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Uramado

November 1964

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Cover of Uramado, November 1964

Issue Details

Volume
9
Issue
11
PDF pages
214

Summary

The November 1964 issue of Uramado is a dense mixture of cultural criticism, autobiographical and psychological writing, illustrated erotic fiction, imported American fetish comics, film commentary, reader-oriented material, and visual collecting. Its formal contents spread presents the magazine less as a single-theme publication than as a meeting place for discussions of masochism, fetishism, bondage, sexual psychology, popular culture, and imaginative literature. The opening essay, Helping Strength by Examining Weakness, is followed by Awaji Shūgo’s lengthy Yellow Gospel and Andō Izumi’s literary-critical discussion Scratching at the Heart of Masochistic Psychology, establishing a strongly analytical tone before the issue shifts toward visual and fictional material.

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A major middle section is occupied by Toyama Kazuhiko’s Seeking Freedom from Perversion and the extended first-person work Negative Picture, followed by the illustrated interlude Famous Moon. The issue then gives extraordinary space to John Willie’s Gwendoline Story, reproducing English-language bondage comic art alongside Japanese explanatory and narrative text. This sustained engagement with imported fetish imagery is followed by Morishita Takashige’s From My Collection, which gathers and comments on foreign drawings, photographs, fashion and domination imagery, further demonstrating Uramado’s role as a conduit for international erotic visual culture. Ayukawa Yōji’s Tanuki returns the magazine to prose fiction before the recurring Body-on Masochism Theory series examines masochistic psychology in a more discursive format.

The later issue again turns toward long-form fiction with Ushio Kazuki’s Strange Bat Castle, followed by the eighth installment of Morimoto Aizō’s Prayer to the Arrogant Goddess and the twentieth installment of Ama Tetsurō’s Gordon’s Memories. Fujimi Iku’s feature on a German film, Car and a Dancing Beauty, connects cinema to the magazine’s recurring interest in spectacle, female performance, and eroticized domination. Bibliographic and community sections then document earlier Uramado issues and provide the Uramado Town miscellany, while later prose, notices, reader correspondence, and editorial material extend the magazine’s participatory identity.

Taken as a whole, the issue demonstrates how Uramado in 1964 combined Japanese literary experimentation with sexological discourse and imported fetish culture. Its recurring preoccupations include masochistic identity, bondage and punishment, the psychology of desire, female dominance, cinematic and graphic representations of sexuality, and the translation or adaptation of Western erotic material for Japanese readers. The extensive bibliographic and reader-oriented closing material also makes the issue an unusually useful record of the magazine’s own developing community and publishing history.

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Table of Contents 20 items
  1. Dance at the Bottom of the Earth by Yoshida Hisashi
    9
  2. Helping Strength by Examining Weakness
    12
  3. Yellow Gospel by Awaji Shūgo
    18
  4. Scratching at the Heart of Masochistic Psychology by Andō Izumi
    33
  5. Seeking Freedom from Perversion by Toyama Kazuhiko
    44
  6. Negative Picture by Tsukumo Jūrō
    54
  7. Famous Moon by Furumasa Hideo
    69
  8. The Gwendoline Story by John Willie
    70
  9. Long Nightmare by Hajima Shichirō
    84
  10. Ecology of a Slave by Segawa Miki
    98
  11. From My Collection by Morishita Takashige
    106
  12. Tanuki by Ayukawa Yōji
    116
  13. Body-on Masochism Theory, No. 29 by Mizuo Kyū
    124
  14. Strange Bat Castle by Ushio Kazuki
    134
  15. Prayer to the Arrogant Goddess, Part 8 by Morimoto Aizō
    163
  16. Gordon's Memories, Part 20 by Ama Tetsurō
    170
  17. Car and a Dancing Beauty: A German Film by Fujimi Iku
    180
  18. Comprehensive Index of Previous Uramado Issues
    185
  19. Uramado Town
    188
  20. Reader Corner and Editorial Postscript
    208

Highlights

  • The illustrated formal contents spread maps an unusually broad issue combining masochism theory, fiction, foreign comics, film discussion, visual collecting, recurring serials, and community material. (PDF pp. 4–5).
  • Yellow Gospel is a long first-person prose work occupying much of the issue's opening section and moving through sexuality, personal experience, social convention, and psychological self-examination. (PDF pp. 14–28).
  • Scratching at the Heart of Masochistic Psychology explicitly treats masochism as a subject for literary and psychological criticism, illustrating Uramado's continuing effort to intellectualize erotic experience alongside fiction. (PDF pp. 29–37).
  • The Gwendoline Story reproduces a lengthy sequence of John Willie's American fetish comic art, preserving English dialogue while surrounding the panels with Japanese narrative and commentary. (PDF pp. 68–103).
  • From My Collection assembles foreign photographs and drawings of riding, boots, whips, cross-dressing, female domination, and other fetish subjects, documenting the international visual sources circulating through Japanese SM publishing. (PDF pp. 104–112).
  • Body-on Masochism Theory, installment 29, combines discursive discussion with illustrations and continues a recurring series devoted to the psychology and lived experience of masochism. (PDF pp. 123–131).
  • Strange Bat Castle forms one of the issue's largest later fictional sequences, combining captivity, violence, erotic peril, and serialized adventure. (PDF pp. 132–154).
  • Gordon's Memories, installment 20, continues the magazine's long-running serialized fiction and extends through a substantial block immediately before the film-oriented material. (PDF pp. 159–177).
  • The late issue combines a German-film feature, bibliographic listings of previous Uramado issues, Uramado Town, additional prose, reader material, and editorial notices, reinforcing the magazine's identity as both an erotic publication and a reader community. (PDF pp. 178–214).

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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