Kitan Club

February 1955

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Summary

This February 1955 special enlarged issue of Kitan Club is a 309-page miscellany combining bondage illustration, staged photography, sexual and psychological essays, reader testimony, serialized fiction, translated European writing, historical material, prison memoir, autobiographical confession, and advice-oriented features. The issue opens with more than thirty pages of pictorial material. These pages include humorous senryū drawings, historical scenes of punishment and execution, women bound in kimono or restrictive harnesses, photographs of rope bondage and gagging, foreign images of unusual restraint devices, staged female domination, ski and sports fantasies, illustrations of captivity in wartime, and visual studies of punishment, humiliation, trampling, clothing, feet, and bodily display. The front section is not a random collection of advertisements: it corresponds to the formal contents and functions as a deliberately curated visual portfolio.

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The numbered literary section begins on PDF page 39 with Naruse Ryō’s essay asking whether inverted sexual interests are necessarily immoral. The article challenges simple moral condemnation and surveys medical, social, and ethical explanations for nonstandard desire. It is followed by Furuta Kichirō’s account of an experiment involving nipple fixation and restraint, then by the fiction series The Bride Has Arrived, whose comic and melodramatic episodes turn domestic and marital expectations into scenes of concealment, coercion, embarrassment, and physical control. Yamaguchi Kōichi next examines tendencies visible in readers’ correspondence, treating the magazine’s letters as evidence of patterns among rope and bondage enthusiasts. This piece is especially important because it shows Kitan Club presenting its readership as a recognizable community whose desires could be classified, compared, and discussed.

Several subsequent articles focus on childhood and adolescence. The Boys of Mount Hachiyama is framed as a summer-vacation diary and depicts a group of boys whose games, curiosity, bullying, and bodily experimentation become increasingly charged. Miscellaneous Notes on Moxibustion considers punishment and therapeutic burning through anecdotal and historical examples. Ten Months in Prison is a long illustrated account of penal life, discipline, humiliation, institutional routines, and relations among prisoners. The section concludes with The Death of a Woman Who Trampled Her Husband, a comic and sensational piece about marital domination, and the second installment of The Bloodstained Reins, Itō Seiu’s historical narrative of violence, punishment, and social disorder.

The middle of the issue is dominated by extended confessional and quasi-documentary narratives. Morimoto Aizō’s translated continuation of Cruel Women introduces European anecdotes about female sadism and domination. Hōzuka Mitsuo’s How I Was Tormented follows a first-person narrator through humiliating treatment, erotic coercion, and bodily control. Mori Taichi’s Confession from My Boyhood: The Smell of Boys revisits school and dormitory life through memories of male bodies, shame, fascination, and sexual awakening. My Observations of Three Deformed Women and the continuation of A Girl from the Red-Light District further develop the magazine’s interest in bodily difference, marginality, exploitation, and the unstable boundary between documentation and voyeurism. Trampled, a prize-winning confession, recounts a man’s attraction to submission beneath women and frames his experiences as both personal testimony and a case for interpretation.

A Wife Abused in the Abdomen begins on PDF page 151 and continues the issue’s series of prize-winning testimonies. It is followed by Breasts and the Menstrual Belt, Confession of an Extraordinary Masochist, and a group of short illustrated narratives concerning erotic danger and deviant behavior. Jealous Boys continues the juvenile-victim series, after which Hemorrhoids: A Woman’s Nighttime Letter offers an intimate medical and erotic account. The issue then returns to Itō Seiu’s Sexual Fluids, includes the essay From the Notebook of a Certain Masochist, a prize-winning confession about a burglary, a discussion between lesbianism and sodomy, and a second major essay on the secret of the A-sensation.

Later contributions broaden the geographic and historical range. A Taiwanese colonial-history feature recounts the Beipu Incident through scenes of armed conflict, state violence, and civilian suffering. Other pieces discuss women who respond to sadism, a stranger’s memoir, photographic observations of breasts, a woman’s account of being abused by a mistress, methods of self-binding, translated or adapted erotic anecdotes, and a sustained sequence of articles derived from reader letters and personal experience. The final pages contain columns, short correspondence features, editorial notes, and classified or club material rather than another major story. The true final page is PDF page 309, which contains publication and club notices. Across its complete length, the issue presents Kitan Club as both an illustrated entertainment magazine and an informal research forum. It repeatedly converts fantasy, testimony, history, foreign literature, visual documentation, and reader correspondence into evidence for a shared inquiry into bondage, pain, fetishism, submission, humiliation, bodily difference, and unconventional desire.

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Table of Contents 56 items
  1. Kawayanagi Amateki: Ten Scenes by Yamaguchi Kōichi
    5
  2. The Bound Bride
    6
  3. A Woman with Strange Feet in an Illustrated Curiosity Book by Itō Seiu
    7
  4. The Woman with the Waist Wrap
    8
  5. Masterpiece Collection: The Black Cat
    9
  6. The Room of Itō Seiu
    10
  7. Introductions from Foreign Publications
  8. Selected Bondage Photographs of Itō Sakae
  9. Nude Skiing
  10. The Bloodstained Reins: Illustrated Preview by Itō Seiu
  11. Service in the Slave's Room and Bathroom
  12. Rope Binding
  13. A Japanese Woman Being Punished
  14. Two-Woman Combat Photographs
  15. Strange Submission: An Idea Selection
    29
  16. New Artists' Picture Collection
    30
  17. Fetishism Seen in Foreign Magazines
  18. Women's Restraint and Leg Irons
  19. Illustrated Story: Jealous Woman
  20. Is Inverted Sexual Taste Ultimately Immoral? by Naruse Ryō
  21. An Experiment Concerning Nipple Fixation by Furuta Kichirō
  22. The Bride Has Arrived by Shirogane Kōji
  23. Tendencies of Bondage Enthusiasts Revealed in Readers' Letters by Yamaguchi Kōichi
  24. The Boys of Mount Hachiyama: Summer Vacation Diary by Miki Yoshio
  25. Miscellaneous Notes on Moxibustion by Hasegawa Kiyoshi
  26. Ten Months in Prison by Kasuga Ichirō
  27. The Death of a Woman Who Trampled Her Husband by Kawagō Itoko
  28. The Bloodstained Reins, Part Two by Itō Seiu
  29. Cruel Women by Morimoto Aizō
  30. How I Was Tormented by Hōzuka Mitsuo
  31. Confession from My Boyhood: The Smell of Boys by Mori Taichi
  32. My Observations of Three Deformed Women by Tōmei Hiroshi
  33. Continued Confession of a Girl from the Red-Light District by Shibasaki Reiko
  34. Trampled by Kotake Norio
  35. The Beipu Incident: A Secret History of Colonial Taiwan by Kawano Kyōsuke
  36. Confession of a Wife Abused in the Abdomen by Ōsawa Itsuko
  37. Breasts and the Menstrual Belt by Hanamura Megumi
  38. Confession of an Extraordinary Masochist by Nagaoka Shun'ichirō
  39. Illustrated Accounts of Dangerous Adventures
  40. Jealous Boys by Mine Kōji
  41. A Woman's Nighttime Letter About Hemorrhoids by Hanamura Megumi
  42. The Inverted Hero Oda Nobunaga by Kasaya Toshikō
  43. The Naked Beauty by Yamamoto Osamu
  44. Sexual Fluids by Itō Seiu
  45. From the Notebook of a Certain Masochist by Numata Shōzō
  46. Confession: The Time a Burglar Entered by Nakano Taeko
  47. Lesbianism and a Discussion of Sodomy by Hamura Kyōko
  48. The Secret of the A-Sensation by Hamura Kyōko
  49. The Ōtsu Incident and Its Aftermath by Suda Ritsuo
  50. A Woman Who Responds to Sadism by Shiraki Nobuko
  51. The Crawling Insect by Tsujimura Nobutane
  52. How to Bind Your Own Hands Behind Your Back by Shiraki Nobuko
  53. Photographic Notes on Breasts
  54. Confession to Hanamura-sensei
  55. From Film and Magazine Communications
  56. The Story of Rope by Sugimura Ken

Highlights

  • The formal contents spread identifies a large visual portfolio followed by essays, prize-winning confessions, fiction, translated writing, historical material, and reader-oriented studies. (PDF p. 4).
  • The opening pictorial section combines Japanese historical punishment scenes, rope bondage, foreign restraint devices, staged domination photographs, fetish imagery, and illustrated fantasies. (PDF pp. 5–38).
  • Naruse Ryō's opening essay argues against treating all inverted sexual interests as simple moral corruption and examines psychological, medical, and social explanations. (PDF pp. 39–45).
  • The article on tendencies among bondage enthusiasts uses readers' letters as evidence for recurring interests, practices, and social patterns within the magazine's audience. (PDF pp. 57–62).
  • The Boys of Mount Hachiyama presents a long summer diary of adolescent games, curiosity, bullying, exposure, and developing sexual awareness. (PDF pp. 63–74).
  • Ten Months in Prison is an extended illustrated account of punishment, institutional routine, humiliation, and the social world of incarcerated men. (PDF pp. 77–85).
  • The Bloodstained Reins continues Itō Seiu's historical narrative of violence and punishment through detailed references to places, incidents, and older records. (PDF pp. 89–97).
  • Cruel Women continues Morimoto Aizō's translation of European writing on female cruelty, domination, and punishment. (PDF pp. 98–104).
  • How I Was Tormented is a lengthy first-person narrative centered on humiliation, coercion, physical control, and erotic submission. (PDF pp. 105–114).
  • Confession from My Boyhood: The Smell of Boys revisits school life and male adolescence through bodily memory, shame, attraction, and social pressure. (PDF pp. 115–118).
  • Trampled, a prize-winning confession, follows a narrator whose attraction to being stepped on and physically subordinated develops into repeated encounters. (PDF pp. 125–146).
  • The issue continues far beyond PDF page 150 with additional confessions, essays, serialized fiction, historical writing, reader studies, and advice material through PDF page 309. (PDF pp. 151–309).