Uramado

November 1956

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Cover of Uramado, November 1956

Issue Details

PDF pages
189

Summary

The November 1956 issue of Uramado is a broad sensational magazine rather than a narrowly specialized SM publication. Crime reporting, mystery fiction, sexual customs, medicalized discussions of sexuality, foreign photographs, humor, historical tales, and illustrated pulp fiction all share the same pages. Its importance lies precisely in this mixture. Erotic cruelty, captivity, murder, sexual abnormality, and voyeurism are presented as neighboring forms of “hidden” knowledge rather than as a clearly separated SM culture.

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The issue opens with an international photographic miscellany titled approximately “The World of Western Erotic Curiosities.” Photographs of partially dressed or nude women from Europe and the United States are accompanied by humorous or pseudo-reportorial captions. The feature gives the magazine a cosmopolitan surface while promising readers access to customs and bodies unavailable in ordinary Japanese life.

A long illustrated advice or anecdote section follows, built from short stories about sexual misunderstandings, domestic problems, courtship, adultery, embarrassment, and unconventional desire. Its comic drawings and boxed episodes make sex into a collection of social puzzles. The tone oscillates between instruction and ridicule, encouraging readers to observe abnormal behavior from a supposedly knowledgeable position.

The issue’s main special section is identified as a “War-Crime Special” or “War Criminality Special.” Its central story, “The Stolen Autumn Night,” combines abduction, sexual violence, robbery, and murder. A woman is found dead after being attacked, and the narrative follows the investigation through physical evidence, interrogation, and conflicting testimony.

The crime feature demonstrates how women’s bodies become forensic and narrative objects. Clothing, wounds, blood, bodily position, and sexual history are treated as clues. The reader is invited to inspect the victim through the combined gazes of police, doctors, illustrators, and narrators.

Other crime stories include “The Monster Thief of the Bedroom,” “The Demon’s Hand,” and a kidnapping or murder case built around an older woman and a deceptive younger man. These stories repeatedly locate danger inside bedrooms, hotels, hospitals, railway routes, and other ordinary modern spaces.

The medical and sexological material is equally prominent. A feature titled approximately “Numerical Omens” uses statistics or quasi-statistics to classify criminal and sexual behavior. Charts and lists promise scientific clarity, but they also turn deviance into entertainment.

One article asks whether an actress’s nude body is frightening or dangerous, presenting the film studio as a site of secrecy, manipulation, and exposure. Another feature concerns a dancer implicated in a violent incident. The magazine repeatedly links performance, photography, and female visibility with risk.

Illustrated fiction extends the issue’s interest in endangered women. Stories show women attacked in cars, assaulted in remote places, threatened in bedrooms, pursued through rural landscapes, and subjected to criminal schemes. The pictures often freeze moments of helplessness, struggle, or discovery.

The issue also contains historical fiction, detective stories, foreign pulp adaptations, comic columns, and reader-oriented miscellany. This profusion is significant. Uramado does not yet organize erotic cruelty around a distinct identity such as the sadist, masochist, or rope enthusiast. Instead, it distributes cruelty across crime, medicine, humor, exoticism, and entertainment.

For readers of Kinbaku Today, the issue is most useful as evidence of the cultural environment surrounding early SM publishing. Restraint, assault, exposure, and bodily inspection circulate throughout popular print before they become consolidated into a recognizable SM genre. Uramado helped make the concealed body, the criminalized body, and the endangered female body ordinary objects of illustrated consumption.

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Table of Contents 23 items
  1. East-West Uramado Erotic Anecdotes by Hara Hiroshi
    Summary

    A serialized collection of comic erotic anecdotes set across Japanese and Western contexts, presented through short narrative episodes, dialogue, and spot illustrations. The stories explore secret desire, voyeuristic situations, marital and domestic sexual scenarios, and playful erotic misadventure.

  2. The Autumn Festival That Was Toyed With by Hagihara Hideo
    Summary

    A sensationalized account of a young woman’s murder during an autumn festival, beginning with the discovery of her strangled body in a cabbage field. The article follows the police investigation, forensic observations, witness interviews, reconstruction of the victim’s relationships, and pursuit of a male suspect, accompanied by dramatic illustrations.

  3. The Bedroom Phantom Thief by Setoguchi Torao
    Summary

    A sensational serialized crime narrative follows a fugitive “phantom thief” who enters a bedroom, threatens and overpowers women, and becomes connected to murder, robbery, and an attempted escape. Police investigators pursue clues across rural communities, while accompanying illustrations emphasize danger, coercion, captivity, flight, and the eventual manhunt.

  4. The Lady Doctor Is Frightening! A Film Studio Cut Open by an Actress’s Scalpel by Ōtaka Gorō
    Summary

    A sensational reportage-style examination of actresses, doctors, directors, and studio personnel, portraying the film studio as a site where erotic desire, ambition, rivalry, and emotional vulnerability intersect. Through anecdotes and commentary on actresses’ careers, romances, performances, and public images, the article presents the “scalpel” as a metaphor for exposing the hidden sexual and psychological dynamics of the postwar film world.

  5. The Demon’s Tentacles by Hisaki Takashi
    Summary

    An illustrated crime-and-captivity fiction involving a brutal attack on women, military police investigations, and the pursuit of suspects through nighttime urban and rural settings. The narrative combines eroticized violence, restraint, interrogation, blood evidence, and sensational encounters with foreign soldiers and civilians.

  6. Could Your Name Cause You to Kill? by Kinsudōjin
    Summary

    This article examines Japanese name-based divination, arguing that surname and given-name kanji—and their stroke counts—can reveal personality, fortune, criminal tendencies, and even susceptibility to violent acts. It applies a numerological system of main, secondary, total, and supplementary fortunes to several sensational murder cases and discusses the supposed relationship between names, fate, and behavior.

  7. The Mystery of the Pawn Ticket by Segi Toshirō
    Summary

    A crime-mystery narrative follows the investigation of a bizarre riverside murder, with a pawn ticket providing the crucial clue. Police interrogation and the killer’s confession gradually reveal a story of betrayal, obsession, and revenge involving an older woman.

  8. The Dōgenzaka Beautician Murder by Tobe Harumitsu
    Summary

    A sensational account of the murder of a Dōgenzaka beautician, whose strangled body is discovered at home. Police interrogate associates and reconstruct a web of jealousy, concealed relationships, and forbidden desire surrounding the crime before identifying the culprit.

  9. The Woman Who Came from the Demon Tower by Sugiyama Kiyoshi
    Summary

    This illustrated erotic-grotesque fiction follows a mysterious woman from the Demon Tower who arrives at a remote hot-spring inn and becomes entangled with a doctor, his associates, and other guests. Sexual obsession, jealousy, mental disturbance, violence, and apparent supernatural or grotesque transformations escalate into murder and psychological collapse.

  10. Decoding the Imperial Navy’s Erotic Cipher by Usami Masao
    Summary

    Usami Masao deciphers the euphemisms, abbreviations, and coded vocabulary used for sexual behavior and relationships within the Imperial Japanese Navy. Drawing on naval life, wartime anecdotes, and illustrated examples, the article discusses prostitution, same-sex encounters, gendered roles, secrecy, and the psychological meanings attached to military slang.

  11. The Woman Used as a Gambling Stake by Tominaga Yōsuke
    Summary

    A serialized erotic narrative in which a woman becomes the stake in a gambling contest among men. As the wagers escalate, she is subjected to coercive possession, humiliation, restraint, and sexual exploitation, with the story framed through melodramatic scenes and accompanying erotic illustrations.

  12. The Blood-Soaked Lust Demon by Miyashita Bunsaku
    Summary

    An illustrated serialized erotic crime narrative following Keijiro’s predatory encounters with women, marked by coercion, captivity, physical violence, and bloodshed. The story moves between eroticized assaults and their aftermath, including medical attention, police involvement, and attempts to identify or apprehend the perpetrator.

  13. An Evening of Crime-Prevention Films by Editorial Department
    Summary

    A satirical mock program for an evening of “crime-prevention” films, presenting sensationalized scenes of sexual misconduct, assault, abduction, voyeurism, and fetishized encounters through pseudo-official narration, film captions, and cartoons. The feature combines moralistic public-safety rhetoric with eroticized visual spectacle and exaggerated case-reporting.

  14. The Woman Demon I Peeped At by Maeda Isamu
    Summary

    A first-person erotic mystery recounts the narrator’s voyeuristic peeping into a woman’s room and his growing fascination with her apparently beautiful yet uncanny, demon-like body. The narrative develops through investigation, testimony, and grotesque transformations, accompanied by sensational illustrations of nudity and bodily abnormality.

  15. Why Did These Women Kill Their Own Relatives? by Kojika Aiko
    Summary

    Kojika Aiko examines several sensational cases in which women were accused or convicted of killing relatives, including the murder of a university student and alleged family-linked insurance crimes. The article reviews court testimony, evidence, family relationships, personality, motive, and the psychological and social pressures presented as explanations for the crimes.

  16. The Uramado Wife Murder Case: Exclusive Trial Record by Editorial Department
    Summary

    An exclusive trial-record feature reconstructs a wife-murder case involving alleged arsenic poisoning, marital conflict, suspected infidelity, and the testimony of the accused and witnesses. Presented through police reports, courtroom questioning, and witness statements, the account emphasizes domestic secrecy, sexual relationships, suspicion, and the sensational mechanics of the case.

  17. The Interfering Man Is Eliminated by Yūki Sō
    Summary

    A sensational account of the Clayton/Applegate household describes a sexually transgressive family, the murder of the husband, and the police investigation that follows. The narrative combines crime reporting, interviews, medical commentary, and lurid depictions of forbidden family relationships.

  18. Three-Way Battle by Isogai Jun
    Summary

    A narrative feature recounts a teacher’s sexually charged encounter with two young women, whose rivalry and shifting advances produce the article’s “three-way battle.” Dialogue, staged scenes, and illustrated erotic situations frame the episode as sensational erotic storytelling.

  19. A Glimpse of Eroticism by Saijō Bonji
    Summary

    A humorous essay on eroticism in postwar everyday life, using imagined conversations, domestic episodes, and commentary on marital behavior, sexual appeal, and changing social attitudes. The accompanying cartoons reinforce its satirical treatment of intimacy, embarrassment, and ordinary couple relationships.

  20. Aoki Residence Diary by Hirano Imao
    Summary

    A fictionalized diary-style narrative following the social and romantic entanglements of the Aoki household and its acquaintances. Through comic conversations and illustrations, it explores dating, generational differences, courtship, secrecy, and the tensions between conventional respectability and modern sexual culture.

  21. The Secret Chronicle of Suruga Dainagon: The Chapter of His Origins by Iwahori Taizō
    Summary

    An illustrated historical erotic serial set in the Edo period, following Suruga Dainagon and the woman Yuki amid intrigue, captivity, and encounters with a mysterious white ape. The chapter combines feudal drama with scenes of bondage, coercion, humiliation, and supernatural menace.

  22. Worldly Night Tales by Toyama Kazuhiko
    Summary

    A collection of eroticized tales set in different countries, including Sweden, Japan, Denmark, and South Africa. The stories depict seduction, sexual intrigue, fetishistic situations, and imagined encounters involving travelers, servants, historical figures, and wartime settings.

  23. Publication Information
    189
    Summary

    Publication information and promotional notices for the issue, including book advertisements, subscription and pricing details, publisher information, and an invitation for readers to submit material.

Highlights

  • The international opening portfolio presents nude and partially dressed women as examples of strange Western customs and modern sexual life (PDF pp. 6–13).
  • A long illustrated advice section turns adultery, courtship, embarrassment, and sexual misunderstanding into short comic case histories (PDF pp. 14–21).
  • The issue’s principal special section is devoted to crime, violence, and sensational criminal investigation (PDF p. 22 onward).
  • “The Stolen Autumn Night” begins with the discovery of a woman’s body and follows an investigation through forensic clues and witness testimony (PDF pp. 23–31).
  • The story’s illustrations emphasize the victim’s clothing, bodily position, and surrounding objects as evidence to be visually examined (PDF pp. 23–30).
  • “The Monster Thief of the Bedroom” transforms domestic privacy into a site of intrusion and danger (PDF pp. 32–40).
  • A hotel or lodging-house murder story links sexual secrecy, travel, and anonymous modern spaces (PDF pp. 32–40).
  • “The Demon’s Hand” presents violent crime through the conventions of American or imported pulp fiction (PDF pp. 47–55).
  • A dancer-centered crime report combines nightclub culture, female performance, and murder investigation (PDF pp. 47–55).
  • “Why Do Actresses Kill People?” uses the film world to connect female visibility with scandal, danger, and exploitation (PDF p. 56).
  • A statistical feature classifies crime and abnormal behavior through numbers, charts, and pseudo-scientific explanation (PDF pp. 57–62).
  • Several stories turn women’s bodies into forensic objects interpreted by police, doctors, and readers (PDF pp. 23–40 and 47–62).
  • A mystery involving an older woman and a younger man combines courtship, deception, money, and murder (PDF pp. 63–69).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue: