Kitan Club

July 1956

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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
  2. Gathering of the Masqueraders
    10–11
  3. Introducing a New Model: Michiko Hanazaka
    12–13
  4. The Pipe Horse by Ryōji Hida
    14
  5. The Staring Woman
    15
  6. The Young Lady Who Commands the Horse by Junko Kitahara
    16
  7. Depictions of Torment in Modern Popular Literature, Part Two by Kaoru Fujimi
    18–27
  8. My Image: The Revival of Wakashū Kabuki by Norio Kotake
    28–29
  9. On Nako’s Self-Love, Part Two by Nako Kadota
    30–36
  10. Ten Months in Confinement by Ichirō Haruta
    37–42
  11. The Attraction of a Woman Marked by Moxibustion by Shōichi Iwase
    43–45
  12. The Red Flowers Are Weeping, Part Four by Rōko Matsui
    46–55
  13. A Method for Increasing a Boy’s Physical Growth Using a Body-Building Machine by Shun'ichi Kumagai
    56–59
  14. From My Collection by Sōkichi Kakuma
    60–67
  15. Thoughts on Torment in Theater by Chūjirō Honda
    68–69
  16. The Love of Kajii by Fujio Maki
    70–77
  17. A Young Man’s Zen Record by Kōichi Yamaguchi
    78–82
  18. Recent Magazine Communications by Editorial Department
    83
  19. Living Volcano by Minoru Aoba
    92–94
  20. Selected Manuscripts and Gleanings by Editorial Department
    95–99
  21. The Bondage Complex by Tamiko Takamura
    100–106
  22. A Woman’s Fantasy of Seppuku by Shigetaro Narutake
    107
  23. Confessions of an Underwear Fetishist by Shinko Furui
    108–109
  24. The Eve of Annihilation by Sōichi Tsuchiji
    110–121
  25. A Female Soldier’s Death: An Eyewitness Account of a Woman’s Suicide by Hanjirō Saji
    122–123
  26. Reflections on Masochism by Shigehide Amadoro
    124–127
  27. Mr. H’s Strange Confession by Jiei Kitaya
    128–138
  28. Sadistic Fiction by Yoshihiro Izumi
    139–145
  29. I Am a Diaper Fetishist by Yoshiaki Kawano
    146–147
  30. Sudan by Kyōsuke Kawano
    148–157
  31. A Maiden’s Seppuku by Narutake Shigetaro
    158–163
  32. Limited Editions and Special Photographic Publications by Editorial Department
    164–165
  33. Kitan Club Back-Issue Contents Index by Editorial Department
    166–167
  34. Tenseisha Selected Photographic Publications by Editorial Department
    168–169
  35. Reader Correspondence by Editorial Department
    170–175
  36. One-Hundred-Thousand-Yen Prize Essay Competition by Editorial Department
    176

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).
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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