Kitan Club

December 1960

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Summary

The December 1960 issue of Kitan Club combines an unusually extensive opening sequence of bondage illustration and photography with historical fantasy, contemporary erotic fiction, essays, reader contributions, serial narratives, and editorial correspondence. Its editorial identity rests on the movement between visual demonstrations of restraint and literary examinations of domination, humiliation, fantasy, punishment, and secrecy.

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The front matter begins with illustrated studies of suspension and constrained posing. The “Hanging-Play Instruction Room” presents a series of imagined suspension arrangements, including shrimp suspension, inverted suspension, wrist suspension, torso suspension, one-leg suspension, ladder suspension, and combined hand-and-foot suspension. These are followed by the large “Ecstatic Female Body Highlights” portfolio, a succession of photographic scenes featuring multiple models in rope bondage, gags, mirrored interiors, traditional rooms, beds, and outdoor settings. The sequence emphasizes posture, expression, costume, contrast between black and white rope, and the visual transformation of ordinary domestic spaces into theatrical sites of confinement.

The literary section opens with Hayashi Tadashi’s historical fantasy “The Tale of Princess Yuki,” in which capture, restraint, threatened punishment, and feudal authority structure the narrative. Later stories move between contemporary and period settings. “A White Flower Under Abuse,” “One Thief, Two Maids, Three Concubines,” and “Somewhere in the Universe” explore captivity, criminal power, sexual coercion, and speculative danger. Essays and documentary-style contributions examine staged female wrestling, visual erotics, bondage equipment, and the psychology of spectatorship. Chigusa Tadao’s “The Path of a Heretic” provides a longer reflective narrative, while Matsui Reiko’s “Unrequited Love” develops erotic suffering through a serialized fictional framework.

The later half broadens into personal testimony, male-male fiction, speculative fiction, historical sadism, and accounts of unusual punishment. “Thoughts on the Akebono Society Incident” adopts the form of a reader contribution, while “The Land of Shadows,” “My Fantasy Inspired by Chrysanthemums,” and “The Strange Hell Hut” shift between uncanny, confessional, and period modes. Numa Shōzō’s “From the Notebook of a Dreamer” and “Acrobatic Cruelty Record” continue the magazine’s interest in elaborate imagined ordeals. The closing fiction, including “Hot-Spring Hell” and “The Underground City of Female Slaves,” returns to hidden spaces, organized captivity, and fantastic systems of domination. Reader correspondence, editorial notes, publication information, and notices conclude an issue that presents bondage as visual art, narrative machinery, private fantasy, and shared subcultural discourse.

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Table of Contents 27 items
  1. Hanging-Play Instruction Room by Shima Takashi
    5–14
  2. Ecstatic Female Body Highlights by Fujimi Shirō
    15–47
  3. The Tale of Princess Yuki by Hayashi Tadashi
    62–70
  4. A Woman for Display by Tsujimura Takashi
    71–75
  5. Yamamoto Fujiko as Shirakoya Komako by Higashiyama Eishi
    76–77
  6. A White Flower Under Abuse by Akagawa Michirō
    78–87
  7. One Thief, Two Maids, Three Concubines by Nishida Jin
    88–95
  8. A Delicious Thing on the Ground by Toyama Kasuhiko
    96–97
  9. Somewhere in the Universe by Saji Shinzo
    98–113
  10. Female Beauty Revealed in Women’s Wrestling by Yukizaki Kyōto
    114–121
  11. Burning Star by Fujiyama Hideo
    122–133
  12. The Path of a Heretic by Chigusa Tadao
    134–143
  13. Thoughts on Foreign Magazines by Kurahito Naruhito
    144–147
  14. How About This Enema Device? by Nakai Teruo
    148–149
  15. Unrequited Love by Matsui Reiko
    150–161
  16. Thoughts on the Akebono Society Incident by Furuta Sumio
    162–167
  17. Zhu Jin Zhao by Kan Ryōta
    168–173
  18. The Land of Shadows by Taki Reiko
    174–184
  19. The Life and Opinions of Mr. Asō Tamotsu by Asō Tamotsu
    185–187
  20. My Fantasy Inspired by Chrysanthemums by Kitagawa Haruo
    188–191
  21. The Strange Hell Hut by Yagiri Jūhachi
    192–193
  22. From the Notebook of a Dreamer by Numa Shōzō
    194–207
  23. Acrobatic Cruelty Record by Mizuta Makiko
    208–217
  24. Hot-Spring Hell by Ochiba Jūrō
    218–225
  25. The Underground City of Female Slaves by Shōyō Jūrō
    226–242
  26. Editorial Notes and Afterword
    243
  27. Readers’ Correspondence
    244–252

Highlights

  • The opening “Hanging-Play Instruction Room” illustrates multiple suspension concepts and evaluates them primarily as visual compositions rather than as practical techniques. (PDF pp. 5–14).
  • The large “Ecstatic Female Body Highlights” portfolio presents numerous models in rope bondage across Japanese rooms, bedrooms, mirrored interiors, and outdoor locations, creating one of the issue’s most substantial visual sections. (PDF pp. 15–47).
  • “The Tale of Princess Yuki” opens the literary section with an illustrated feudal fantasy centered on capture, restraint, threatened execution, and political intrigue. (PDF pp. 49–57).
  • “A Woman for Display” combines photographs of a bound model with an essay on the female body as an object of visual contemplation. (PDF pp. 58–64).
  • “A White Flower Under Abuse” uses modern crime melodrama and illustrations of restraint to develop the issue’s recurring association between innocence, victimization, and erotic danger. (PDF pp. 65–74).
  • “Female Beauty Revealed in Women’s Wrestling” examines staged struggle between women through explanatory text and sequential illustrations of holds and throws. (PDF pp. 101–108).
  • Chigusa Tadao’s “The Path of a Heretic” is a substantial reflective narrative that links transgressive desire, social alienation, and personal identity. (PDF pp. 121–130).
  • Matsui Reiko’s “Unrequited Love” continues a recurring erotic-fiction series with illustrations of binding and punishment integrated into the narrative. (PDF pp. 137–148).
  • Numa Shōzō’s “From the Notebook of a Dreamer” presents an extended sequence of imagined scenarios, reinforcing the magazine’s self-conscious treatment of fantasy as a private literary archive. (PDF pp. 195–204).
  • “The Underground City of Female Slaves” closes the principal fiction with a hidden-world narrative of organized captivity, coercive authority, and fantastic social control. (PDF pp. 213–229).
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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