Kitan Club

July 1952

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Cover of Kitan Club, July 1952

Issue Details

PDF pages
201

Summary

The July 1952 issue of Kitan Club is a densely illustrated popular sexological and sensational magazine organized around the special feature 女天下時代, or The Age of Female Domination. Its editorial world repeatedly reverses conventional gender hierarchies: women discipline, bind, deceive, employ, sell, or sexually command men, while male characters appear as subjects of humiliation, fetishism, fear, curiosity, or masochistic pleasure. The issue combines erotic fiction, confessional memoir, pseudo-medical essays, historical anecdotes, crime reportage, folklore, reader correspondence, travel writing, and visual art.

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The opening pages establish the magazine’s visual identity through erotic drawings, staged bondage imagery, nude studies, and illustrated title pages. The long 女天下時代 feature then develops themes of female authority, male submission, flagellation, masochism, fetishized feet, and the biography of Sacher-Masoch, before turning to Japanese mythology and the female-centered symbolism of 高天ヶ原. Other early narratives include sensational accounts of sexually dominant women, an ozashiki entertainment-world story, a precocious-girl confession, and the grotesque family narrative 疾患の鶏.

The middle of the issue broadens its scope into erotic history and international culture. Features examine slavery and sexual exploitation, wartime anecdotes connected with the Nikolayevsk Incident, artificial phalli, international erotic correspondence, a deviant couple’s death, Japanese fertility stones, Shanghai prostitution, Monaco’s casinos, erotic legends, sexual acts outside intercourse, and the history of 張形. Treaty-port relationships, foreign women, mixed Japanese-Western families, and commercial sexual culture receive extended treatment. Reader letters concerning homosexuality, fetishistic practices, sexual anxiety, and education show the magazine functioning as an advice forum as well as a source of spectacle.

Later sections move through counterfeit-crime reportage, popular verse, female sexual memoir, foot fetishism, female sword-play theater, animal sexuality, seasonal sexual crime, cruelty and erotic pain, and sensational biographies of Bakumatsu and Meiji figures. The closing sequence includes a student confession, erotic letters, adolescent fiction, an art-history essay on religious imagery, nudity, violence, and punishment, rural erotic fiction, and the serialized confession 夢性の美少年, which discusses voyeurism, same-sex and heterosexual desire, bodily self-consciousness, and postwar youth. The final page solicits manuscripts, confessions, crime stories, erotic photographs, and illustrations, while also carrying subscription and ordering information, making the issue’s participatory publishing culture explicit.

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Table of Contents 41 items
  1. Strange Picture Collection
    Summary

    An opening portfolio of erotic drawings and staged photographs depicting nude bodies, bondage, restraint, and power reversal.

  2. Ten Talents of the Nude Woman by Reiko (reading uncertain)
    5
    Summary

    A full-page illustrated study of multiple nude female figures in varied poses, emphasizing eroticized bodily display.

  3. Portraits of Female Slaves and Masochists by Takatō Tatsumō
    approximately 12–31
    Summary

    The issue’s central feature presents female domination, male submission, fetishism, flagellation, masochism, and mythological arguments for female authority. Internal headings and case narratives remain part of this single article-level container.

  4. The Reality of Sexually Promiscuous Women by Fujisaki Yō
    Summary

    An illustrated sensational narrative follows sexual pursuit, coercion, humiliation, violence, and shifting power relations between its principal characters.

  5. A Tale of Desire: The Female Parlor Striptease by Kiyama Kinu
    Summary

    A comic and violent narrative set in the ozashiki entertainment world, where performance, sexual commerce, money, and bodily display produce repeated reversals of power.

  6. Reader Communications
    45
    Summary

    A reader letter and editorial response discuss excessive sexual desire, sexual education, and the magazine’s role as an advice forum.

  7. Aoi Was a Precocious Sheltered Girl by Tsuji Mamako
    Summary

    A first-person confessional narrative describes a sheltered girl’s early sexual curiosity, clandestine initiation, emotional attachment, and later reflections on desire and respectability.

  8. The Diseased Chicken
    Summary

    A grotesque domestic narrative uses a diseased chicken, family scarcity, illness, secrecy, and sibling conflict to create a comic-horrific account of bodily disorder and household trauma.

  9. A Sexual History of Slavery throughout the World by Nobuchi Sō
    Summary

    A historical survey of Roman and medieval slavery discusses ownership, sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, punishment, prostitution, and class hierarchy.

  10. Erotic Fragments from the Front: Anecdotes Concerning the Nikolayevsk Incident by Shimoide Takuichi
    Summary

    Wartime and military anecdotes concerning the Nikolayevsk Incident combine purported testimony with sexualized violence, captivity, punishment, foreignness, and racialized sensationalism.

  11. The Erotic Riddle of the Artificial Phallus by Ōshō Sumiko
    69
    Summary

    An illustrated sexological account of the harigata discusses its materials, historical use, manufacture, and relation to marital and female sexual pleasure.

  12. International Correspondence: Erotic Judgments
    Summary

    International letters and replies discuss photographs, body hair, masturbation, sexual preferences, relationships, and cross-border erotic communication.

  13. The Death of a Certain Perverted Couple by Hiromi Fujisaki
    Summary

    A purported true-crime narrative reconstructs a couple’s sexual pathology, domestic life, deaths, forensic clues, and the subsequent investigation.

  14. A Guide to Ishigami and Stone Gods
    Summary

    An illustrated folklore and travel guide surveys Japanese phallic stones, fertility deities, shrine traditions, reproductive beliefs, and folk medicine.

  15. Shanghai’s Huang Xiaofu: The Savage Tribe by Nonaka Aizō
    Summary

    A social-reportage feature describes Shanghai prostitution, nightlife districts, street solicitation, foreign commerce, clothing, performance, poverty, and sexual labor.

  16. World Tour, Part 2: Sexual Techniques of Freedom and Love—Monaco by Miura Yoshiko
    Summary

    A travel essay presents Monaco and Monte Carlo through casinos, tourism, luxury, gambling, seaside spectacle, class, and the international fantasy of freedom.

  17. The Legend of the Mandarin Ducks by Yamamoto Kajō
    91
    Summary

    A short eroticized legend uses birds, secrecy, dreams, captivity, and uncanny transformation to frame inherited sexual folklore.

  18. Sexual Acts Without Intercourse
    Summary

    A sexological essay examines abstinence, cruelty, unconscious masturbation, displaced desire, fetishism, sadism, masochism, and ritualized bodily imagery outside conventional intercourse.

  19. The Mystery of the Horigata
    Summary

    An illustrated cultural history of 張形 treats the phallic substitute as a sexual implement, ritual object, manufactured commodity, and subject of clandestine folklore.

  20. A History of Foreign Mistresses by Fukumori Kōji
    Summary

    A historical-social essay examines foreign women, treaty ports, sailors, merchants, entertainment houses, mixed-race children, clothing, and intercultural intimacy in Japan.

  21. At the Crossroads of Moral Fall by Ōshō Sumiko
    Summary

    A serialized urban erotic fiction follows seduction, jealousy, voyeurism, financial dependence, deception, illness, and sexual relationships among characters in hotels, restaurants, and lodging houses.

  22. Secrets of the Female Body: Pubic and Armpit Hair by Akada Tanaka
    Summary

    A period sexological essay discusses pubic and axillary hair, sexual maturation, grooming, bodily variation, racialized comparison, and erotic visual preference.

  23. Letters from Male Homosexuals
    Summary

    A letter and editorial response address male same-sex desire, loneliness, social pressure, work, marriage, health, and self-control.

  24. Tracking Down a Counterfeiter of One-Thousand-Yen Notes by Miyagawa Rikizō
    Summary

    A counterfeit-money investigation combines rural reportage, domestic suspicion, adultery, jealousy, interrogation, concealment, and murder.

  25. Sexual Feelings Appearing in Cities and Countryside by Abe Ukō
    Summary

    An essay reads popular verse as evidence of longing, jealousy, separation, marriage, sexual desire, and changing social feeling.

  26. A Woman’s Sexual Memoir: From Office Girl to an Executive’s Mistress by Izawa Ranko
    Summary

    A first-person memoir links office work, economic dependence, adultery, hotels, consumer culture, secrecy, and the narrator’s changing understanding of desire.

  27. Letters from a Sexual Deviant
    Summary

    A confessional letter describes compulsive fetishistic and coercive practices, shame, bodily detail, medical authority, punishment, and the possibility of treatment.

  28. The Soles of Women’s Feet: Enchantment by Akasaka Gō
    Summary

    A historical and psychological essay treats feet, shoes, stockings, exposure, beauty, and foot fetishism across Japanese and foreign examples.

  29. The Queen of the Female Sword-Drama Is Still Going Strong by Fujiyama Yoshi
    Summary

    An illustrated theatrical feature eroticizes a female sword-play performer through backstage scenes, costume, spectatorship, youthful fascination, jealousy, and physical combat.

  30. Does Love Exist among Animals? by Kinushima Tanfū
    Summary

    A popular natural-history essay compares animal mating, attachment, jealousy, breeding, and sexual competition with human love and desire.

  31. Summer and Sexual Crime by Kanbe Shin
    Summary

    A seasonal essay connects heat, clothing, bathing, public exposure, voyeurism, harassment, and sexual crime through moralizing pseudo-medical commentary.

  32. The Mole on the Inner Thigh by Sasada Yutaka
    Summary

    Comic dialogue and erotic anecdotes address bodily marks, marriage, pregnancy, sexual expectations, reputation, and domestic relationships.

  33. Sex and Cruelty: Cruelty, Pain, and Desire by Tō Hihito
    Summary

    A wide-ranging sexological essay links erotic desire to pain, violence, domination, gender hierarchy, historical examples, and supposedly anthropological accounts of cruelty.

  34. Comparing the Erotic Exploits of Restoration Heroes
    Summary

    Popular history recasts Bakumatsu and early Meiji figures through courtesans, lovers, sexual rivalry, disguise, violence, and erotic scandal.

  35. The Female Student Who Wet Her Skin by Akiyama Rumiko
    Summary

    A confessional student narrative explores illness, education, teacher-student intimacy, bathing, emotional dependence, summer travel, and anxiety about social judgment.

  36. Perverse Love Letters
    Summary

    An illustrated exchange of erotic letters discusses nude modeling, bondage, exhibitionism, voyeurism, erotic art, private experience, and the relationship between readers and magazine production.

  37. A Young Man: An Erotic Strange Tale by Matsutani Shigeru
    Summary

    An illustrated narrative follows an adolescent boy’s curiosity about adult women, bathing, observation, domestic sexuality, and eventual erotic initiation.

  38. Notes on Religious Art by Ōmiya Kiyoko
    Summary

    An art-history essay surveys religious imagery, nudity, erotic symbolism, torture, martyrdom, execution, and the changing treatment of sexual and violent motifs in Western and Japanese art.

  39. Mountain Village Nightscape
    Summary

    An erotic rural-night narrative uses a farmhouse, bride, bathing, voyeurism, dancing, restraint, and shifting sexual roles as its principal motifs.

  40. The Dream-Sexual Beautiful Boy by Mimura Ikuo
    Summary

    A heavily illustrated first-person confession traces adolescent sexual development, voyeurism, bathing, homoerotic and heterosexual desire, shame, bodily self-consciousness, and postwar social experience.

  41. Manuscript Solicitation and Subscription Notices by Kitan Club editorial office
    206
    Summary

    The closing page solicits unusual experiences, confessions, crime stories, fiction, erotic photographs, and illustrations, and provides subscription, ordering, pricing, and office information.

Highlights

  • The opening 奇譚画集 combines erotic illustration with staged nude and bondage imagery. (PDF pp. 2–3).
  • 女天下時代 presents an extended argument and series of case narratives about female authority, male submission, flagellation, and masochism. (PDF pp. 6–26).
  • 世界奴隷艶情史 surveys slavery, sexual ownership, prostitution, punishment, and class hierarchy from Rome through the medieval period. (PDF pp. 54–59).
  • 張形の謎 offers a detailed illustrated history of the Japanese phallic substitute, combining folklore, sexual practice, and material culture. (PDF pp. 91–103).
  • International and domestic correspondence columns address homosexuality, fetishism, masturbation, sexual anxiety, and erotic relationships. (PDF pp. 64–68,121–122,133–135,171–178).
  • The essay 女の足の蠱惑 treats women’s feet, footwear, stockings, and foot fetishism through historical and psychological examples. (PDF pp. 136–138).
  • 性愛と残酷 links erotic desire to pain, violence, domination, and culturally framed cruelty. (PDF pp. 154–158).
  • The closing confession 夢性の美少年 discusses adolescent sexuality, voyeurism, homoerotic desire, heterosexual experimentation, and shame. (PDF pp. 193–200).
  • The final page solicits unusual experiences, confessions, crime stories, erotic photographs, and illustrations, documenting the magazine’s participatory publishing system. (PDF p. 201).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue: