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Kitan Club

November 1955

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Cover of Kitan Club, November 1955

Issue Details

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86

Summary

The November 1955 issue of Kitan Club is a visually and textually dense publication combining bondage illustration, historical fantasy, confessional fiction, sexological commentary, medical and bodily case studies, prison memoir, translated European material, film and literary criticism, reader correspondence, and extensive publishing back matter. Its editorial identity depends on the close association of erotic spectacle with purported documentation. Images of restraint and punishment are placed beside autobiographical testimonies, historical investigations, clinical discussion, cultural criticism, and serialized narratives, creating a magazine that treats unconventional desire as fantasy, personal experience, artistic subject, and field of inquiry.

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The issue opens with a formal contents page accompanied by a suspension illustration, followed by a compact portfolio of drawings and photographs. These early features include women tied or suspended in outdoor settings, a woman restrained during a small athletic or disciplinary spectacle, historical scenes of capture and punishment, an image of a woman treated as the spoils of gambling, and several foreign or exoticized captivity scenes. The opening section establishes recurrent motifs of ropes, suspension, forced posture, transport, public display, female vulnerability, and dominant authority. Although brief compared with the longer photographic portfolios in some adjacent issues, it provides a concentrated visual overture to the prose that follows.

Furukawa Hiroko’s Farewell begins the principal literary body with a long, psychologically oriented narrative. Its sustained first-person and dialogic passages explore separation, attachment, emotional instability, sexual secrecy, and the difficulty of reconciling private desire with ordinary relationships. The relative lack of illustration gives the story a serious, inward tone and establishes confession and emotional estrangement as important concerns. Satō Masuo’s Theory of the Abnormal Novel then turns from narrative to criticism, considering the literary treatment of unconventional sexuality, the relationship between fiction and lived experience, and the difficulty of defining a distinct literature of sexual difference.

Haruta Ichirō’s Ten Months in Captivity continues the recurring prison memoir. This installment describes institutional routines, discipline, bodily hardship, surveillance, authority, and the social relationships formed under confinement. It is followed by Takarazuka Fumio’s How I Punish Him, illustrated by Shima Takashi, which shifts from involuntary imprisonment to deliberately staged female dominance. The article develops punishment through commands, humiliation, bodily positioning, emotional control, and scenes in which male submission becomes the central erotic structure.

A short article linking lesbianism and enemas combines same-sex desire with medicalized bodily treatment. Kameyama Hideo’s historical discussion of female belly-cutting in training clothes follows, using an older written source to examine ritualized cutting, spectacle, and gendered violence. Futamata Shizuko’s Playing with Life is one of the issue’s longest fictional works. It unfolds through coercive encounters, physical danger, medical intervention, confinement, attempted control, and recurrent threats to bodily autonomy. Its illustrations heighten the melodramatic atmosphere, moving from private interiors to scenes of restraint, forced treatment, and helplessness.

Numa Shōzō’s From the Notebook of a Certain Masochist continues his long-running hybrid of confession, cultural history, foreign reference, psychological interpretation, and commentary on punishment. This installment discusses masochistic identity through literature, medicine, social convention, and personal reflection. It is followed by Tsujiura Takashi’s The Woman Who Laughs Under Torture, presented as the record of an acrobatic dancer. The article combines performance culture, bodily endurance, public spectacle, and punishment, treating the woman’s theatrical or professional identity as inseparable from the fascination generated by her suffering.

Mikine Kōji’s Landing Before the Enemy is a juvenile-detention or wartime-inflected memoir centered on discipline, risk, institutional authority, and the vulnerability of young men. Okyū and the Loincloth then adopts a more comic and anecdotal mode, using moxibustion, clothing, exposure, and domestic embarrassment as its organizing devices. Confusion returns to serious fiction through a narrative of emotional disturbance, desire, and unstable perception. Yoshino Mayumi’s Let Me Wear Your Underwear addresses a woman directly and treats intimate clothing as a vehicle for identification, fetishistic longing, cross-gender imagination, and personal confession.

A brief hymn to bodily beauty and Izuta Osamu’s Fireside Talk provide a pause before the long prize-selected narrative Jealousy and Woman. The latter examines romantic rivalry, possessiveness, humiliation, sexual betrayal, and the aggressive emotions produced by unstable relationships. Its length allows jealousy to become both a motive for cruelty and an organizing psychological condition. An illustrated wartime captivity feature interrupts the prose near its conclusion, connecting private erotic conflict with broader images of violence and forced exposure.

The Japanese translation of Johannes R. Birlinger’s Das Grausame Weib, rendered by Morimoto Aizō as Cruel Women, again supplies the magazine with a European comparative framework. It surveys historical and literary examples of female cruelty, punishment, domination, and sexual violence. Okinoya Sumiko’s From Cruelty to Sadism follows by considering the distinction between cruelty as behavior and sadism as an erotic or psychological orientation. The accompanying illustrations and case-oriented discussion connect theoretical terminology with concrete scenes of bodily punishment.

The fourth installment of Azuma Shin’s Notes on Meiji-Period Newspapers uses newspaper reports to document crime, domestic violence, gender transgression, sexual practices, punishment, and unusual customs. The article treats the popular press as an archive of marginal behavior, preserving incidents that formal histories often omit. A confession titled The Dawn of the City of Sodom then presents male same-sex experience through personal memory, secrecy, social stigma, and the search for a community or vocabulary capable of explaining desire.

Sakata Shinji’s Complete Submission returns as a substantial prize-selected narrative of domination, dependency, humiliation, and the progressive loss of autonomy. A second confession, A Certain Sodomite’s Confession, develops male same-sex desire through autobiographical recollection, social concealment, erotic discovery, and the tension between public respectability and private experience. Kyōmachi Shin’ichirō’s Longing for Sadism examines the appeal of dominance and cruelty from the perspective of someone drawn toward a sadistic identity rather than securely possessing one.

The later part of the issue contains a varied sequence of criticism, model studies, confession, and reader-oriented material. A compiled collection centered on corn cobs and erotic or medical anecdotes uses a catalog-like format. Takahara Masao’s The Actress’s Bare Feet explores foot fetishism through theatrical performance, spectatorship, bodily detail, and personal fascination. Watanabe Yō’s Record of Yuriko is a long narrative of intimacy, observation, and sexual development. A letter addressed to a model follows, making explicit the relationship between viewers, performers, and the magazine’s visual culture.

A review of film magazines and theatrical scenes examines how cinema and popular imagery represent eroticism, bodily danger, and unusual desire. Kondō Kikuya’s experiential narrative Blowing Pool develops through personal recollection, bodily sensation, and social unease. An article on an acrobatic troupe and a continuation of Haruki Toshio’s A Faint Masochism Seen in Film extend the magazine’s interest in performance, spectacle, and mediated suffering. The film essay considers how submission and punishment are transformed by acting, framing, and narrative convention.

The final group of substantive articles includes an appeal for ideas for a third album, a discussion of women’s professional wrestling, a confession titled Secret Obscenity, a short literary piece called Blooming in the Soil of Shared Bedding, and several correspondence departments. Women’s professional wrestling is treated as a spectacle of bodily strength, staged aggression, costume, and gendered performance. The correspondence pages collect readers’ personal experiences, questions, comments on previous articles, requests for information, and editorial responses. They show the magazine functioning as a meeting place where isolated interests could be named, compared, and converted into publishable testimony.

The back matter is extensive. It contains new-book listings, advertisements for erotic and sexological publications, catalog pages, subscription instructions, contributor notices, publication data, and a final short piece concerning ancestral female belly-cutting. These pages locate Kitan Club within a wider commercial and intellectual network of magazines, books, correspondence circles, and specialist publications. The issue therefore closes not with the final fictional narrative but with an invitation to continue reading, ordering, submitting, and participating.

Across the issue, restraint appears as physical bondage, imprisonment, emotional dependency, medical intervention, institutional discipline, and narrative structure. Clothing and bodily accessories function as fetish objects and instruments of control through underwear, loincloths, training garments, theatrical costumes, and wrestling attire. Female dominance is explored through fiction, historical examples, translated scholarship, punishment scenes, and athletic spectacle. Male vulnerability appears through prison memoir, same-sex confession, submission narratives, fetishistic identification, and spectatorship. The magazine’s central editorial achievement is its fusion of visual fantasy, historical documentation, confession, criticism, and reader exchange into a single participatory discourse about desires that conventional society treated as private, shameful, or abnormal.

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Table of Contents 47 items
  1. Bagworm
    2
    Summary

    An erotic illustration depicts a woman tightly bound and hoisted into the air like a bagworm, presented as a spectacle for onlookers and as an imagined form of public display.

  2. A Small Athletic Meet
    3
    Summary

    An erotic illustration and accompanying text portray a woman struggling through a small athletic meet while restrained and urged to run, turning physical exertion into a scene of coercion and humiliation.

  3. Drifting Woman
    3
    Summary

    A pair of erotic illustrations presents women in stylized drifting or reclining poses, emphasizing vulnerable bodily positioning and visual spectacle.

  4. Spoils of the Gambling House
    4
    Summary

    An illustrated erotic narrative depicts women seized after a gambling-house episode, gagged and rope-bound before being carried into a storehouse as sacrificial victims.

  5. The Captive of the Little Island
    5
    Summary

    A captivity fantasy recounts a woman awakening naked and tied on the shore of the Little Island, where miniature officials and a royal procession inspect and display her body.

  6. A Scene from Gulliver's Travels by Kitahara Sumiko
    5
    Summary

    A two-panel erotic adaptation of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels shows a nude giant woman restrained and surrounded by Lilliputian people, with the miniature society examining her body.

  7. Female Missionary by Sugihara Kōji
    5
    Summary

    An illustrated erotic fantasy depicts a female missionary or trainer captured and restrained in a fantastical Lilliput-like setting, combining narrative captions with staged bondage imagery.

  8. Farewell by Furukawa Hiroko
    13–23
    Summary

    This extended fictional work follows Yūko through troubled romantic and sexual relationships, confessional exchanges, fantasies of isolation, and episodes of coercion, restraint, humiliation, and domination. The narrative repeatedly examines the psychological conflict between desire, shame, independence, and surrender.

  9. Theory of the Abnormal Novel by Satō Masuo
    24–27
    Summary

    Satō Masuo offers a literary-critical theory of the “abnormal novel,” classifying its treatments of sadism, masochism, fetishism, and erotic transformation while discussing the genre’s narrative techniques, psychological appeal, and social significance.

  10. Ten Months in Captivity by Haruta Ichirō
    28–33
    Summary

    A first-person captivity memoir recounts ten months spent in a prison environment, focusing on the medical department, inmates, guards, institutional routines, illness, food, and the narrator’s shifting relationships with staff and fellow prisoners.

  11. How I Punish Him by Takarazuka Fumio
    34–41
    Summary

    An illustrated practical feature presents a woman’s methods of punishing and disciplining a male partner through commands, bondage, restraint, corporal punishment, teasing, humiliation, and staged erotic role-play.

  12. Lesbianism and Enemas by Kajimura Kyōsuke
    42–43
    Summary

    A sexological advice article examines a woman’s same-sex desire and relationship with a female partner, particularly the erotic and relational significance of enemas, while considering how the situation affects her marriage and future choices.

  13. Female Belly-Cutting in Training Clothes by Kameyama Hideo
    44–45
    Summary

    A short erotic narrative depicts a woman in training clothes undergoing belly-cutting as a stylized act of violent punishment and sexualized submission.

  14. Playing with Life by Futamata Shizuko
    46–59
    Summary

    This serialized erotic story follows Sumie and Nobuo through a volatile relationship involving marital conflict, coercive sexual games, bondage, humiliation, and escalating danger, accompanied by erotic illustrations.

  15. From the Notebook of a Certain Masochist by Numa Shōzō
    60–67
    Summary

    A first-person notebook-style account describes a masochist’s fantasies, desires, sexual experiences, and reflections on fetishistic relationships, punishment, social stigma, and the search for sympathetic companionship.

  16. The Woman Who Laughs Under Torture by Tsujiura Takashi
    68–73
    Summary

    A first-person erotic narrative follows an artist’s increasingly sadistic experiments with a female model, who endures elaborate restraints and torture while laughing, accompanied by an erotic illustration of a woman bound to a guillotine-like apparatus.

  17. Landing Before the Enemy by Mikine Kōji
    74–79
    Summary

    A dark erotic narrative depicts a boy or young man subjected to authoritarian captivity, interrogation, forced exposure, physical punishment, and humiliating restraint in a prison- or institutional setting.

  18. Okyū and the Loincloth by Nagaharu Osamu
    80–83
    Summary

    This autobiographical fetish account traces the author’s long-standing erotic fascination with women’s loincloths and moxa treatment, recalling domestic and school-age encounters in which clothing, bodily inspection, and therapeutic pain become sexualized.

  19. Confusion by Kawashita Jun'ichi
    84–87
    Summary

    An extended first-person erotic essay describes the author’s fixation on tying women, recounting fantasies and experiences involving rope wrapping, waist binding, concealment, and the visual appeal of restrained female bodies.

  20. Let Me Wear Your Underwear by Yoshino Mayumi
    88–90
    Summary

    A personal erotic confession and reader-style exchange centers on the desire to obtain, wear, and imagine women’s underwear, discussing cross-dressing, intimate clothing, secrecy, and fetishistic fascination.

  21. Praise of Bodily Beauty by Itō Susumu
    91
    Summary

    This essay praises the erotic and aesthetic qualities of the traditional Japanese fundoshi, describing its fit, tying, bodily contours, and heightened sensual effect in everyday and bathing contexts.

  22. Fireside Talk by Izuta Osamu
    92–93
    Summary

    A conversational erotic anecdote set around a rural social gathering describes flirtation, drinking, sexual pursuit, and the manipulation of appearances and reputation, accompanied by a staged image of a woman in traditional dress.

  23. Jealousy and Woman by Kaji Shin'ichi
    94–101
    Summary

    This fictional account follows a hostess whose relationships with male customers become entangled with money, sexual access, jealousy, secrecy, and competing expectations of affection and marriage.

  24. Cruel Women by Johannes R. Birlinger
    102–105
    Summary

    A translated case-based essay examines allegedly cruel women through historical and contemporary examples of female violence, domestic abuse, punishment, sadism, and social responses to women who inflict suffering.

  25. From Cruelty to Sadism by Okinoya Sumiko
    106–111
    Summary

    A first-person sadomasochistic narrative traces a woman’s experiences of abuse, coercion, and punishment as she moves from the position of victim toward sadistic control, accompanied by illustrations of violent restraint and corporal domination.

  26. Notes on Meiji-Period Newspapers, Part Four by Azuma Shin
    112–115
    Summary

    This historical column surveys sensational Meiji-era newspaper reports involving domestic conflict, sexual scandal, violence, female resistance, and unusual crimes, presenting them as evidence of changing social and sexual attitudes.

  27. The Dawn of the City of Sodom by Mori Tadashi
    116–117
    Summary

    Framed as the confession of a male sodomist, this erotic narrative recounts a night at a Japanese hot-spring city involving the pursuit of male companionship, clandestine desire, and sexual encounters in public and private spaces.

  28. Complete Submission by Sakata Shinji
    118–121
    Summary

    A first-person erotic narrative portrays a young man’s intense submission to his father’s harsh discipline, especially through scenes involving horse riding, clothing, and corporal punishment.

  29. A Certain Sodomite's Confession by Asaji Noboru
    122–125
    Summary

    An autobiographical confession traces the narrator’s developing attraction to men from childhood through military service, describing same-sex longing, fantasy, and emotionally charged encounters with male comrades.

  30. Longing for Sadism by Kyōmachi Shin'ichirō
    126–127
    Summary

    This short illustrated essay explores the narrator’s fascination with sadism, presenting sadistic desire as a psychologically compelling erotic impulse.

  31. Corncob Stories by Editorial Department
    128–129
    Summary

    An editorial miscellany on fetishism surveys unusual fixations involving body parts—especially ears and earwax—and also presents imaginative erotic anecdotes and reader-contributed fantasies.

  32. The Actress's Bare Feet by Takahara Masao
    130–131
    Summary

    This essay examines actresses’ bare feet in detail, discussing their shapes, toes, size, and the erotic fascination they can provoke in spectators and photographers.

  33. Record of Yuriko by Watanabe Yō
    132–135
    Summary

    Yuriko recounts her life and sexual exploitation in a first-person record, moving from her upbringing into nude photographic modeling, nude performance, and other forms of commercialized erotic display and service.

  34. To a Certain Model
    136–137
    Summary

    A love-letter-style piece addressed to model Nagase Akiko, reflecting on her published image, physical presence, posing, and the charged relationship between model and male observer.

  35. The Screen of Film Magazines and Theater by Watashiba Den'ichirō
    138–139
    Summary

    An illustrated survey of bondage scenes in films, magazines, and theater, discussing how restraint, danger, eroticism, and dramatic staging are represented across popular media.

  36. Blowing Pool by Kondō Kikuya
    140–145
    Summary

    A long experience-based narrative set around a hospital ward, portraying impoverished and institutionalized patients, harsh treatment, sexual tensions, and the patients’ collective efforts to demand humane reforms. It culminates in formal demands and an agreement concerning nursing, restraint, sanitation, and patient rights.

  37. The Acrobat Troupe by Yamada Makoto
    146–147
    Summary

    An observational essay on a Chinese acrobat troupe and circus performers, focusing on their extraordinary feats, bodily discipline, costumes, and the spectators’ fascinated response to their bodies in performance.

  38. A Faint Masochism Seen in Film, Continued by Haruki Toshio
    148–149
    Summary

    A continuation of the author’s survey of films that portray faint or muted forms of masochism, discussing female characters, eroticized vulnerability, humiliation, and the suggestive emotional power of cinematic scenes.

  39. Ideas for the Third Album by Narumi Fumio
    150–151
    Summary

    A proposal soliciting reader ideas for the magazine’s third album, listing possible photographed bondage compositions and inviting contributions to shape the next collection.

  40. Thoughts on Women's Professional Wrestling by Kiyama Shinsaku
    152–154
    Summary

    An essay on the rapid popularity of women’s professional wrestling examines its performers, match techniques, bodily presentation, audience appeal, and prospects for future development.

  41. Secret Obscenity by Aoba Jun'ichi
    155–156
    Summary

    An erotic fantasy narrated from a woman’s perspective depicts a frightening nighttime encounter involving pursuit, captivity, physical restraint, and conflicted sensations of fear and desire.

  42. Blooming in the Soil of Shared Bedding by Amadoro Kansai
    157
    Summary

    This reflective essay considers same-sex desire, arguing that homosexual inclinations can emerge naturally and criticizing social prejudice, ignorance, and restrictive moral judgments.

  43. Reader Correspondence
    158–161
    Summary

    A reader-mail section presents personal accounts, questions, requests, and editorial replies concerning erotic experiences, relationships, bondage, and sexual concerns.

  44. Latest Kitan Club Books
    162–169
    Summary

    A multi-page promotional catalog advertises recent Kitan Club and related erotic publications, including illustrated and photographic works focused on bondage, fetishism, bodies, and sexual scenarios.

  45. Editorial and Publication Information
    170
    Summary

    The closing publication page combines a preview of the forthcoming issue with reader-exchange information and practical editorial or subscription notices.

  46. Ancestral Female Belly-Cutting by Furukawa Shinsuke
    171
    Summary

    An anecdotal historical account examines the practice of women cutting their own abdomens, presenting family lore and testimony about a woman who performed or threatened such an act with a small knife.

  47. Advertisements and Subscription Notices
    172
    Summary

    A densely packed advertising and subscription section promotes Kitan Club and related publications, erotic books, photographic collections, model-photo contests, illustration and writing opportunities, and mail-order purchasing.

Highlights

  • The formal contents page organizes the issue's visual features, fiction, prize-selected manuscripts, memoirs, historical essays, translation, criticism, and correspondence departments. (PDF p. 2).
  • The opening visual portfolio presents suspension, outdoor restraint, historical capture, public punishment, and exoticized captivity scenes. (PDF pp. 2–5).
  • Farewell is a long psychological narrative centered on separation, secrecy, unstable attachment, and emotional estrangement. (PDF pp. 6–11).
  • Theory of the Abnormal Novel considers how literature represents unconventional sexuality and the relationship between fiction and lived experience. (PDF pp. 12–13).
  • Ten Months in Captivity continues the prison memoir's account of discipline, institutional authority, surveillance, and bodily hardship. (PDF pp. 14–16).
  • How I Punish Him develops an extended scenario of female authority, male submission, commands, humiliation, and controlled punishment. (PDF pp. 17–20).
  • The article on lesbianism and enemas combines same-sex desire with medicalized bodily treatment. (PDF p. 21).
  • Female Belly-Cutting in Training Clothes examines a historical account of ritualized cutting and gendered bodily violence. (PDF p. 22).
  • Playing with Life is a long illustrated narrative involving coercion, bodily danger, confinement, medical intervention, and threatened loss of autonomy. (PDF pp. 23–29).
  • From the Notebook of a Certain Masochist combines personal reflection, cultural history, foreign sources, medicine, and psychological interpretation. (PDF pp. 30–33).
  • The Woman Who Laughs Under Torture links acrobatic performance, bodily endurance, public spectacle, and punishment. (PDF pp. 34–36).
  • Landing Before the Enemy presents a juvenile-detention experience shaped by discipline, institutional authority, danger, and vulnerability. (PDF pp. 37–39).
  • Let Me Wear Your Underwear treats intimate clothing as a vehicle for fetishistic identification, longing, and cross-gender imagination. (PDF pp. 44–45).
  • Jealousy and Woman is a substantial prize-selected narrative about rivalry, possessiveness, betrayal, humiliation, and sexual dependency. (PDF pp. 47–50).
  • The translation of Das Grausame Weib surveys European historical and literary representations of cruel women. (PDF pp. 51–52).
  • From Cruelty to Sadism considers the distinction between nonsexual cruelty and sadism as an erotic or psychological orientation. (PDF pp. 53–55).
  • Notes on Meiji-Period Newspapers, Part Four, gathers historical reports concerning crime, punishment, gender transgression, sexuality, and unusual customs. (PDF pp. 56–57).
  • The Dawn of the City of Sodom presents male same-sex experience through memory, secrecy, stigma, and the search for community. (PDF p. 58).
  • Complete Submission is an extended prize-selected narrative of domination, dependency, humiliation, and psychological surrender. (PDF pp. 59–60).
  • A Certain Sodomite's Confession traces male same-sex desire through autobiographical recollection and social concealment. (PDF pp. 61–62).
  • The Actress's Bare Feet explores foot fetishism through theater, spectatorship, bodily detail, and personal fascination. (PDF p. 65).
  • Record of Yuriko is a sustained narrative of intimacy, observation, and sexual development. (PDF pp. 66–67).
  • The film and theater columns examine how performance and visual media transform bodily suffering and submission into spectacle. (PDF pp. 69, 73–74).
  • The discussion of women's professional wrestling treats costume, strength, staged aggression, and gendered performance as erotic spectacle. (PDF pp. 76–77).
  • Reader correspondence collects personal experiences, questions, comments on earlier articles, and editorial replies. (PDF pp. 79–80).
  • Book catalogs, publication advertisements, contributor notices, subscription details, and a final historical note form the issue's closing back matter. (PDF pp. 81–86).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue:

Kinbaku Today
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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