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Kitan Club

December 1947

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Cover of Kitan Club, December 1947

Issue Details

Issue
2
PDF pages
27

Summary

The December 1947 Kitan Club, identified on the cover and contents page as No. 2 and as an Eccentrics and Abnormal People issue, develops the magazine’s early postwar fascination with unconventional sexuality, unusual personalities, erotic customs, medical and sexological observation, and sensational urban life. A formal contents page organizes the magazine around profiles of unusual people, a recurring taxonomy of abnormal sexual desire, sexual folklore, foreign travel and nightlife, first-person testimony, erotic commerce, prostitution, and historical curiosities. The editorial tone oscillates between quasi-scientific explanation, humorous anecdote, sensational reportage, and sympathetic personal narrative.

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The issue opens with Yuge Shinobu’s Profiles of Eccentrics and Unusual People, an extended portrait of individuals whose behavior, relationships, and sexual lives depart from contemporary norms. A neighboring illustrated feature describes a man obsessed with women’s bare feet. The recurring Portraits of People with Abnormal Sexual Desires appears at several points in the issue, treating voyeuristic, masochistic, sadistic, and fetishistic tendencies as distinct categories. The series reflects the period’s imported sexological terminology while presenting case histories in an accessible magazine style. Nobuta Haruo’s Erotic Men’s Amorous Conduct Records shifts toward historical anecdote, using notorious figures from earlier periods as examples of extravagant sexual behavior.

Other articles broaden the geographic and cultural frame. Ukita Tsugio describes the erotic atmosphere of Singapore’s side streets, while Mizuhara Junko gives a first-person account of working as a nude model. Sakai Sanjin continues the previous issue’s study of genital worship and sexualized folk objects, discussing phallic stones, shrines, ritual symbols, and fertility beliefs. Yabe Bunkichi’s investigation of supposedly primitive sexual customs ranges across circumcision, genital modification, ritual practice, and ethnographic material, illustrating how early Kitan Club mixed anthropology, folklore, and sensational sexuality.

The later half turns increasingly toward contemporary urban life. Asakawa Gyōji’s Curious Business: The Matchmaking House describes a commercial intermediary for men and women. The Dark Women’s Ecology material follows women who have fallen into prostitution or unstable urban livelihoods, while Aoki Tomiji’s Tour of Foreign and Unusual Baths compares bathing practices and sexualized bath culture in Japan and abroad. A report on a woman who accumulated a large sum through black-market activity and Nakahara Harumi’s Confession of My Male Mistress add further portraits of postwar survival, sexual unconventionality, and marginal relationships.

The closing pages continue the male-mistress confession, add a humorous Edo-period erotic anecdote, and present The Whereabouts of The Carnal Prayer Mat, which discusses the transmission and publication history of the Chinese erotic novel Rouputuan in Japan. Membership notices, manuscript solicitation, editorial remarks, advertisements, and the colophon close the issue. Taken as a whole, the number shows Kitan Club rapidly consolidating an editorial identity based on sexological classification, erotic folklore, urban reportage, fetishism, marginal sexual lives, and the circulation of erotic literature.

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Table of Contents 21 items
  1. Profiles of Eccentrics and Unusual People by Yuge Shinobu
    3–5
  2. Erotic Men's Amorous Conduct Records by Nobuta Haruo
    6–7
  3. Portraits of People with Abnormal Sexual Desires, Part 1
    5
  4. Portraits of People with Abnormal Sexual Desires, Part 2: Masochistic Desire
    10
  5. Portraits of People with Abnormal Sexual Desires, Part 3: Sadistic Desire
    11
  6. Portraits of People with Abnormal Sexual Desires, Part 4: Fetishistic Desire
    17
  7. Singapore's Side Streets Overflowing with Southern Atmosphere by Ukita Tsugio
    8
  8. A Nude Model Tells All by Mizuhara Junko
    9–10
  9. Worship of the Genitals and the Sexual Spirit: A Study of Folk Toys, Part 2 by Sakai Sanjin
    11–12
  10. Exploring the Abnormal Life of Primitive Peoples by Yabe Bunkichi
    13–15
  11. A Certain Day in the Life of an Amorous Company President by Nanyō Niga
    14
  12. Curious Business: The Matchmaking House by Asakawa Gyōji
    16–17
  13. The Dark Women's Ecology
    18–19
  14. Her True Story: From Schoolteacher to the Night World by Ninchōji Minoru
    18
  15. A Fourteen-Year-Old Girl Pregnant by a Customer
    18
  16. Women Seen in a Panpan Lodging House
    19
  17. Tour of Foreign and Unusual Baths by Aoki Tomiji
    20–22
  18. The Black-Market Woman's 100,000-Yen Savings by Kamiyama Eizō
    22
  19. Confession of My Male Mistress by Nakahara Harumi
    23–25
  20. Edo Erotic Anecdote: The Handsome Customer
    24
  21. The Whereabouts of The Carnal Prayer Mat by Hōen Bunko Shujin
    25–26

Highlights

  • Profiles of Eccentrics and Unusual People opens the issue with an extended examination of people whose sexual behavior and private lives depart from conventional expectations, establishing the issue's central interest in human variation. (PDF pp. 3–5).
  • Portraits of People with Abnormal Sexual Desires recurs in several installments, distinguishing voyeuristic, masochistic, sadistic, and fetishistic tendencies through contemporary sexological categories and case narratives. (PDF pp. 5,10–11,17).
  • Erotic Men's Amorous Conduct Records uses historical figures and anecdotes to connect legendary sexual excess with the magazine's broader catalog of unusual desire. (PDF pp. 6–7).
  • The Singapore feature presents tropical urban space through nightlife, dress, flirtation, hotels, and sexual commerce, reflecting the magazine's fascination with foreign erotic modernity. (PDF p. 8).
  • A Nude Model Tells All offers a first-person account of posing nude, discussing professional modeling, bodily exposure, artistic settings, and the social assumptions surrounding women who model. (PDF pp. 9–10).
  • The continuation of the study of genital worship examines phallic stones, shrines, ritual symbols, and fertility beliefs, extending Kitan Club's early interest in sexuality as folklore and religious practice. (PDF pp. 11–12).
  • Exploring the Abnormal Life of Primitive Peoples surveys circumcision, genital modification, ritual sexuality, and ethnographic examples, revealing the magazine's mixture of anthropology and sensational sexual curiosity. (PDF pp. 13–15).
  • The Dark Women's Ecology and related narratives portray prostitution, economic precarity, and women's survival strategies in the immediate postwar city. (PDF pp. 18–19).
  • Tour of Foreign and Unusual Baths compares bathhouses and bathing customs across different places, treating communal nudity and bathing as both cultural practice and erotic spectacle. (PDF pp. 20–22).
  • The Whereabouts of The Carnal Prayer Mat traces the transmission and publication of Rouputuan, connecting Kitan Club's contemporary erotic culture to an older Chinese and Japanese history of erotic literature. (PDF pp. 25–26).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue:

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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