Kitan Club

October 1955

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Cover of Kitan Club, October 1955

Issue Details

PDF pages
172

Summary

The October 1955 issue of Kitan Club is organized as a broad survey of bondage imagery, erotic fiction, confessional testimony, medical and sexological discussion, historical documentation, translated European material, reader correspondence, and publishing notices. Its editorial identity is established by the close proximity of staged photographs, illustrated fantasies, purported case histories, autobiographical writing, literary criticism, and articles presented as research. Rather than separating entertainment from inquiry, the issue repeatedly treats visual fantasy, historical anecdote, personal confession, and specialist discussion as complementary ways of documenting unconventional desire.

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The issue opens with advertisements, payment forms, and a formal printed contents page, followed by an extended visual section. The first illustrated features depict confinement, female command, punishment, captivity, and bodily display. A woman is chained to an ornate door; another image converts two men into a human carriage controlled by a woman with a whip. Further drawings place women underwater, in captivity, or within scenes of stylized danger. The accompanying photographic sequence presents gagging, rope restraint, mummy-like wrapping, outdoor bondage, tightly posed bodies, and women restrained in Western clothing and kimono. These pages establish the issue’s recurring visual grammar of ropes, belts, cloth, fixed postures, exposure, and control.

Fujiki Senji’s The Actress Bound on a Journey begins the principal prose section with an illustrated narrative about travel, performance, abduction, and restraint. Its movement through inns, rural landscapes, and theatrical encounters combines period atmosphere with melodramatic coercion. Shirogane Kōji’s Returning Spring Flower follows as another installment in the kimono series, using historical costume, pursuit, concealment, violence, and the vulnerability of women in transit. Both stories link bondage to movement through space: travelers are intercepted, bodies are carried or hidden, and domestic or roadside settings become stages for unequal power.

The prize-selected confession Evil Habit, Part Two continues an autobiographical narrative about compulsive desire, marital relationships, secrecy, humiliation, and the narrator’s attempts to understand his behavior. Its domestic setting and confessional tone contrast with the historical fiction surrounding it. The essay How I Blame Him then turns to female authority and male submission, describing punishment, emotional control, restraint, and the imagined satisfaction of reversing conventional gendered power. The article’s combination of commentary and illustrative examples places female dominance within the magazine’s wider discussion of sadism rather than treating it solely as a photographic pose.

An extended essay on women’s underwear examines intimate clothing through fetishism, social convention, bodily concealment, fashion, and erotic association. It moves between European and Japanese examples and discusses garments as cultural objects as well as private sources of fascination. The fourth-prize narrative Fallen Love follows with a melodramatic account of sexual entanglement, betrayal, jealousy, bodily desire, and emotional degradation. Its illustrations emphasize physical domination and the instability of romantic attachment.

Shorter specialist features then narrow the issue’s attention to particular bodily and medical subjects. One article classifies nipple types and discusses their erotic and physiological significance. A clinical narrative concerning intestinal cleansing and enemas uses hospital experience, procedure, embarrassment, and bodily treatment as the basis of fetishistic reflection. Complete Submission, a fourth-prize selection, shifts back to long-form fiction and follows the progressive domination of its narrator through coercion, humiliation, dependency, and psychological surrender. The story’s movement from social interaction into total subordination gives it a darker and more sustained structure than the surrounding case notes.

Murakami Sukehiro’s A Sadist’s Miscellaneous Thoughts presents a first-person meditation on sadistic desire, control, fantasy, and personal experience. The following essay, Expecting the Next Bondage Again, reflects on anticipation, memory, performance, and the appeal of repeated restraint. Before the History of Female Labor is a prize-selected historical and social essay addressing women’s work, exploitation, coercive labor conditions, bodily punishment, and the relationship between gender and economic dependency. The issue thereby moves from private fantasy toward broader questions of authority and vulnerability within labor and social history.

A sequence of specialist articles examines castration, chastity devices, punishment, and incarceration. A historical-medical discussion of castration is followed by essays on chastity implements and a memoir of juvenile detention. The latter describes confinement, institutional rules, discipline, fear, violence, and the relationships formed within a penal environment. Its documentary tone reinforces the issue’s recurring use of prisons and reform institutions as real-world counterparts to fictional captivity.

The Method of Male Self-Abuse discusses masturbation and self-directed bodily stimulation as behavioral and psychological phenomena. The following collection of anecdotes concerning genital injury and bodily accidents adopts a more sensational medical tone. Yamada Masami’s Thirty Years of Pursuing Abnormality continues his retrospective series, considering female erotic expression, historical material, visual representation, and the author’s changing understanding of unconventional sexuality. Ten Months in Captivity resumes the prison memoir with further descriptions of labor, punishment, hierarchy, and survival under institutional control.

The later middle section broadens into foot fetishism, sadomasochistic aesthetics, journalism, literature, and model studies. An article on foot worship treats feet as visual, tactile, symbolic, and devotional objects, combining photographs, art reproductions, confession, and historical references. A fashion note introduces a new corset design, while From the Notebook of a Certain Masochist continues Numa Shōzō’s hybrid of autobiography, intellectual reflection, historical anecdote, and erotic interpretation. The short-news and cultural columns that follow survey books, films, performances, crime reports, and unusual events, strengthening the magazine’s role as a clearinghouse for material related to sadism, masochism, fetishism, and sexual difference.

My Theory of Debauchery is a reflective essay on desire, morality, repression, and the relationship between private impulse and social norms. A review titled A Masochist Seen in Film examines cinematic images of submission and punishment, discussing how performance, editing, and visual convention transform suffering into spectacle. Acrobat Correspondence and the Profile of a Nude Model continue the reader-oriented and documentary mode. The model profile combines photographs, biography, working conditions, and posing practices, while the correspondence feature gathers specialist experiences and observations from participants rather than professional writers alone.

The third installment of Notes on Meiji-Period Newspapers returns to historical documentation, drawing on reports of crime, gender nonconformity, sexual behavior, domestic scandal, punishment, and unusual customs. The article’s short excerpts and illustrations turn newspapers into a fragmented archive of marginal experience. The translation of Johannes R. Birlinger’s Das Grausame Weib, presented as Cruel Women, supplies a European comparative framework through historical and literary examples of female cruelty, sadism, punishment, and sexual violence.

The final major narrative, The Appearance of the Seven-Transformation Monk, is a historical illustrated story involving disguise, deception, captivity, pursuit, punishment, and theatrical revelation. Its episodic structure and period illustrations bring the literary section to a dramatic conclusion. The pages that follow contain reader correspondence, responses to earlier articles, technical questions, personal confessions, requests for contacts, and editorial mediation. These exchanges demonstrate that Kitan Club conceived its readers as contributors to a shared archive of experience. The magazine closes with book advertisements, catalog listings, an editorial afterword, subscription and payment information, and publication notices.

Across the issue, bondage is treated as an image, a narrative event, a remembered experience, a medicalized condition, an institutionally imposed reality, and an object of intellectual analysis. Clothing and accessories repeatedly mediate power through kimono, underwear, corsets, chastity devices, belts, bandages, and uniforms. Female dominance appears in photographs, fiction, confessions, historical studies, and translation, while male vulnerability is explored through submission, imprisonment, masturbation, foot worship, model performance, and emotional dependence. The issue’s defining editorial method is its ability to move between sensational entertainment and documentary seriousness without sharply separating them. Visual portfolios, fiction, research, confession, criticism, and correspondence collectively construct a participatory culture in which unusual desire is presented as both private experience and shared field of knowledge.

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Table of Contents 41 items
  1. Beautiful Door
    5
    Summary

    An erotic illustration depicts a woman posed in a doorway with her raised arms and body apparently secured by straps or restraints.

  2. Two-Horse Carriage
    6
    Summary

    An erotic illustration presents a commanding woman holding reins attached to two kneeling, collared men, emphasizing a spectacle of female control and male submission.

  3. Woman in the Water by Miyako Mineko
    7
    Summary

    Two sensual illustrations portray topless women reclining and partially submerged in water amid floral motifs, patterned fabrics, and dreamlike aquatic surroundings.

  4. Black News: Bondage
    8
    Summary

    A photographic bondage feature presents women in black clothing restrained with bands and coverings, emphasizing tightly bound seated and reclining poses.

  5. What Kind of Pose Will You Take?
    9
    Summary

    A pose-focused photographic feature shows masked and restrained women adopting varied kneeling, crouching, and seated positions, with captions identifying the models.

  6. Sideways Glance and Prone Pose
    10
    Summary

    A photographic sequence contrasts a sideways glance with a prone pose, including outdoor and studio scenes of women bound with rope and cloth.

  7. Bathed in the Morning Sun
    11
    Summary

    A photographic scene shows a woman bound with rope while reclining outdoors in the morning sunlight.

  8. Kimono
    12
    Summary

    A photographic portrait presents a woman in kimono seated in a restrained pose, emphasizing traditional dress and rope bondage.

  9. The Actress Bound on a Journey by Fujiki Senji
    Summary

    This illustrated erotic narrative follows an actress traveling through rural Japan, performing and recounting staged bondage encounters involving rope restraint, theatrical performance, and relationships with spectators and companions.

  10. Returning Spring Flower by Shirogane Kōji
    Summary

    A serialized historical erotic narrative set amid wartime mobilization, following soldiers and women through coercive encounters, captivity, and sexualized restraint.

  11. Evil Habit, Part Two by Enomoto Toshiko
    Summary

    A marital SM narrative in which a domineering wife subjects her husband to escalating humiliation, physical punishment, and coercive domestic discipline, illustrated through staged scenes.

  12. How I Torture Him by Takarazuka Fumio
    Summary

    An illustrated erotic account presenting a man’s methods of binding, controlling, and observing women, with detailed scenes of rope restraint, imposed poses, and voyeuristic display.

  13. On Women's Underwear by Minakami Ryūtarō
    Summary

    An essay on women’s underwear examines the author’s fascination with garments such as corsets, girdles, stockings, and brassieres, combining personal fetish experience with observations on changing fashion, social attitudes, and erotic spectatorship.

  14. Fallen Love by Sawai Kazuo
    Summary

    A serialized erotic narrative follows Yukari through coercive encounters involving domination, humiliation, punishment, bondage, and escalating sexual control by male characters, including scenes centered on an enema device.

  15. Nipple Types and Classification by Tsuchiya Naniwa
    Summary

    An illustrated pseudo-scientific feature classifies nipple shapes and types, drawing on purported research and newspaper coverage while presenting the female breast as an object of anatomical and erotic observation.

  16. The Two-Section Enema by Hanamura Emiko
    Summary

    A clinical-style erotic episode follows a patient’s difficult visit to a hospital, where doctors and nurses administer a two-stage enema and discuss the procedure, bodily sensations, and its aftermath.

  17. Complete Submission by Sakata Shinji
    Summary

    A first-person literary narrative recalls a young woman’s encounter with an intimidating, physically powerful father figure, combining fascination and submission with violent horse-cart episodes, corporal discipline, and intimate domestic caregiving during illness.

  18. A Sadist's Miscellaneous Thoughts by Muraoka Sukehiro
    Summary

    This reflective essay examines sadistic taste through the aesthetics of female bondage, considering restraint, bodily posture, clothing, exposure, and the difference between compelling visual tension and mere cruelty, alongside accompanying erotic illustrations.

  19. Expecting the Next Bondage Again by Numa Shōzō
    Summary

    Numa Shōzō responds to a woman critic’s condemnation of his masochistic writing, defending and debating its implications through arguments about gender, sexuality, psychology, and social theory. The piece functions as an extended polemic and correction of claims made in earlier reader correspondence.

  20. Before the History of Female Labor by Nanahara Yōichirō
    Summary

    Nanahara Yōichirō presents a historical, partly autobiographical account of female textile workers, describing factory discipline, sexual exploitation, confinement, beatings, and other abuses suffered by young women in the prewar labor environment. Testimony and illustrative scenes are used to expose the violence behind the conventional history of women’s industrial labor.

  21. The Female Belly-Cutting of Kurima Zubon by Kaji Sanshū
    Summary

    Kaji Sanshū combines sensational case histories of female factory workers subjected to binding, beating, and other punishments with an illustrated erotic narrative centered on a woman in riding breeches who cuts her abdomen. The feature links historical abuse reportage with violent, coercive fantasy and eroticized visual staging.

  22. Women's Chastity Devices by Tanaka Aiko
    Summary

    A widow describes adopting a men's loincloth as a protective undergarment against sexual harassment, recounting how she wears and secures it and presenting practical details of its construction and use.

  23. Juvenile Prison Experience: Gray by Mikine Kōji
    Summary

    A first-person account of life in a juvenile prison describes regimented labor, exercise, surveillance, escape attempts, interrogation, and harsh physical discipline among incarcerated boys.

  24. The Method of Male Self-Abuse by Okamura Fumio
    Summary

    A personal and instructional account of male self-abuse describes erotic responses to loincloths and bodily exposure, along with rope bindings, inverted positioning, and other self-restraint techniques.

  25. Collected Tales of Genital Mishaps by Editorial Department
    95
    Summary

    An editorial miscellany presents several sensational anecdotes involving genital injury, sexual mishaps, and related bodily embarrassment, framed as collected manuscript material.

  26. Thirty Years of Pursuing Abnormality by Yamada Masami
    Summary

    Yamada Masami’s memoir reviews thirty years of pursuing “abnormality,” recalling fetishistic interests, especially women’s noses and faces, alongside observations on beauty, erotic psychology, marriage, illustrations, and the development of specialist erotic publishing.

  27. Ten Months in Captivity by Haruta Ichirō
    Summary

    Haruta Ichirō recounts ten months of postwar imprisonment, describing prison hierarchy, labor assignments, discipline, meals, sanitation, inspections, fellow prisoners, and the routines and indignities of institutional confinement.

  28. Foot Worship by Takahara Masao
    Summary

    A personal essay celebrates women’s feet and describes the author’s attempts to observe, photograph, and collect images of attractive feet in everyday and staged settings. The article is richly illustrated with foot photographs and discusses aesthetic appreciation, secrecy, and the social risks of the fetish.

  29. A New Corset by Yanagi Fusako
    115
    Summary

    An illustrated feature presents a new tightly laced corset, describing its construction, steel stays, restrictive fit, and effects on the wearer’s body and movement. It treats the garment both as clothing and as an erotic apparatus of bodily control.

  30. From the Notebook of a Certain Masochist by Numa Shōzō
    Summary

    This serialized masochist’s notebook presents a fictional domestic power relationship in which a submissive man is subjected to commands, humiliation, bodily discipline, servitude, and increasingly animalizing treatment by dominant women. The episodic narrative uses household scenes, coercive fantasy, and fetishized control to explore male submission and the loss of ordinary social identity.

  31. My Theory of Debauchery by Kazuma Masao
    Summary

    An essay develops a personal theory of enema eroticism, discussing the psychological formation of atypical desire, the conditions that encourage or inhibit it, and differences in how men and women may experience and express it.

  32. A Masochist Seen in Film by Haruki Toshio
    Summary

    A film-oriented essay examines masochistic and gendered erotic scenarios in several Japanese and foreign films, interpreting scenes of humiliation, domination, female power, and male vulnerability through cinematic spectatorship.

  33. Acrobat Correspondence by Kyūshū Kōjō
    Summary

    A correspondence column combines editorial replies and reader reports about acrobatic performance, training, bodily flexibility, and eroticized acrobatic imagery, emphasizing readers’ participation in the magazine community.

  34. Profile of a Nude Model by Tsuji Takashi
    Summary

    A profile of nude model Kaga Rieko, combining biographical commentary with staged studio and outdoor photographs depicting rope-bound, blindfolded, and otherwise restrained poses; a second model, Sugawa Reiko, is also presented in kinbaku scenes.

  35. Notes on Meiji-Period Newspapers, Part Three by Azuma Shin
    Summary

    A documentary-style survey of Meiji-period newspaper reports concerning foreign settlements, prostitution, trafficking, domestic abuse, wife-selling, sexual exploitation, sensational crimes, and the era’s criminal punishments, with commentary on their historical significance.

  36. Cruel Women by Johannes R. Birlinger
    Summary

    A translated and illustrated excerpt from Johannes R. Birlinger’s 1901 work on the cruel treatment of women, presenting historical and ethnographic examples of wife and servant abuse, flogging, confinement, forced labor, and patriarchal domination.

  37. The Appearance of the Seven-Transformation Monk
    Summary

    A serialized Edo-period erotic fantasy follows the violent exploits of the transforming monk Shichibake Kozō and associated characters, featuring pursuit, abduction, deception, sexual coercion, and elaborate rope restraints and punishments. Illustrated scenes emphasize bound, gagged, suspended, and otherwise humiliated women within a sadistic adventure narrative.

  38. Reader Correspondence
    Summary

    A substantial reader-mail section presents letters responding to the magazine’s fiction, illustrations, photographs, bondage and erotic features, while also recording requests, criticisms, personal disclosures, and suggestions for future issues and reader participation.

  39. Latest Book Guide
    Summary

    A catalog-style guide advertises newly available erotic photograph and illustration booklets, especially works featuring female nudity, abdominal cutting imagery, bondage, restraint, punishment, and fetishized bodies, with titles, creators, formats, and prices.

  40. Night Reflections
    170
    Summary

    An editorial marking the magazine’s resumption discusses its interrupted publication, rising printing and distribution costs, circulation difficulties, and plans to sustain regular issues through reader support and improved editorial content.

  41. Publication and Subscription Information
    Summary

    A publishing-information section lists the contents of earlier Kitan Club issues, invites readers to submit fiction, essays, reports, photographs, illustrations, and ideas, and provides subscription, back-issue, pricing, and publisher-distribution details.

Highlights

  • The formal contents page lists the issue's pictorial features, fiction, prize-selected confessions, research essays, translation, recurring series, and reader departments. (PDF p. 2).
  • The opening visual section combines chained-door imagery, female command, underwater captivity, gagging, mummy-like wrapping, outdoor restraint, and kimono bondage. (PDF pp. 5–12).
  • The Actress Bound on a Journey is an illustrated period narrative combining travel, performance, abduction, and restraint. (PDF pp. 13–19).
  • Returning Spring Flower develops a kimono-centered historical story of pursuit, capture, violence, and forced transport. (PDF pp. 20–28).
  • Evil Habit, Part Two continues a prize-selected confession about compulsion, marital secrecy, humiliation, and erotic fixation. (PDF pp. 29–35).
  • How I Blame Him presents female authority and male punishment through commentary, fantasy, and illustrated examples. (PDF pp. 36–43).
  • The essay on women's underwear examines intimate garments through fetishism, fashion, bodily concealment, and cultural history. (PDF pp. 44–47).
  • Fallen Love is a prize-selected melodrama involving jealousy, degradation, emotional dependency, and sexual domination. (PDF pp. 48–57).
  • A specialist article classifies nipple forms and discusses their physiological and erotic significance. (PDF pp. 58–59).
  • An enema narrative turns hospital treatment, bodily procedure, and embarrassment into a medicalized fetish account. (PDF pp. 60–61).
  • Complete Submission is an extended prize-selected narrative of coercion, humiliation, dependency, and psychological surrender. (PDF pp. 62–67).
  • A Sadist's Miscellaneous Thoughts presents a first-person reflection on domination, fantasy, and sadistic self-understanding. (PDF pp. 68–69).
  • Expecting the Next Bondage Again considers anticipation, memory, and the repeated desire for restraint. (PDF pp. 70–73).
  • Before the History of Female Labor examines women's work, exploitation, bodily discipline, and gendered dependency. (PDF pp. 74–81).
  • The juvenile detention memoir describes confinement, institutional rules, punishment, violence, and survival. (PDF pp. 86–92).
  • The Method of Male Self-Abuse discusses masturbation through behavioral, psychological, and bodily perspectives. (PDF pp. 93–94).
  • Thirty Years of Pursuing Abnormality continues Yamada Masami's retrospective on female sexuality, visual representation, and sexual research. (PDF pp. 96–101).
  • Ten Months in Captivity resumes its detailed account of imprisonment, labor, punishment, hierarchy, and institutional life. (PDF pp. 102–109).
  • Foot Worship combines photographs, historical imagery, confession, and commentary on feet as fetish and devotional objects. (PDF pp. 110–114).
  • From the Notebook of a Certain Masochist continues Numa Shōzō's blend of autobiography, history, and theoretical reflection. (PDF pp. 116–125).
  • A Masochist Seen in Film examines the cinematic representation of submission, punishment, and erotic spectacle. (PDF pp. 128–129).
  • The Profile of a Nude Model combines photographs, biography, working conditions, and discussion of posing. (PDF pp. 132–135).
  • Notes on Meiji-Period Newspapers, Part Three gathers historical reports concerning crime, gender, sexuality, punishment, and unusual social practices. (PDF pp. 136–142).
  • The translation of Das Grausame Weib surveys European historical and literary representations of cruel women. (PDF pp. 143–145).
  • The Appearance of the Seven-Transformation Monk is a historical illustrated narrative involving disguise, pursuit, captivity, and punishment. (PDF pp. 146–156).
  • The closing reader department contains letters, personal experiences, questions, contact requests, and editorial responses. (PDF pp. 158–167).
  • Book lists, an editorial afterword, subscription information, and publication notices form the final back matter. (PDF pp. 168–172).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue:

English Translations from This Issue