Fuzoku Kitan

November 1960

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Cover of Fuzoku Kitan, November 1960

Issue Details

PDF pages
74

Summary

The November 1960 issue of Fuzoku Kitan is organized around spectacular images and narratives of cruelty, humiliation, wartime violence, punishment, bondage, and bodily ordeal. Its cover announces a special feature on merciless humiliation, while the formal contents page foregrounds both a Record of Wartime Atrocities feature and a large gravure section. The publication moves between eroticized staged imagery and documentary or quasi-documentary representations of historical violence, producing an unusually stark juxtaposition between fantasy, fetish photography, wartime testimony, and illustrated historical narratives.

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The opening pages combine foreign punishment imagery with Doi Keiko’s color illustration Water Hell. The principal gravure sequence then develops a sustained visual vocabulary of Japanese bondage: ankle suspension, rope harnesses, breast restraint, collars, pole binding, standing restraint, red-and-white rope, suspension, humiliating poses, and a concluding sequence in which the model handles a snake. Short captions present the positions as named tableaux rather than as a continuous narrative. This photographic section is followed by four full-page bondage illustrations, two by Tagami Keiko and two by Oda Toshimi, depicting women restrained in cabins, against rocks, with bamboo, and as shooting targets.

The tone changes sharply with the photographic Record of Wartime Atrocities, which reproduces historical images of executions, shootings, bodies, punishment, and mass violence in Europe and Asia. Ōdachi Kinji’s essay The Greatest Sadism explicitly interprets war as sadism on a collective scale, linking organized violence with the magazine’s broader concern with cruelty and domination. The long feature Torture Warehouse by Shimaki Keiko follows with a first-person account by a detained nurse set amid the collapse of the Japanese war effort in Manchuria. Its emphasis falls on captivity, coercion, physical abuse, fear, attempted escape, and the vulnerability of women under military authority.

Later surviving sections include Banba Takeo’s Hair Burning and Hair Suspension, a historical survey of punishments inflicted on women, and Shinoda Fujimi’s Sengoku-period narrative The Mass Crucifixion of 122 People. Iwasaki Kōichi’s Sisters Subjected to Fire and Water Torture continues the historical cruelty theme. The issue then shifts into Reader Salon, a dense correspondence section in which readers discuss sexual practices, fetish interests, personal experiences, magazine material, and questions directed to the editors. The closing pages consist largely of advertisements and publication notices for related erotic, fetish, and specialized books and magazines.

Across its surviving contents, the issue repeatedly collapses distinctions between historical cruelty, erotic fantasy, bondage aesthetics, punishment lore, and reader participation. Photography and illustration carry as much editorial weight as prose, while the correspondence section situates these materials within an active community of readers rather than presenting them only as isolated spectacles.

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Table of Contents 21 items
  1. Water Hell by Doi Keiko
    foldout
  2. Gorgeous Cruelty
    11
  3. Flamboyant Foot Suspension
    13
  4. The Pose of Love-Rope
    14
  5. Dog-Collar Brassiere
    16
  6. Pole Binding
    18
  7. Standing Figure in Torment
    20
  8. Red-and-White Rope Binding
    22
  9. Moment of Ecstasy
    24
  10. Embarrassing Pose
    26
  11. Suspension Torment
    28
  12. The Coiling Snake
    30
  13. The Horror of the Log Cabin / Crucifixion on the Rocks by Tagami Keiko
    40
  14. Bamboo-Binding Torment / The Shooting Target by Oda Toshimi
  15. Record of Wartime Atrocities
  16. The Greatest Sadism by Ōdachi Kinji
    51
  17. Torture Warehouse by Shimaki Keiko
  18. Hair Burning and Hair Suspension by Banba Takeo
    67
  19. The Mass Crucifixion of 122 People by Shinoda Fujimi
  20. Sisters Subjected to Fire and Water Torture by Iwasaki Kōichi
    157
  21. Reader Salon

Highlights

  • The opening color plate Water Hell by Doi Keiko depicts a restrained woman being forced to drink water and establishes the issue's recurring fusion of punishment imagery and eroticized suffering. (PDF pp. 3–4).
  • The principal gravure portfolio presents an extended sequence of staged bondage tableaux including ankle suspension, breast restraint, pole binding, standing restraint, suspension, humiliating poses, and snake imagery. (PDF pp. 8–31).
  • Four full-page illustrations by Tagami Keiko and Oda Toshimi depict women bound in a log cabin, restrained against rocks, tied with bamboo, and used as a shooting target. (PDF pp. 32–35).
  • Record of Wartime Atrocities reproduces documentary photographs of executions, shootings, bodies, and punitive violence, including material concerning Poland, Nazi forces, and wartime violence in China. (PDF pp. 36–42).
  • Ōdachi Kinji's The Greatest Sadism interprets warfare as sadism magnified to the scale of collective human behavior, providing an explicit editorial bridge between the issue's historical and erotic material. (PDF p. 43).
  • Torture Warehouse by Shimaki Keiko is a lengthy first-person wartime captivity narrative centered on nurses, military collapse, imprisonment, attempted escape, coercion, and physical abuse. (PDF pp. 44–58).
  • Hair Burning and Hair Suspension by Banba Takeo surveys forms of punishment directed at women, including the burning and suspension of victims by their hair. (PDF p. 59).
  • The Mass Crucifixion of 122 People by Shinoda Fujimi presents a Sengoku-period account of collective crucifixion and military vengeance. (PDF pp. 61–66).
  • Sisters Subjected to Fire and Water Torture by Iwasaki Kōichi continues the issue's historical punishment material with an account centered on two women subjected to fire and water ordeals. (PDF p. 67).
  • Reader Salon provides several pages of reader correspondence on sexual practices, fetish interests, personal experiences, and reactions to the magazine's content. (PDF pp. 68–71).

Contributors

Named contributors represented in this issue: