Kitan Club

December 1956

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Summary

The December 1956 issue of Kitan Club combines illustrated fiction, personal testimony, cultural criticism, behavioral case studies, medical and psychological discussion, translated or adapted material, and an extensive reader-oriented back section. Its editorial identity rests on the constant movement between fantasy and documentation: bondage and punishment appear as motifs in stories and drawings, but also as subjects of correspondence, newspaper commentary, clothing analysis, psychiatric inquiry, and reports on contemporary film and print culture.

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The front matter opens with photographs of Western bondage costumes, masks, and posed restraint, followed by drawings by Kitahara Junko, Izumi Yoshiaki, Takireiko, and La Bonda. The principal text begins with Fujimi Iku’s “Depictions of Torment in Literature,” a wide-ranging essay that examines scenes of restraint, cruelty, execution, sexual violence, and female suffering in historical and popular narratives. Short newspaper and magazine communications broaden the issue’s documentary frame through discussions of homosexuality, clothing, and social behavior. Koyama Takeo’s serialized “The House of Silence” then supplies one of the issue’s longest fictional narratives, placing religious authority, incarceration, interrogation, corporal punishment, and execution within a melodramatic institutional setting.

The middle portion alternates compact essays and longer literary works. “Corset Mambo” and “The Attraction of Skirts” consider restrictive clothing, fashion, femininity, and bodily sensation. “Adolescence: Letters Between Mother and Child” documents youth sumo training through personal correspondence and practical descriptions of ritual, costume, competition, and discipline. Naruyama Nōhei’s play “The Bride of the Prison” turns confinement into theatrical melodrama, while Maki Fujio’s “The Birth of the Yellow Orami” develops an exotic adventure narrative. Essays proposing exhibitions of women bound in Japanese dress and discussing ideas for images of beautiful women reveal the magazine’s interest in staging, composition, costume, and visual production.

Later sections include historical fiction about a female warrior, Numa Shōzō’s continuing notebooks and “The Domesticated Human Yapoo,” accounts of sadistic fantasy, mental illness, feminization, hormones, cross-gender identification, and personal experience. These pieces repeatedly connect desire with transformation, whether through costume, discipline, medical intervention, fantasy, or social role. Short reports on bondage cinema, accidental deaths involving restraint or sound-suppression devices, club organization, and regional activity shift the tone from fiction toward news, cautionary documentation, and subcultural networking.

The closing pages are dominated by modern masochism criticism, book and magazine notices, reader letters, editorial replies, correspondence columns, and publication records. This substantial back matter presents Kitan Club as a participatory research and affinity community in which readers exchange experiences, debate terminology, recommend materials, and propose organized activities. Across the issue, visual fantasy, literary history, personal confession, medical discourse, and community correspondence are treated as interlocking ways of investigating eroticized restraint, submission, identity, and bodily control.

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Table of Contents 40 items
  1. New Photograph Introduction, Part One
    18
  2. Ideyu by Kitahara Junko
    7–8
  3. Restrictive Clothing and Masks by Kumoi Hisako
    9
  4. Modern Masochism Art Review, Reprint Series No. 12
    10
  5. Takireiko Sketch Collection by Takireiko
    11–12
  6. New Euro-American Style, Part Four by La Bonda
    13
  7. Depictions of Torment in Literature by Fujimi Iku
    18–28
  8. Newspaper and Magazine Communications: Homosexuality Among American Soldiers in Shimbashi by Yagiri Jūhachi
    29
  9. My Loincloth, Part Two by Matsubara Michiyo
    30–32
  10. Interest in the Same Sex Rather Than the Opposite Sex by Hatamura Hajime
    33
  11. The House of Silence by Koyama Takeo
    34–46
  12. Corset Mambo by Hayashi Yasuhiko
    47
  13. The Attraction of Skirts by Azuma Ichirō
    48–49
  14. Adolescence: Letters Between Mother and Child by Yamaguchi Kōichi
    50–53
  15. The Bride of the Prison by Naruyama Nōhei
    54–59
  16. The Birth of the Yellow Orami by Maki Fujio
    60–69
  17. Proposal for an Exhibition of Women Bound in Japanese Dress
    70–71
  18. Ideas for Images of Beautiful Women by Konishi Tetsuji
    72–73
  19. Through the Light, Final Installment
    74–78
  20. In Praise of Eyelashes
    79
  21. Female Warrior with a White Blade by Fujiyama Hide緒
    80–85
  22. From a Dreamer’s Notebook by Numa Shōzō
    88–92
  23. Fantasy of Ugliness by Awami Ichirō
    93–99
  24. Collected Manuscript Gleanings by Editorial Department
    100–105
  25. The Person with an Afflicted Soul by Kitahara Junko
    106–116
  26. My Image: F4’s Soliloquy
    117–119
  27. Two Confessions by Aoba Kaede
    120–123
  28. The Domesticated Human Yapoo by Numa Shōzō
    124–134
  29. Feminization Desire and an Experimental Record of Female-Hormone Use by Furui Masataka
    135–138
  30. The Experience of Itohime by Takahashi Yoshie
    139–140
  31. Dust-Basket Diary by Kuga Kiei
    141–148
  32. From Recent Films
    149
  33. The World of Beauty and Fetishism
    150
  34. The Female Warrior Tayū
    151
  35. Bondage Film News
    152
  36. Deaths Caused by Restraint and Sound-Suppression Devices
    153
  37. A Proposal to Form a Masochists’ Club by Yamada Masao
    154
  38. Local Reports and Correspondence
    155–159
  39. Modern Masochism Art Review by Hara Tadamasa
    161–162
  40. Reader Correspondence, Editorial Replies, and Publication Notices by Editorial Department
    163–176

Highlights

  • The opening portfolio juxtaposes Western bondage photography, Japanese illustrations of women restrained in domestic settings, drawings from Takireiko’s notebooks, and La Bonda’s European-style imagery. (PDF pp. 6–13).
  • Fujimi Iku’s “Depictions of Torment in Literature” surveys scenes of coercion, execution, sexual violence, and female suffering in historical and popular writing. (PDF pp. 15–25).
  • The newspaper and magazine communications section addresses American soldiers, homosexuality, clothing, and same-sex attraction as contemporary social questions. (PDF pp. 26, 30).
  • Koyama Takeo’s “The House of Silence” is an extended institutional melodrama involving imprisonment, religious discipline, interrogation, corporal punishment, and execution. (PDF pp. 31–43).
  • “Adolescence: Letters Between Mother and Child” offers a detailed account of youth sumo training, ritual clothing, practice, public competition, and the emotional relationship between a young wrestler and his mother. (PDF pp. 47–50).
  • Naruyama Nōhei’s play “The Bride of the Prison” treats confinement, loyalty, marriage, and authority through a formal theatrical structure. (PDF pp. 51–56).
  • The paired essays on exhibitions of bound women in Japanese dress and ideas for images of beautiful women document the magazine’s interest in costume, posing, staging, and the production of fetish art. (PDF pp. 67–70).
  • Numa Shōzō’s later contributions connect fantasy, discipline, domestication, transformation, and the symbolic reduction of human beings to controlled or animalized roles. (PDF pp. 85–89, 121–133).
  • The late issue includes testimony and discussion concerning feminization, female hormones, cross-gender identity, and embodied transformation. (PDF pp. 134–147).
  • The closing news, criticism, and correspondence sections cover bondage films, restraint-related fatalities, club organization, foreign publications, reader experiences, and editorial community-building. (PDF pp. 148–175).
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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