Kitan Club

May 1951

← Back to magazine archive

Cover of Kitan Club, May 1951

Issue Details

Volume
5
Issue
5
PDF pages
110

Summary

The May 1951 issue of Kitan Club combines erotic illustration, nude photography, humorous pseudo-journalism, sexual reportage, romantic and sensational fiction, crime stories, comic miscellany, and recurring urban-sexuality features. Its opening pages make the visual character of the magazine especially prominent. After the contents page, several color erotic illustrations are followed by an extended photographic sequence devoted to nude dancers and models. The issue then shifts into the newspaper-like Jōdan Yokochō Circular Board, whose mock news items, jokes, social satire, school humor, and sexual anecdotes establish a playful, topical tone before the longer prose features begin.

Read full summary Close full summary

The first major prose sequence turns from visual eroticism toward voyeurism and encounters between men and women. Nude Photograph Collecting Mania follows a man’s fascination with photographing and collecting nude images, while I Am Surrounded by a Group of Women uses an almost comic nightmare of female attention to explore male sexual anxiety. The historical story The Peach-Colored Inspector Arrives moves this erotic curiosity into a period setting. Other early pieces consider intimacy between lovers, marriage, and changing sexual conduct, while the long-running Hundred Strange Tales: Sighs of the City offers short urban episodes that treat modern romance and sexuality as material for anecdote and comedy.

The middle of the issue broadens considerably. Siberian Sexual Landscape: Okyanska’s Love places sexual and romantic experience against an international postwar setting, and Tokyo Nocturne adapts the language of cinema into short fiction. My Regret over My Mustache is followed by the comic Marriage Report and the melodramatic Breast Guarded by Blood. Revenge Drama, Three Masters of Lovemaking, and the Gion geisha feature Twilight on Hanamikoji continue the magazine’s mixture of melodrama, erotic folklore, humor, and curiosity about professional entertainment worlds. The sequence Nighttime City: Titillating Strange Tales and the later Flower-Scented Back Street return the focus to modern urban encounters.

The later third becomes darker and more sensational. The Shoplifting Heiress Murder Case adopts true-crime conventions, while Akihiko’s Peach-Colored Theater Visit: There Are Such She-Leopards in the City presents the entertainment world as an arena of sexual spectacle and social transgression. Sweet Dream, Peach-Colored Dream and The Lustful Man of the Naniwa Boat combine erotic fantasy with humorous or strange storytelling. Two overlapping comic-erotic features beginning on page 98 lead into the substantial closing passion story The Naked Witch, which occupies most of the final pages. The issue concludes with humor, games, and miscellaneous reader-facing material. Across the magazine, changing postwar sexual mores, voyeurism, marriage, urban nightlife, female autonomy, theatrical spectacle, crime, and the tension between comic and sensational treatments of sexuality repeatedly intersect.

Loading PDF…
Table of Contents 31 items
  1. The Naked Witch: Color Frontispiece
    3
    Summary

    A color frontispiece for “The Naked Witch” depicts a nude woman in an intimate interior, accompanied by erotic prose invoking mirrored rooms, duplicated bodies, and a fantastical “naked witch.”

  2. Erotic Color Illustration
    4
    Summary

    A full-page color illustration shows an intimate encounter between a reclining traditionally dressed woman and a man in Japanese clothing, with a sheathed sword visible beside him.

  3. The Peach-Colored Inspector Arrives: Color Frontispiece
    5
    Summary

    A color erotic frontispiece depicts two women in a traditional Japanese interior, posed intimately beside a low table laden with food. The vertical caption presents the scene as the arrival of a “peach-colored inspector.”

  4. Revenge Drama: Color Frontispiece
    6
    Summary

    A color dramatic illustration shows two partially undressed women in a room divided by a sliding screen, with one woman watching or confronting the other. The surrounding Japanese text frames the scene as an emotionally charged story of desire, jealousy, and revenge.

  5. Nudes Dance
    Summary

    A photographic feature presenting nude female performers in a sequence of posed and dance-like studio images. Japanese captions emphasize movement, bodily form, and the visual appeal of the performers, with several portraits and group compositions.

  6. Jōdan Yokochō Circular Board by Fūryū Tarō
    15
    Summary

    A humorous miscellany presented as a circular-board column, combining satirical topical notes, comic reports, school and workplace anecdotes, domestic jokes, and reader-style question-and-answer exchanges. Its humor frequently turns on everyday social tensions, gender relations, petty crime, and the absurdities of postwar life.

  7. Nude Photograph Collecting Mania
    22
    Summary

    A sensational illustrated feature about a man absorbed in collecting nude photographs and discussing the women, settings, and circumstances represented in his collection. The narrative explores erotic image-making, voyeuristic desire, photographic fantasy, and the collector’s obsession through dialogue and staged illustrations.

  8. I Am Surrounded by a Group of Women by Noto Ichizō
    26
    Summary

    An erotic comic fiction follows a young physician and the women connected with a psychiatric and venereal-disease hospital, mixing medical examinations, ward life, flirtation, jealousy, and sexual intrigue. The episodic narrative satirizes doctors, nurses, patients, and male anxieties through exaggerated encounters and dialogue.

  9. Kitan Fake News by Nakamura Yonezō
    32
    Summary

    A humorous “fake news” feature presents a series of invented reports and comic anecdotes involving public figures, officials, social scandals, and absurd incidents. Its mock-news format uses gossip, parody, and exaggeration for satirical entertainment.

  10. The Peach-Colored Inspector Arrives by Negoro Yoshitarō
    34
    Summary

    An Edo-period historical fiction follows the arrival of a secret bakufu inspector in the Yamato Koriyama domain, throwing the lord’s officials into fear and suspicion. They attempt to discover the inspector’s identity and undermine the investigation through surveillance, interrogation, disguises, alcohol, and sexual seduction.

  11. Until the Loincloth Is Disordered by Kamo Michihiko
    38
    Summary

    A fictionalized dialogue and romantic episode considers whether engaged couples should permit sexual intimacy before marriage. The narrative explores desire, restraint, emotional uncertainty, and competing expectations surrounding premarital physical relations.

  12. Hundred Strange Tales: Sighs of the City by Akashi Sanpei
    40
    Summary

    A sequence of sensational urban erotic vignettes portraying clandestine affairs, prostitution, sexual bargaining, and comic or tragic encounters among city dwellers. The episodes emphasize the anonymity, commercial pressures, and emotional disquiet of modern metropolitan sexuality.

  13. Siberian Sexual Landscape: Okyanska's Love by Anabuki Takeshi
    43
    Summary

    An erotic narrative set against a Siberian frontier of military work camps and remote settlements, where labor, money, and institutional power shape access to women and sexual relationships. The story follows Okyanska and several men through seduction, jealousy, coercion, marriage, and violent emotional conflict.

  14. Tokyo Nocturne
    45
    Summary

    A first-person nocturnal vignette about wandering through postwar Tokyo, combining nightlife, encounters with women, sexual fantasy, and reflections prompted by popular films and urban entertainment. The piece presents the city as a setting of transient pleasure, loneliness, and erotic intrigue.

  15. My Regret over My Mustache by Takamura Chōji
    46
    Summary

    An illustrated serialized fiction follows office worker Miyazaki Shōzō and Haruko through an emotionally volatile relationship shaped by attraction, jealousy, social expectations, and questions of marriage. Their exchanges and confrontations explore gendered reputation, class-conscious respectability, and masculine self-presentation, including the recurring motif of the protagonist’s moustache.

  16. Marriage Report by Nakamura Yonezō
    50
    Summary

    A humorous illustrated marriage report presented through comic dialogue and mock interviews. It jokes about courtship, newlywed expectations, domestic roles, appearance, drinking, and sexual relationships.

  17. Breast Guarded by Blood by Hokkai Chizuko
    52
    Summary

    An erotic melodrama follows a young model whose relationship with her teacher and other men becomes entangled in desire, jealousy, possessiveness, and physical coercion. The story treats the female body—especially the breast—as a focus of artistic scrutiny, erotic fascination, vulnerability, and violence.

  18. Revenge Drama by Kataya Kaoru
    56
    Summary

    A melodramatic revenge story centered on marital betrayal, jealousy, and concealed sexual relationships. As suspicion and resentment intensify, the characters manipulate one another through confrontations, letters, and calculated acts of retaliation.

  19. Three Masters of Lovemaking
    61
    Summary

    An episodic erotic feature portraying three experienced seducers and their encounters with women in cafés, hotels, baths, and other social settings. Through dialogue and illustrative scenes, it emphasizes flirtation, sexual confidence, romantic maneuvering, and the performers’ contrasting techniques.

  20. Gion Geisha Mizuage Notebook: Twilight on Hanamikoji
    64
    Summary

    A detailed account of Kyoto’s Gion geisha district follows maiko and geisha life around Hanamikoji, including dance training, dress, etiquette, teahouse work, patrons, earnings, and the transition from apprenticeship to professional performance. It presents the social and economic world of the Gion entertainment quarter through individual cases and reported conversations.

  21. A Woman Awakens to Beauty
    67
    Summary

    An illustrated essay responding to readers about “female beauty” examines the relationship between natural and artificial beauty, static bodily form and beauty in movement, and the aesthetic presentation of the nude body. Its discussion ranges from artistic technique and bodily proportions to performance, visual composition, and changing ideals of feminine appearance.

  22. Nighttime City: Titillating Strange Tales
    70
    Summary

    A sensational urban tale follows Sanpei and Namie through Tokyo’s nightlife, illicit encounters, jealousy, deception, and escalating sexual intrigue. The story moves among bars, back streets, rented rooms, and the city’s shadowy entertainment world.

  23. Flower-Scented Back Street
    74
    Summary

    A melodramatic story set in a working-class urban neighborhood centers on Kaneda, Fumihiko, Shimizu, and their associates amid romance, poverty, labor organizing, and tensions between workers and company authority. Illustrated scenes emphasize intimate encounters and the social pressures surrounding precarious employment and everyday life.

  24. The Shoplifting Heiress Murder Case by Setogawa Hiroshi
    77
    Summary

    A true-crime narrative follows Misako, a young woman from a respectable family, whose petty shoplifting and efforts to conceal it lead to blackmail, sexual exploitation, and a murder case. The account reconstructs the people, hotel encounters, evidence, and police investigation surrounding the crime.

  25. Akihiko's Peach-Colored Theater Visit: There Are Such She-Leopards in the City by Tsubaki Akihiko
    82
    Summary

    A sensational first-person reportage visits postwar urban venues of sexual entertainment, describing performers, customers, backstage arrangements, erotic games, and encounters in hotels and nightlife districts. The illustrated feature combines voyeuristic travel writing with depictions of commercialized sexuality and theatrical spectacle.

  26. Sweet Dream, Peach-Colored Dream by Hisatomi Kōji
    86
    Summary

    An erotic psychological melodrama centered on Shizuko, Sonoko, and their male companions. Romantic longing, secrecy, jealousy, financial vulnerability, and shifting sexual relationships lead to increasingly tense confrontations and emotional disillusionment.

  27. The Lustful Man of the Naniwa Boat by Kasagi Yoshio
    90
    Summary

    A first-person maritime erotic-horror narrative involving a sailor, a ship’s captain, and the captain’s daughter Yoshiko. Desire, coercion, violence, murder, death, and uncanny imagery unfold aboard and around a vessel, culminating in disturbing reflections on obsession and guilt.

  28. The Couple Who Were Spied Upon by Tamaki Mitsuo
    98
    Summary

    A comic erotic domestic tale about a married couple whose intimate life is disrupted when their landlady and others spy on them. Their attempts to find privacy lead to further misunderstandings and embarrassing exposure.

  29. The Lover Toying with the Flower Barrel by Kaneko Shinobu
    98
    Summary

    An erotic supernatural tale in which two men encounter a beautiful, mysterious woman—or women—near a river and become ensnared by a flower spirit’s seductive power. Vines, apparitions, dreams, and bodily peril blur the boundary between rural landscape and erotic hallucination.

  30. The Naked Witch by Matsui Yoriko
    102
    Summary

    An erotic supernatural tale in which Ryoji becomes captivated by the image of Takie appearing in a mirror. Their growing obsession blurs the boundary between reflection, fantasy, and physical encounter, leading to jealousy, forbidden intimacy, and emotional upheaval.

  31. Entertainment Grab Bag and Closing Miscellany
    110
    Summary

    A closing miscellany of reader entertainments, including shogi problems, answer sections, riddles, quizzes, and word or picture puzzles. The page functions as a participatory recreational feature inviting readers to solve problems and compare responses.

Highlights

  • The issue opens with a concentrated sequence of color erotic illustrations and nude photography, including The Naked Witch, The Peach-Colored Inspector Arrives, Revenge Drama, and the multi-page Nudes Dance portfolio. (PDF pp. 3–14).
  • Jōdan Yokochō Circular Board adopts the visual language of a newspaper and fills it with mock news, sexual jokes, school humor, domestic anecdotes, and topical satire. (PDF pp. 15–21).
  • Nude Photograph Collecting Mania explicitly makes the production, exchange, and erotic consumption of nude photographs its subject, providing unusually direct evidence of photographic erotic culture. (PDF pp. 22–25).
  • I Am Surrounded by a Group of Women develops a comic and anxious fantasy of a man confronted by numerous women, foregrounding gender reversal and male sexual vulnerability. (PDF pp. 26–31).
  • Siberian Sexual Landscape: Okyanska's Love situates erotic and romantic experience in a postwar international setting, one of several places where the issue links sexuality to the wider world beyond Japan. (PDF pp. 43–45).
  • The Shoplifting Heiress Murder Case blends sexuality, social class, crime, and sensational reportage in one of the issue's major late nonfiction-style features. (PDF pp. 77–81).
  • Akihiko's Peach-Colored Theater Visit: There Are Such She-Leopards in the City examines erotic theatrical entertainment and presents the urban stage as a site of spectacle, sexuality, and transgression. (PDF pp. 82–85).
  • The Naked Witch is the issue's substantial closing passion story, returning the publication to the erotic-fantastic imagery introduced by its color frontispiece. (PDF pp. 102–109).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue: