Uramado

January 1958

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Cover of Uramado, January 1958

Issue Details

PDF pages
373

Summary

The January 1958 New Year issue of Uramado is a lavish 150-page special number organized around hidden crimes, historical punishment, erotic danger, supernatural tales, foreign pulp, and illustrated suspense. Its cover advertises the “Hidden Lord Special,” visually combining a distressed woman, historical cruelty, a large key, and torture imagery.

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The issue begins with a richly illustrated historical serial titled approximately “The Bewitching Tale of the Hidden Woman,” or “The Hidden Woman in Peril.” Set in the Edo period, it follows a woman trapped among political plots, household authority, criminal accusation, and physical restraint. Color illustrations show her pursued through snowy landscapes, interrogated by officials, tied in a seated position, and threatened inside domestic spaces.

The story’s visual emphasis is significant. Female captivity is not only described but carefully staged through posture, clothing, rope, and environment. One illustration shows the woman restrained around the torso and arms; another presents her on the floor near a dog, framed as both endangered person and pictorial object.

An extended historical essay, “A Woman’s Crimson Underrobe Seen Through the Age,” examines clothing, sexuality, custom, punishment, and the cultural meanings attached to women’s garments. The article uses antiquarian curiosity to eroticize objects associated with concealment and exposure.

The central New Year supplement begins with “The Righteous Man Who Lives in Darkness.” Its episodes include strangulation, inverted suspension, kidnapping, imprisonment, assault, and violent pursuit. Although presented as historical adventure, the serial repeatedly converts punishment into visual spectacle.

The feature’s titles include “The Man Strangled by a Dog,” “The Hanging Man,” “The Man Sold,” “The Punishment at the Barrier,” “The Woman at the Bathhouse,” “The Search of the Body,” and “The Burning Skin.” The organization resembles a sequence of illustrated punishments, each offering a different bodily predicament.

A second long serial, “Three Stages of the Former Enemy,” continues the magazine’s interest in historical revenge and punishment. Its illustrations show women threatened, disrobed, bound, or placed under the control of armed men. The body becomes evidence of guilt, vulnerability, and social rank.

The magazine also includes “The Shadow of Yomisen Road,” a historical crime tale involving abduction, alcohol, night travel, theft, and a woman subjected to violence. Again, familiar SM imagery appears within criminal and historical narrative rather than within reciprocal erotic practice.

A modern illustrated work, “Konbanwa,” or “Good Evening,” shifts into urban anxiety. Its illustrations show illness, medical intervention, nightlife, sexual danger, and threatening male figures. The modern city becomes another hidden world parallel to the Edo-period underworld.

A major nonfiction or investigative feature concerns prayer healers, hypnotists, and religious fraud. It describes how suggestion, ritual authority, and fear can be used to manipulate vulnerable people. Drawings of women under examination or control connect spiritual deception with bodily access.

The issue’s editorials repeatedly promote Uramado as a magazine that reveals what lies behind respectable surfaces. Crime, sexuality, superstition, medicine, and historical cruelty are all treated as concealed realities waiting to be exposed.

For readers of Kinbaku Today, the January 1958 issue is valuable because it demonstrates the persistence of punishment imagery outside the specialist SM press. Inversion, tying, confinement, flogging, bodily search, and forced exposure are already organized into repeatable visual motifs. What is missing is not the imagery but the later SM framework that would interpret these scenes through erotic preference, technique, or reciprocal desire.

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Table of Contents 29 items
  1. A Strange Tale of the Female Chūshingura by Yokoyama Kengo; illustrations by Nakajima Kimi
    Summary

    An illustrated historical erotic tale recasts the Chūshingura legend through the ordeal of a woman pursued, abducted, coerced, and subjected to humiliating restraint amid samurai intrigue.

  2. An Amorous Akō Ballad by Hōkaiji Kayō
    Summary

    This illustrated Akō-themed erotic ballad blends Chūshingura-era revenge and household intrigue with sexualized coercion, restraint, violence, and the threatened or actual punishment of women.

  3. A Loyal Retainer Living in Darkness by Shimamoto Haruo
    Summary

    This serialized historical erotic fiction follows a loyal retainer moving undercover through the intrigues surrounding the Akō vendetta, with secret messages, disguises, violence, and eroticized encounters involving coercion and restraint.

  4. Two Paths of the Genroku Era by Hashizume Hikoshichi
    Summary

    A serialized Genroku-era erotic adventure follows samurai, townspeople, and women through abduction, concealment, escape, social intrigue, and shifting romantic and sexual power relations. The narrative repeatedly uses confinement, coercion, and bondage imagery within its historical setting.

  5. Good Evening! by Narumi Genkichi
    Summary

    A serialized erotic story follows Chifumi from an unremarkable young woman into a transformed beauty through cosmetic surgery, tracing how her altered appearance changes her confidence, employment prospects, romantic relationships, and domestic life. Its numbered episodes combine sexual fantasy with anxieties about beauty, status, and personal identity.

  6. Shadow on the Road to the Underworld by Ujigawa Ryū
    Summary

    This serialized Edo-period erotic crime tale follows Sanpei and Oharu through betrayal, abduction, interrogation, revenge, and repeated scenes of coercive captivity and rope restraint.

  7. Secret Tale of the Basket Lantern by Matsui Raiko
    Summary

    A serialized Edo-period erotic tale follows Kiyoshichi and O-Chiyo through family intrigue, debt, deception, abduction, and escalating scenes of forced restraint and punitive violence, ending amid an unresolved confrontation.

  8. The Illustrated Mandala of Strange Tales by Kubomura Hiroshi
    Summary

    A serialized Edo-period erotic strange tale combining dramatic prose with heavily illustrated scenes of seduction, coercion, captivity, violence, and revenge among merchants, artisans, and samurai-era figures. The installment repeatedly foregrounds women and men subjected to ropes, confinement, assault, and other fetishized forms of restraint.

  9. The Graveyard Mansion by Jinkō Kyōichi
    Summary

    An episodic historical erotic tale in which an investigation of a sinister graveyard mansion uncovers buried bodies, family secrets, violent captivity, and grotesque encounters between the living and the dead.

  10. The Great Disloyalist by Takano Nijūsan
    Summary

    A historical erotic adventure about a disloyal samurai and his companions, involving abduction, pursuit, coercion, violence, and forbidden sexual intrigue amid Edo-period social and military settings.

  11. The Disordered Genroku Kimono by Kuroki Shinobu
    Summary

    A serialized historical erotic tale set in Edo-period Japan, following Koyata and other townspeople through clandestine encounters, jealousy, pursuit, deception, and violent confrontations involving sexual coercion and restraint. Dramatic illustrations reinforce the story’s scenes of captivity, bondage, and danger.

  12. Foxfire by Matsui Raiko
    Summary

    A serialized historical erotic mystery follows a dangerous investigation involving murder, pursuit, captivity, and women subjected to elaborate rope restraint and coercive treatment.

  13. Snowstorm Confession of Omiyo by Inō Takashi
    Summary

    This serialized historical erotic narrative recounts Omiyo’s troubled experiences amid snowbound travel, social vulnerability, coercive sexual power, and abusive male authority.

  14. The Bloodstained Kannon Image by Iida Toyokichi
    Summary

    A serialized historical erotic adventure follows the swordsman Shinpachirō through assassinations, pursuit, betrayal, and revenge surrounding the bloodstained Kannon image, with scenes of capture, coercion, and violent swordplay. The accompanying illustrations depict stylized samurai combat, bound or threatened figures, and eroticized restraint.

  15. The Demon-Hour Woman, Part Ten of the Secret Memorandum by Shimamoto Haruo
    Summary

    The tenth installment of Shimamoto Haruo’s serialized fiction follows a mysterious demon-like woman whose transformations, occult powers, violent encounters, and episodes of pursuit, restraint, and sexualized peril entangle Chizuru and other characters in a dark supernatural conspiracy.

  16. The White Caterpillar by Anzukasa Ichirō
    Summary

    A serialized erotic fantasy follows a woman whose strange encounters with a beautiful, caterpillar-like figure lead through captivity, bodily transformation, medicalized torment, and violent sadomasochistic power struggles.

  17. Kira’s Hawk Head by Inagaki Shisei
    Summary

    An illustrated historical erotic serial set in the Edo period depicts a young woman and rival men caught in schemes of seduction, abduction, confinement, deception, and coercive punishment.

  18. The Booby-Trapped Gun by Watson Dokuda
    Summary

    A serialized Western-style suspense story follows lawmen, hunters, and fugitives through a mountain settlement as a booby-trapped rifle, killings, revenge, pursuit, and a final armed confrontation expose a dangerous criminal scheme. The narrative incorporates captivity and scenes of people being bound or restrained outdoors.

  19. Two Men Named Kuranosuke by Koyama Ryūtarō
    Summary

    This serialized historical erotic fiction set in the Genroku period follows rival samurai households and their schemes of deception, pursuit, captivity, and revenge, with scenes of women being stripped, bound, gagged, humiliated, and subjected to coercive sexualized interrogation. Illustrated episodes combine the Ako vendetta milieu with melodramatic bondage and sadistic fantasy.

  20. The S.S. Secret Club by Yokoyama Masakatsu
    Summary

    A serialized erotic crime narrative follows a narrator’s increasingly perilous involvement with the clandestine S.S. club, whose members stage sadistic games, coercive encounters, disguises, surveillance, and execution-like punishments amid police threats and pursuit.

  21. The Beautiful Slave Jelissna by Kaibe Yōzō
    Summary

    An illustrated erotic narrative depicts a dissatisfied woman drawn into a coercive sexual situation connected with a pachinko-world setting, using domestic tension, male control, humiliation, and bondage imagery to frame her loss of autonomy.

  22. Pachinko Hell by Ōkōchi Jōhei
    Summary

    A serialized erotic story set around a pachinko parlor follows gambling-obsessed patrons and staff through coercive sexual encounters, bondage, humiliation, and escalating financial and emotional ruin.

  23. The Sole of the Foot and Gennai by Koyama Ryūtarō
    Summary

    A historical erotic narrative set in the Edo period depicts samurai, servants, and women entangled in secret intrigues, pursuit, captivity, and elaborate rope restraint, with fetishistic attention to bodies and clothing.

  24. The Treasury of King Ryuka by Fuji Kinya
    Summary

    A serialized erotic adventure follows the pirate King Ryuka and his companions through violent encounters, captivity, coercion, punishment, and bondage at sea and on land, accompanied by dramatic illustrations.

  25. Record of Wandering by Fushimi Kazuo
    Summary

    An autobiographical, epistolary narrative traces a young man’s wandering life, emotional isolation, romantic longing, and developing recognition of same-sex desire through a series of letters and recollections.

  26. Passion and the Compassionate Heart by Yamada Shigeyoshi
    Summary

    A serialized erotic-crime narrative follows a violent gang whose robberies, coercive encounters, kidnappings, and betrayals draw police attention, with scenes of bound captives and threatened women intensifying the story’s atmosphere of sadism and forbidden desire.

  27. The Sound Demon by Misaki Yōnosuke
    Summary

    A surreal erotic story follows a solitary narrator through postwar Tokyo nightlife and an unsettling encounter with Eiko, whose voice, appearance, and strange sensory effects generate fascination, disorientation, and obsessive desire.

  28. Tattooed Benten by Nakabayashi Setsuzō
    Summary

    A serialized historical erotic story set in the Edo period, following women and men through abduction, confinement, sexual coercion, punishment, and elaborate rope-bound scenes associated with a tattooed Benten figure. The narrative is accompanied by dramatic illustrations and emphasizes violent power relations, captivity, and fetishized bodily display.

  29. Publication Information and Advertisements
    Summary

    The supplied pages contain a continuation of a serialized historical erotic narrative in which characters pursue, abduct, restrain, and interrogate one another amid scenes of rope bondage, gagging, and coercive sexual tension.

Highlights

  • The New Year cover combines a distressed woman, a large key, historical imagery, and instruments of punishment under the banner of a “Hidden Lord Special” (PDF p. 1).
  • The opening color serial presents a woman endangered by household authority, political intrigue, and criminal accusation (PDF pp. 6–12).
  • One color illustration shows the heroine bound around the torso and arms while seated on the floor (PDF p. 12).
  • A full-page illustration of a woman near a dog transforms domestic vulnerability into a carefully composed erotic-danger image (PDF p. 13).
  • “A Woman’s Crimson Underrobe Seen Through the Age” studies garments, sexuality, custom, and concealed parts of the female body (PDF pp. 14–21).
  • The New Year supplement “The Righteous Man Who Lives in Darkness” begins a long catalogue of historical punishments and crimes (PDF p. 23).
  • “The Man Strangled by a Dog” uses animal attack, ligature, and helplessness as a sensational opening episode (PDF pp. 23–26).
  • “The Hanging Man” presents inverted or elevated restraint as part of historical punishment (PDF pp. 27–28).
  • Later episodes include sale, branding, confinement, bathhouse danger, bodily search, and burning or marked skin (PDF pp. 29–40).
  • “The Woman at the Bathhouse” combines nudity, public vulnerability, criminal intrusion, and historical setting (PDF pp. 34–35).
  • “The Search of the Body” makes forced inspection itself a narrative and visual spectacle (PDF pp. 36–37).
  • “Three Stages of the Former Enemy” develops a longer historical tale of revenge, abduction, and punishment (PDF pp. 41–53).
  • “The Shadow of Yomisen Road” joins night travel, alcohol, abduction, and violence in a historical crime narrative (PDF pp. 65–69).
  • The modern serial “Konbanwa” brings the magazine’s hidden-world formula into hospitals, nightlife, and urban sexual danger (PDF pp. 54–64).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue: