashi Yumio’s “Religious Hallucination and Masochism” examines religious visions and persecution through the psychology of suffering, submission, and sacrificial devotion. (PDF pp. 31–36).
  • Mutsu Ryō’s “The Dark Generation” presents a first-person recollection of wartime suspicion, arrest, interrogation, imprisonment, and abuse by police authorities. (PDF pp. 43–46).
  • Takagi Nobuo’s “In the Prison of Beautiful Tastes” follows an investigator through urban spaces associated with fetish and abnormal-sex subcultures. (PDF pp. 47–56).
  • Ichijiku’s “Confession Concerning Enemas” traces a fetishistic fixation to medical treatment and hospitalization. (PDF pp. 57–66).
  • The middle fiction sequence links captivity, religious devotion, female seppuku, domestic suffering, and masochistic longing across several long-form contributions. (PDF pp. 67–140).
  • The later section includes speculative fiction, the continuation of “Yellow Sex,” a sustained essay on feet, an interview about women’s sumo, and a reader’s discussion of pregnancy photographs. (PDF pp. 141–174).
  • The closing correspondence and classified section records requests for photographs and publications, club notices, reader introductions, personal exchanges, and editorial replies. (PDF pp. 175–189).
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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