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Fuzoku Kitan

May 1960

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Cover of Fuzoku Kitan, May 1960

Issue Details

Issue
5
PDF pages
155

Summary

The May 1960 issue of Fūzoku Kitan presents an unusually concentrated examination of homosexuality alongside the magazine’s customary mixture of sadomasochistic photography, sexual folklore, criminology, fiction, confession, historical miscellany, and erotic visual culture. Its substantial opening section begins with Japanese erotic-print reproductions, photographs of sexually suggestive natural forms, a signed foreign comic illustration, a color fantasy image, and an extended sequence of staged bondage photography. Most of these gravure portfolios are editorial features without printed photographer, model, writer, or director credits. The identifiable opening artists include Suzuki Harunobu for the bathhouse print and Hérouard for “The Swing.” A concluding art portfolio reproduces European paintings, including works identified in captions with Rubens, while leaving the magazine compilation itself uncredited.

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The central special feature approaches homosexuality through several competing postwar frameworks. Ōtachi Kinji’s opening survey attempts to classify male and female homosexuality, gender presentation, bisexuality, and sexual behavior using psychological and medical terminology characteristic of the period. Subsequent essays shift between personal testimony, criminal case history, historical anecdote, and sensational reportage. Yuasa Shigeji presents a feminine man’s romantic memoir, while Kido Giichi reconstructs the emotional development of a homosexual youth who committed murder. Takabayashi Shingo examines same-sex relations among Sengoku-period warriors, connecting famous military figures and literary traditions with male-male intimacy. Other contributions treat vernacular sexual language, female same-sex relationships, masochism, and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s private contracts and domestic arrangements.

The issue broadens outward through accounts of ghosts who marry human partners, female-specific tortures, ritual suicide, erotic tattoos, tangled marriages, historical sexual customs, cannibalistic crime, harem cruelty, fetishistic attraction, and nocturnal violence. Fiction and quasi-documentary narratives repeatedly join sexuality to coercion, jealousy, murder, disguise, imprisonment, and punishment. The magazine’s illustrations and photographic sequences translate these motifs into both historical fantasy and contemporary Japanese interiors.

Later sections return to recurring Fūzoku Kitan genres: Meiji-period sexual curiosities, violent crime, razor mutilation, dangerous conversation, sexual autobiography, advertisements for sexological books, short reports, contributor information, and the colophon. Across the issue, medicalized explanation, historical curiosity, lurid crime, erotic fantasy, and staged visual performance coexist without a stable boundary, giving the magazine its characteristic blend of research pretension and sensational entertainment.

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Table of Contents 42 items
  1. May 1960 Cover: Special Issue on Homosexuality and Pleasurable Humiliation
    1
  2. Meeting on a Boat
    2
  3. At the Bathhouse by Suzuki Harunobu
    2
  4. Male Tree and Female Avenue
    3
  5. Formal Table of Contents
    4
  6. The Swing by Hérouard
    5
  7. Captured Mermaid
    6
  8. Women and Animals
    7
  9. Captured Mermaid
    8–10
  10. Nude Tight Binding
    11–12
  11. When a Woman Is Bound
    13–14
  12. Painful Sacrifice
    15–16
  13. Bound Glossy Skin
    17–19
  14. Chair Torment
    20–21
  15. Beauty in Darkness
    22
  16. Night of Pleasurable Cruelty
    23
  17. Abnormal Sexuality in Famous Paintings
    24–27
  18. May 1960 Issue Title Page
    28
  19. Types and Realities of Homosexual Love by Ōtachi Kinji
    32–39
  20. Romantic Memoir of a Feminine Man by Yuasa Shigeji
    40–41
  21. How a Homosexual Youth Came to Commit Murder by Kido Giichi
    42–47
  22. Homosexual Love Among the Warriors of the Warring States by Takabayashi Shingo
    48–52
  23. The Sodomy-Loving Head Clerk by Hanajima Seiji
    53
  24. Ecstasy Between White-Skinned Women by Kamiyama Kōkichi
    54–60
  25. Pictorial Fetishism by Asakawa Hisashi
    61
  26. Sacher-Masoch’s Contract of Abuse by Mase Teruo
    62–66
    Read Translation
  27. The Masochist’s Fine Wine by Masaki Shin’ichi
    67–69
  28. People Who Fell in Love with Ghosts and Married Them by Wakatsuki Yasuaki
    70–75
  29. Tortures Inflicted Only on Women by Sō Shunzō
    76–82
  30. A Woman’s Seppuku by Kosen Kyōta
    83–87
  31. The Beauty Who Became a Sadist’s Prey by Bill Marcus
    88–95
  32. A Study of Sexual Tattoos by Sengoku Sentarō
    96–97
  33. A Tangled Marriage by Sano Kazuhiko
    98–111
  34. A History of Sexual Curiosities in the Meiji Period, Part 4 by Somei Keiichirō
    112–119
  35. The Man Who Ate Women’s Flesh by Shinkawa Yūji
    120–126
  36. Night of the Beast by Tsuki Kyōsuke
    127–131
  37. Cruel Tales of the Harem by Somei Keiichirō
    132–135
  38. The Allure of Belts by Kashiwamura Midori
    136–141
  39. Midnight Murder Show by Nanamura Jirō
    142–145
  40. Razor-Blade Writing on a Woman’s Skin by Takashima Shinroku
    146–149
  41. A Dangerous Conversation by Klaus Arnaud
    150–151
  42. The Abnormal Sexual History of Fukiage Satarō by Jinbo Kenzō
    152–158

Highlights

  • The opening visual section combines Japanese erotic-print reproductions, photographs of sexually suggestive trees, signed foreign comic art, women-and-animals imagery, and a long sequence of staged bondage photography. (PDF pp. 2–23).
  • The right-hand erotic print on PDF page 2 is explicitly credited to Suzuki Harunobu, while the attribution beneath the left-hand print remains difficult to read. (PDF p. 2).
  • Hérouard’s signed comic illustration “The Swing” uses accidental exposure and slapstick eroticism, contrasting with the more severe bondage imagery that follows. (PDF p. 5).
  • The staged gravure sequence presents women restrained with rope, chairs, fabric, and household architecture, with captions emphasizing capture, exposure, humiliation, pain, and pleasure. (PDF pp. 8–23).
  • A visual survey of allegedly abnormal sexuality in European painting reproduces works attributed in the captions to Rubens and other artists as evidence for voyeurism, bestiality, fetishism, and sexual excess. (PDF pp. 24–27).
  • Ōtachi Kinji’s lead essay classifies homosexuality into psychological and behavioral types and discusses gender presentation, bisexuality, male and female homosexual conduct, and contemporary social attitudes. (PDF pp. 29–36).
  • A criminal case study follows a youth’s emotional attachment to another boy and the development of jealousy, isolation, and obsessive desire into planned homicide. (PDF pp. 39–44).
  • The article on Sengoku warriors surveys traditions of male-male intimacy associated with military elites and famous historical figures, treating such relationships as culturally embedded rather than purely modern. (PDF pp. 45–49).
  • The feature on Sacher-Masoch examines his biography, marriages, erotic imagination, and written contracts governing submission, domination, and punishment. (PDF pp. 59–63).
  • The final third includes Meiji sexual curiosities, cannibalistic murder, harem cruelty, fetishistic attraction, nocturnal homicide, razor mutilation, sexual autobiography, contributor information, and the colophon. (PDF pp. 109–155).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue:

English Translations from This Issue

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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