Kitan Club

May 1963

← Back to magazine archive

Summary

The May 1963 issue of Kitan Club is organized as a broad anthology of bondage photography, fetish illustration, supernatural adventure, historical fiction, personal testimony, cultural commentary, and reader correspondence. Its opening pages establish the issue’s visual character through staged scenes of blindfolding, gagging, trampling, tightly compressed rope positions, kimono bondage, and women alternately occupying dominant and submissive roles. A substantial illustration portfolio follows, with contributions by Shima Takashi, Claude Koga, Kurokawa Fujio, and Taki Reiko depicting warehouse restraint, tongue suspension, breast-weight bondage, group punishment, imagined disembowelment, female same-sex intimacy, and headlock wrestling.

Read full summary Close full summary

The prose section opens with Nonaka Aizō’s “Valley of the Dead,” an extended pulp-fantasy narrative involving an isolated valley, a criminal entertainment trade, coercive performance, escape attempts, and grotesque transformation. Yoshino Mayumi’s conversational “Notes of a Gun-Making Maniac” shifts the tone toward modern urban leisure, collecting, transport work, and the economics of specialized hobbies. Maki Shinji’s “The Women of Sunpu Castle” then turns to historical melodrama, presenting conflict between women, assassination plots, ritualized combat, and female seppuku within a castle setting. Iseki Yasuaki’s “A Beautiful Cry” develops a modern sadomasochistic story, while Yoshino Mayumi’s “The Ordeal of the Diapered Child” examines infantilism and humiliation through a confessional narrative.

The middle of the issue combines recurring serial fiction with psychological and social themes. Tsujimura Takashi contributes the twenty-fourth installment of “Tales of the Thirty-Ninth Night,” followed by Hanada Ichirō’s “Longing for a Long Sentence,” which treats imprisonment as fantasy and fixation. “Marriage: The Withered Chapter” and Horikawa Shichirō’s “Secret Tales of Female Seppuku” continue the issue’s interest in troubled relationships, bodily sacrifice, and women subjected to or embracing ritual death. Taketani Jūzō’s continuing novel “The Wife of the Cross” extends this atmosphere into domestic and religiously inflected suffering.

The later section becomes more explicitly documentary and participatory. Reader testimony describes intoxication with enemas; a short essay considers women in male dress; another reflects on bondage photography as an amateur practice. Manda Fuji’s confession “Love’s Bewilderment,” Maruyama Keizō’s report on women’s sumo, Sanjō Takushi’s fiction “The Woman of the Ginkgo Mansion,” and Ōtsuka Keiko’s eight-millimeter memoir “Happiness” broaden the issue from fantasy and punishment to private memory, performance, cross-gender spectacle, and domestic unease. The final pages are filled with reader exchanges, classified notices, requests for photographs and publications, club announcements, editorial replies, and advertisements for fetish materials. These closing pages reveal Kitan Club not only as a magazine of visual and literary fantasy but also as a social network through which readers shared experiences, sought correspondents, and circulated specialized media.

Loading PDF…
Table of Contents 21 items
  1. Opening Gravure Portfolio
    6–13
  2. Illustration Portfolio by Shima Takashi, Claude Koga, Kurokawa Fujio, Taki Reiko, and others
    14–21
  3. Second Gravure Portfolio
    22–28
  4. Valley of the Dead by Nonaka Aizō
    34–42
  5. Notes of a Gun-Making Maniac by Yoshino Mayumi
    43–45
  6. The Women of Sunpu Castle by Maki Shinji
    46–55
  7. A Beautiful Cry by Iseki Yasuaki
    56–67
  8. The Ordeal of the Diapered Child by Yoshino Mayumi
    68–75
  9. Tales of the Thirty-Ninth Night: Twenty-Fourth Night by Tsujimura Takashi
    76–81
  10. Longing for a Long Sentence by Hanada Ichirō
    82–99
  11. Marriage: The Withered Chapter by Kururugi Sakae
    100–102
  12. Secret Tales of Female Seppuku by Horikawa Shichirō
    103–117
  13. The Wife of the Cross, Continued by Taketani Jūzō
    118–125
  14. Intoxicated by the Words of an Enema by Takeno Keizō
    126–127
  15. Observations on Women in Male Dress by Tajima Naoshi
    128–135
  16. Reflections on Bondage Photography by Yasuda Takao
    136–137
  17. Love’s Bewilderment by Manda Fuji
    138–147
  18. The Women’s Sumo of the Wives by Maruyama Keizō
    148–149
  19. The Woman of the Ginkgo Mansion by Sanjō Takushi
    150–167
  20. Happiness: An Eight-Millimeter Memoir by Ōtsuka Keiko
    168–177
  21. Reader Communications
    178–191

Highlights

  • The opening photographic sequence presents blindfolding, trampling, exposed rope restraint, kneeling positions, and tightly compressed floor ties. (PDF pp. 6–13).
  • A full-page illustration portfolio by Shima Takashi, Claude Koga, Kurokawa Fujio, Taki Reiko, and others depicts warehouse bondage, tongue suspension, breast-weight restraint, group punishment, disembowelment fantasy, and headlock wrestling. (PDF pp. 14–21).
  • A second photographic portfolio places gagged and bound women in domestic and outdoor settings and includes female-on-male domination and compact rope positions. (PDF pp. 22–28).
  • Nonaka Aizō’s “Valley of the Dead” is a long supernatural adventure combining an isolated criminal enclave, coerced performance, escape, and bodily transformation. (PDF pp. 30–38).
  • Maki Shinji’s “The Women of Sunpu Castle” dramatizes rivalry, assassination, female sword combat, and ritual suicide in a historical setting. (PDF pp. 42–51).
  • Yoshino Mayumi’s “The Ordeal of the Diapered Child” provides a substantial treatment of infantilism and humiliation as an erotic and psychological fixation. (PDF pp. 64–71).
  • The central run of serial and case-oriented writing explores imprisonment fantasies, troubled marriage, female seppuku, and the continuing story “The Wife of the Cross.” (PDF pp. 72–121).
  • Later documentary pieces address enema practices, women in male dress, and the culture of amateur bondage photography. (PDF pp. 122–133).
  • The final literary section includes a confession of erotic bewilderment, a report on women’s sumo, the long story “The Woman of the Ginkgo Mansion,” and an eight-millimeter film memoir. (PDF pp. 134–173).
  • The extensive closing correspondence and classified pages document reader networks, exchanges of photographs and publications, club activity, personal advertisements, and editorial communication. (PDF pp. 174–188).
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.

EVEN MORE NEWS

POPULAR CATEGORY

©