Kitan Club

July 1956

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Cover of Kitan Club, July 1956

Issue Details

Volume
10
Issue
4
PDF pages
173

Summary

The July 1956 issue of Kitan Club combines visual portfolios, criticism of popular literature, autobiographical essays, serialized fiction, prison memoir, fetish commentary, short fiction, reader communications, and publishing notices. The front matter establishes a deliberately international and theatrical visual identity. It opens with an image of a woman wearing a tightly fitted leather restraint garment, followed by costume designs reproduced from the American magazine Bizarre, a photographic introduction to model Michiko Hanazaka, Ryōji Hida’s pipe-horse fantasy, a photograph of Michiko Saga in rope, and Junko Kitahara’s equestrian humiliation illustration. These features treat restraint not merely as physical confinement but as costume, spectacle, pose, and visual design.

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The principal opening essay, Kaoru Fujimi’s “Depictions of Torment in Modern Popular Literature, Part Two,” examines how contemporary fiction depicts bound, abducted, punished, and endangered women. It compares prose description with illustration and discusses the narrative effectiveness of restraint, clothing, posture, and physical peril. Norio Kotake’s essay on reviving wakashū kabuki shifts toward theatrical history, proposing a reconstructed form of adolescent male performance and discussing training, costume, staging, discipline, and erotic aesthetics. Nako Kadota’s second essay on self-love then explores narcissism, self-observation, bodily pain, self-inflicted stimulation, clothing, fantasy, same-sex desire, and the psychological division between an observing and an experienced self.

Ichirō Haruta’s “Ten Months in Confinement” supplies the issue’s most substantial documentary section. It describes postwar prison life, hospital wards, guards, inmates, parole procedures, theft, contraband, institutional hierarchy, medical care, and the emotional uncertainty surrounding release. Shōichi Iwase’s confession about the attraction of women marked by moxibustion follows with a compact fetish analysis of scars, heat, pain, bodily marks, and the visual imagination of punishment. The fourth installment of “The Red Flowers Are Weeping” returns to serialized melodrama, intertwining theatrical performance, jealousy, familial authority, coercive restraint, and romantic rivalry.

The middle and later sections expand through personal collections, reflections on torment in theater, fiction about confined women, accounts of self-injury and seppuku fantasy, fetishistic testimony, and short stories concerning submission, captivity, clothing, and bodily exposure. Several essays treat imported imagery, photographs, undergarments, uniforms, and collected pictures as instruments for private fantasy. The final pages contain reader correspondence, announcements of photographic sets and limited editions, indexes to earlier issues, publishing advertisements, editorial communications, and a prize competition. Taken together, the issue presents Kitan Club as a hybrid literary magazine, visual archive, confessional forum, and reader network organized around restraint, cruelty, bodily fantasy, and marginalized erotic interests.

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Table of Contents 36 items
  1. Wearing a Restraint Garment by Takashi Shima
    9
    Summary

    A photographed presentation of a glossy leather restraint garment, describing its close-fitting collar, chest, limb, torso, belt, and buckle components.

  2. Gathering of the Masqueraders
    Summary

    A two-page visual feature reproduces four stylized fetish-costume illustrations from the American magazine Bizarre, depicting figures in cowgirl, fashionable, soldier, and female-officer attire.

  3. Introducing a New Model: Michiko Hanazaka
    Summary

    A photographic model introduction presents Michiko Hanazaka, a long-haired woman from Kyushu, posing for the editorial office in a dark dress while bound with rope in several seated positions.

  4. The Pipe Horse by Ryōji Hida
    14
    Summary

    An illustrated erotic bondage scene presents a young woman in a swimsuit straddling a specially designed pipe horse, with her hands and feet fixed in place and the reader invited to imagine the apparatus in motion.

  5. The Staring Woman
    15
    Summary

    A photographic portrait titled “The Staring Woman” shows Terumi Saga gazing toward readers while tightly wrapped and restrained in a checkered garment, with a caption emphasizing the varied impressions the image may produce.

  6. The Young Lady Who Commands the Horse by Junko Kitahara
    16
    Summary

    An erotic illustration depicts a young woman in revealing attire riding and controlling a horse with reins in a stylized outdoor fantasy scene.

  7. Depictions of Torment in Modern Popular Literature, Part Two by Kaoru Fujimi
    Summary

    Kaoru Fujimi surveys scenes of torment, captivity, binding, assault, and eroticized suffering in modern popular and historical Japanese literature, comparing narrative descriptions with accompanying illustrations and considering their sensational and erotic effects on readers.

  8. My Image: The Revival of Wakashū Kabuki by Norio Kotake
    Summary

    Norio Kotake argues for reviving wakashū kabuki through a proposed young performers’ troupe, discussing its historical significance, recruitment and training, costumes, gendered performance, and the theatrical appeal of youthful actors in female roles.

  9. On Nako’s Self-Love, Part Two by Nako Kadota
    Summary

    In this autobiographical continuation, Nako Kadota describes an intense preoccupation with self-love, bodily appearance, clothing, erotic fantasy, and painful self-directed experiments, presenting autoerotic desire as both psychological confession and masochistic practice.

  10. Ten Months in Confinement by Ichirō Haruta
    Summary

    A prison-guard memoir recounting ten months of work and life around prison wards, including institutional routines, inmate personalities, criminal histories, disciplinary practices, parole interviews, and anxieties surrounding release and rehabilitation.

  11. The Attraction of a Woman Marked by Moxibustion by Shōichi Iwase
    Summary

    An essay presents moxibustion scars as a source of erotic fascination, combining reflections on pain, endurance, bodily marking, and sadistic desire with illustrated fantasies of women subjected to ritualized burning and restraint.

  12. The Red Flowers Are Weeping, Part Four by Rōko Matsui
    Summary

    Part four of a serialized erotic novel follows Masaki, Misako, Teruko, and Shōko through scenes of deception, drinking, theatrical display, and escalating rope bondage in which women are coerced, restrained, and subjected to sadistic control.

  13. A Method for Increasing a Boy’s Physical Growth Using a Body-Building Machine by Shun'ichi Kumagai
    Summary

    A practical guide to improving boys’ physical development through a body-building machine, describing medical checks, exercise routines, massage, hydrotherapy, adjustable apparatus, and training precautions.

  14. From My Collection by Sōkichi Kakuma
    Summary

    A collector’s miscellany combining discussions of disgust, sexual abnormality, and sensational anecdotes with literary-biographical essays on Edgar Allan Poe and Fyodor Dostoevsky, linking artistic creativity to psychological suffering, sexuality, and spiritual striving.

  15. Thoughts on Torment in Theater by Chūjirō Honda
    Summary

    A theater essay examines staged torment scenes, detailing the use of ropes, poles, bindings, lighting, movement, and multiple performers while debating realism, spectacle, and audience response.

  16. The Love of Kajii by Fujio Maki
    Summary

    A serialized erotic tale set in a hospital follows Kajii, a gravely ill patient, and the narrator’s obsessive fascination with the attractive attendant Tamako, whose flirtations, gossip, jealousy, and bodily humiliations create an increasingly sadomasochistic triangle. The narrative uses illness, voyeurism, rivalry, and fetishized bodily details to develop its atmosphere of forbidden desire.

  17. A Young Man’s Zen Record by Kōichi Yamaguchi
    Summary

    In this autobiographical recollection, a man traces his early erotic fascination with sashes, clothing, male bodies, bathing, and the exposed or restrained figure from childhood through adolescence. Memories of boys’ bodies and private acts gradually become a formative account of fetishistic and same-sex-oriented desire.

  18. Recent Magazine Communications by Editorial Department
    83
    Summary

    This editorial news-and-magazine feature discusses a Muromachi-period love story in which religious devotion, male-male attachment, jealousy, and erotic obsession are entangled, drawing on classical literary and historical sources to show how the relationship eventually shifts toward desire directed at women.

  19. Living Volcano by Minoru Aoba
    Summary

    A fictional SM narrative in which characters engage in escalating restraint, humiliation, and sadistic bodily control, culminating in a violent and highly coercive encounter.

  20. Selected Manuscripts and Gleanings by Editorial Department
    Summary

    An editorial anthology of submitted manuscripts and literary fragments, combining erotic narrative excerpts with commentary and glimpses of the magazine’s manuscript-selection and reader-submission culture.

  21. The Bondage Complex by Tamiko Takamura
    Summary

    A serialized bondage narrative centered on a psychologically charged relationship between a male customer and a female entertainer, depicting repeated rope restraint, coercion, humiliation, and the protagonist’s fixation on bondage.

  22. A Woman’s Fantasy of Seppuku by Shigetaro Narutake
    107
    Summary

    A fictionalized psychological account explores a woman’s fantasies of ritual suicide and bodily injury, framing seppuku through eroticized scenes of fear, surrender, and death.

  23. Confessions of an Underwear Fetishist by Shinko Furui
    Summary

    In this first-person fetish confession, a woman describes her growing fascination with black silk underwear, nylon stockings, and the erotic excitement produced by purchasing, handling, viewing, and wearing them.

  24. The Eve of Annihilation by Sōichi Tsuchiji
    Summary

    This serialized SM fiction follows espionage and international-conflict intrigue involving the fictional Y country, as a woman is captured and subjected to coercive interrogation, mechanical restraint, punishment, and sexualized bodily examination.

  25. A Female Soldier’s Death: An Eyewitness Account of a Woman’s Suicide by Hanjirō Saji
    Summary

    An eyewitness-style wartime account describes the death of a woman attached to a Japanese military unit, recounting her isolation, sexual vulnerability, coercion, and eventual suicide amid violence on the front. The narrative combines sensational testimony with reflections on the treatment of women in military settings.

  26. Reflections on Masochism by Shigehide Amadoro
    Summary

    This essay surveys masochism as a psychological and sexual phenomenon, discussing its relationship to self-punishment, desire, pathology, religion, art, and social behavior. It draws on sexological and psychological ideas while considering how masochistic tendencies appear across historical and cultural contexts.

  27. Mr. H’s Strange Confession by Jiei Kitaya
    Summary

    A lengthy, highly unusual first-person confession and editorial commentary center on an obsessive fetish for women’s noses, including childhood memories, imagined scenarios, bodily inspection, and repeated attempts to classify or perfect the ideal nose. The piece uses comic, grotesque, and pseudo-documentary narration to explore fetishistic desire, vanity, medical intervention, and the boundary between confession and literary fabrication.

  28. Sadistic Fiction by Yoshihiro Izumi
    Summary

    A sadistic short story in which a woman is abducted, bound with rope, and subjected to escalating coercion, punishment, and sexualized violence by male characters.

  29. I Am a Diaper Fetishist by Yoshiaki Kawano
    Summary

    A correspondence-style personal account about an intense diaper fetish, discussing the writer’s attraction to wearing diapers, associated shame, and the difficulty of reconciling the fetish with everyday life.

  30. Sudan by Kyōsuke Kawano
    Summary

    A serialized historical erotic adventure set in colonial Sudan around 1899, following Mary and John amid British military operations, interracial tensions, capture, abuse, and violent conflict involving Sudanese forces.

  31. A Maiden’s Seppuku by Narutake Shigetaro
    Summary

    A serialized historical erotic fiction narrative presents four episodes of women caught in coercive sexual situations, violent captivity, murder, and ritualized self-disembowelment in an Edo-period setting.

  32. Limited Editions and Special Photographic Publications by Editorial Department
    Summary

    The editorial department announces limited-edition special publications and catalogs new erotic photographic collections, including portfolio formats, print quantities, prices, and ordering information.

  33. Kitan Club Back-Issue Contents Index by Editorial Department
    Summary

    A back-issue contents index lists articles, fiction, photographic features, correspondence, and special issues from earlier Kitan Club volumes to support archival reference and reordering.

  34. Tenseisha Selected Photographic Publications by Editorial Department
    Summary

    An editorial catalog presents Tenseisha’s selected photographic publications, listing numerous themed erotic photo sets involving bondage, nudity, clothing, punishment, and other fetish scenarios, along with set contents and prices.

  35. Reader Correspondence by Editorial Department
    Summary

    A multi-page reader-correspondence section publishes letters and editorial replies about the magazine’s erotic photographs, fiction, illustrations, special issues, sales and delivery, personal sexual concerns, and readers’ responses to the publication’s representations of gender, bondage, and fetishism.

  36. One-Hundred-Thousand-Yen Prize Essay Competition by Editorial Department
    176
    Summary

    The magazine solicits original manuscripts for a 100,000-yen prize competition, specifying awards, submission rules, format and length requirements, deadlines, and publication arrangements while encouraging readers to participate as contributors.

Highlights

  • The opening portfolio presents restraint through leather garments, imported Bizarre costume designs, rope photography, and equestrian fantasy, emphasizing bondage as fashion, pose, and spectacle. (PDF pp. 6–13).
  • “Depictions of Torment in Modern Popular Literature, Part Two” analyzes how fiction and illustration construct scenes of captivity, bodily danger, and coerced female exposure. (PDF pp. 15–24).
  • “My Image: The Revival of Wakashū Kabuki” proposes a modern reconstruction of adolescent-male kabuki through disciplined training, costume, theater organization, and stylized eroticism. (PDF pp. 25–26).
  • Nako Kadota’s second essay on self-love explores self-observation, narcissism, bodily pain, clothing, self-stimulation, fantasy, and same-sex attachment. (PDF pp. 27–33).
  • “Ten Months in Confinement” offers detailed testimony about prison hospitals, inmates, guards, contraband, theft, discipline, parole, and the instability of institutional life. (PDF pp. 34–39).
  • “The Attraction of a Woman Marked by Moxibustion” develops a distinctive fetish theory of scars, burns, heat, suffering, and the aesthetic value assigned to marked skin. (PDF pp. 40–42).
  • The fourth installment of “The Red Flowers Are Weeping” combines performance, romantic rivalry, family control, restraint, and coercive emotional dependence. (PDF pp. 43–52).
  • The middle essays move from a private collection of unusual material into commentary on torment in theatrical performance and fiction involving women held under coercive control. (PDF pp. 53–74).
  • Later contributions treat self-injury, seppuku fantasy, underwear fetishism, bondage photography, and compulsive confession as interconnected forms of private erotic imagination. (PDF pp. 95–144).
  • The closing pages combine fiction, reader correspondence, back-issue indexes, photographic-set advertisements, editorial notices, and a substantial reader prize competition. (PDF pp. 145–173).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue: