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Kitan Club

November 1947

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Cover of Kitan Club, November 1947

Issue Details

PDF pages
23

Summary

The November 1947 Kitan Club is an early postwar issue whose editorial identity is already recognizable as a mixture of sexological curiosity, ethnographic speculation, urban reportage, erotic humor, medical discussion, folklore, and accounts of unconventional sexuality. The cover identifies the magazine simply as Kitan Club and prominently marks the issue with 11, while the contents page establishes a dense miscellany rather than a single thematic special issue. The magazine moves rapidly among serious explanatory articles, anecdotal collections, comic observation, sensational reportage, and short columns.

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The opening article, Worship of the Genitals and the Sexual Spirit: A Study of Folk Toys, Part 1, by Sakai Sanjin, approaches sexual symbolism through folk religion and material culture. It discusses phallic and genital imagery, fertility worship, ritual objects, and the relationship between sexuality and religious belief. This is followed by Utsumi Yūzō’s Collection of Erotic Curiosities from Various Provinces, a gathering of regional sexual customs, stories, and unusual practices. Nakahara Harumi’s The Frappé Dance That Intoxicates Spectators shifts toward modern entertainment, describing an eroticized dance spectacle and its visual appeal.

Several shorter pieces address fetishism, medicine, and popular sexual knowledge. A discussion of rubber raincoats treats attraction to waterproof clothing as an erotic peculiarity, while Obstetrician-Gynecologist’s View of the Times: ABC collects observations derived from medical practice. The Science of Kissing and the Oral Cavity examines kissing from physiological and hygienic perspectives, and a neighboring article considers erotic pictures and censorship or prohibition. Other short pieces deal with false circumcision, contemporary dating, nightlife, theatrical sexuality, and humorous erotic incidents.

The middle and later portions increasingly emphasize urban and narrative material. Shanghai’s Den of Vice presents Shanghai through the vocabulary of vice tourism and cosmopolitan sexual danger. The magazine also includes reports on Osaka nightlife and pleasure quarters, an essay on the predicament of unmarried women over thirty, and the supernatural story The Fox Spirit and Fox Possession. Erotic comic storytelling appears in the rakugo-style Katsunotsugi, while Curious Talk: An Object for Personal Use examines intimate objects and bodily practices. Human Flesh considers the cultural and gustatory meanings attached to human versus animal flesh.

The closing pages continue the magazine’s fascination with modern sexual behavior. The back-street column Floating-World Patterns: The City’s Back Alleys presents anecdotal encounters and illicit urban situations; Y-Section Discussions offers short provocative observations on sexuality; and the final substantial essay examines precocious girls as represented in erotic books of earlier periods. Editorial notes, advertisements, subscription information, and the colophon close the issue. Collectively, the magazine documents a transitional moment in early postwar popular sex culture, where folklore, medicine, fetishism, prostitution, modern urban life, erotic publishing, and comic storytelling were being assembled into the distinctive editorial mixture that would characterize Kitan Club.

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Table of Contents 26 items
  1. Worship of the Genitals and the Sexual Spirit: A Study of Folk Toys, Part 1 by Sakai Sanjin
    3–4
  2. Collection of Erotic Curiosities from Various Provinces by Utsumi Yūzō
    5
  3. The Frappé Dance That Intoxicates Spectators by Nakahara Harumi
    6
  4. The Rubber Raincoat Fetish by Watagawa Kaoru
    7
  5. An Obstetrician-Gynecologist's View of the Times: ABC by Sugita Kiyoshi
    7
  6. The Science of Kissing and the Oral Cavity by Yagi Kyūichi
    8
  7. Erotic Pictures and Prohibition by Ayukawa Kazuo
    8
  8. The Counterfeit Circumcision Specialist by Nobuta Haruo
    9
  9. A Scene from 1948: The Speed Age by Miki Tosei
    10
  10. Pink-Tinted Social Conditions by M. Y.
    10
  11. Pink Curiosities and Worldly Tales
    11
  12. Kitan Gossip
    11
  13. Conto: One Difference by Mizuhara Kōsuke
    11
  14. Shanghai's Den of Vice by Ukita Fumio
    12–14
  15. Flowers of Vice in the Pleasure Quarter by Yuge Shinobu
    13–14
  16. A Night in Osaka Picked Up on the Kanazuka Highway by Aoki Tomiji
    13–14
  17. The Crisis of the Unmarried Woman Over Thirty by Aoki Tomiji
    15
  18. The Fox Spirit and Fox Possession by Ninchōji Minoru
    16
  19. Erotic Rakugo: Katsunotsugi by Mugen-tei Chian
    17
  20. Curious Talk: An Object for Personal Use by Suzuki Jōfu
    18
  21. Seven Children by H-sei
    18
  22. The Taste of Human Flesh by Tamaji Kōzō
    18
  23. Floating-World Patterns: The City's Back Alleys by Kimura Ichizō
    19–21
  24. Y-Section Discussions: Arabesque by Ashida Keisuke
    20
  25. The Rampage of the Pink Terror
    21
  26. Precocious Girls in the Age Revealed by Erotic Books by Gotō Fumio
    22–23

Highlights

  • The opening study of genital worship connects sexual symbolism, fertility rites, religious belief, and folk objects, showing the magazine's early interest in treating sexuality through quasi-ethnographic and historical frameworks. (PDF pp. 3–4).
  • Collection of Erotic Curiosities from Various Provinces gathers regional stories and customs concerning sexuality and bodily practices, presenting local folklore as a source of erotic knowledge. (PDF p. 5).
  • The Frappé Dance That Intoxicates Spectators describes an erotic modern dance spectacle and the responses of its audience, illustrating the magazine's attention to contemporary entertainment and visual sexuality. (PDF p. 6).
  • A cluster of articles on rubber raincoats, obstetrics and gynecology, kissing, and erotic pictures mixes fetishistic curiosity with medical and pseudo-scientific explanation. (PDF pp. 7–9).
  • The 1948 Scene and related modern-life columns present flirtation, dating, cinemas, streets, and nightlife as emblems of rapidly changing postwar sexual behavior. (PDF pp. 10–11).
  • Shanghai's Den of Vice portrays the Chinese metropolis through nightlife, sexuality, foreignness, and vice, reflecting the era's sensationalized fascination with cosmopolitan urban spaces. (PDF pp. 12–14).
  • The Crisis of the Unmarried Woman Over Thirty discusses marriage, aging, sexuality, social expectation, and women's emotional lives within the gender norms of the immediate postwar period. (PDF p. 15).
  • The Fox Spirit and Fox Possession combines supernatural folklore with sexuality and bodily transformation, continuing Kitan Club's characteristic overlap between the strange, erotic, and ethnographic. (PDF p. 16).
  • Floating-World Patterns: The City's Back Alleys offers anecdotal scenes of intoxication, prostitution, clandestine encounters, and urban sexual behavior. (PDF pp. 19–21).
  • The concluding article on precocious girls in erotic books considers historical representations of adolescent femininity and sexuality, placing modern behavior in dialogue with earlier erotic literature. (PDF pp. 22–23).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in 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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