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Uramado

September 1959

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Cover of Uramado, September 1959

Issue Details

Volume
4
Issue
9
PDF pages
261

Summary

The September 1959 issue of Uramado is a large special number centered on sensationalized histories and fantasies of the Ōoku, the shogunal women’s quarters, and the wider world of the early-modern inner palace. Its editorial mixture is characteristic of Uramado: illustrated fiction, historical melodrama, erotic and grotesque anecdote, supernatural tales, nude photography, essays, and contemporary crime stories are interwoven rather than separated into rigid departments. The opening establishes this range immediately with the illustrated story The Pink Phantom Thief, Fujisawa Osamu’s Nude Masterpieces photographic portfolio, and the editorial miscellany From the Unsorted Shelf.

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The principal special feature begins with Yagiri Jūhachi’s Secret Chiyoda Picture Scroll: Lady Kasuga, an extended historical narrative built around the politics, rivalries, sexuality, and punishments associated with the Tokugawa inner chambers. Other major contributions repeatedly return to court intrigue and female rivalry: Demon Palanquin, The Flying Squirrel’s Long-Cherished Wish, Two Komachi of Vengeance, Illustrated Flowers in Combat in the Ōoku, Sinister Clouds over Nerima Palace, and The Mad Consort’s Trap. The stories are heavily illustrated and use confinement, jealousy, coercion, secret meetings, bodily punishment, and political manipulation as recurring narrative engines.

Alongside the palace material, the issue broadens into other forms of abnormal and erotic culture. Historical Fact and Fiction of Female Seppuku examines women and ritual suicide through a mixture of historical commentary and literary examples. Beautiful-Skinned Page explores male beauty and eroticized youth in an illustrated narrative. The Devil from the Graveyard, Tsugomori Pond, and The Strange Kappa Boy bring supernatural and grotesque motifs into the issue, while Pencil Hell and Hair Benten move into modern urban or psychologically charged settings. Oryū’s Secret Notebook and Records of Wicked Women and Villains continue the fascination with dangerous women, deception, sexuality, and criminality.

The final portion shifts increasingly toward modern settings. In Tokyo’s Blind Spot presents a translated or adapted urban crime narrative, while Chronicle of the Ōjō Group closes the major fiction with a contemporary underworld story. The last pages contain the conclusion of that narrative followed by publication information, manuscript solicitation, notices, and the colophon. Across the issue, the Ōoku functions less as a narrowly historical subject than as an organizing fantasy space for secrecy, erotic rivalry, punishment, disguise, transgression, and dangerous desire, while the surrounding fiction and visual material extend those concerns from the Edo period into supernatural folklore and modern metropolitan life.

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Table of Contents 21 items
  1. The Pink Phantom Thief by Toyoda Ichirō
    11–18
  2. Nude Masterpieces by Fujisawa Osamu
    19–26
  3. From the Unsorted Shelf by Henjūshi
    27–34
  4. Secret Chiyoda Picture Scroll: Lady Kasuga by Yagiri Jūhachi
    36–49
  5. Hair Benten by Shima Fuji
    50–61
  6. Demon Palanquin by Shimamoto Haruo
    62–77
  7. The Devil from the Graveyard by Hasegawa Isamu
    78–89
  8. Historical Fact and Fiction of Female Seppuku by Nakayasu Hiromichi
    90–99
  9. The Flying Squirrel's Long-Cherished Wish by Hashizume Hikoshichi
    100–117
  10. Pencil Hell by Narumi Genkichi
    118–130
  11. Beautiful-Skinned Page by Nakajima Yoshimi
    131–138
  12. Two Komachi of Vengeance by Kuga Fūtarō
    139–147
  13. Illustrated Flowers in Combat in the Ōoku by Nakabayashi Setsuji
    148–159
  14. Tsugomori Pond by Usurogi Jakushi
    160–171
  15. Sinister Clouds over Nerima Palace by Odagiri Sō
    172–185
  16. The Strange Kappa Boy by Suzuki Tarokubei
    186–197
  17. The Mad Consort's Trap by Fujimi Iku
    198–211
  18. Oryū's Secret Notebook by Enjōji Tatsu
    212–223
  19. Records of Wicked Women and Villains by Suzuki Kazuo
    224–237
  20. In Tokyo's Blind Spot by Kuroha Shin
    238–247
  21. Chronicle of the Ōjō Group by Iida Toyokichi
    248–265

Highlights

  • The Pink Phantom Thief opens the substantive issue as a lavishly illustrated crime story, using alternating red and green page designs and cinematic scenes of pursuit, disguise, and seduction. (PDF pp. 6–13).
  • Fujisawa Osamu's Nude Masterpieces is a monochrome photographic portfolio emphasizing sculptural poses, bodily curvature, gesture, and studio composition. (PDF pp. 14–19).
  • Secret Chiyoda Picture Scroll: Lady Kasuga launches the Ōoku special feature with a long illustrated historical narrative about Lady Kasuga and the political and erotic dynamics of the shogunal inner chambers. (PDF pp. 29–42).
  • Demon Palanquin develops the special issue's combination of palace intrigue, coercion, punishment, and illustrated historical melodrama across one of the issue's longest early features. (PDF pp. 55–70).
  • Historical Fact and Fiction of Female Seppuku treats women's ritual suicide as both a historical and literary subject, pairing commentary with period examples and illustrations. (PDF pp. 85–94).
  • Beautiful-Skinned Page is an illustrated narrative focused on an attractive male page, making male beauty and homoerotic attention unusually explicit within the issue's broader erotic program. (PDF pp. 126–133).
  • Illustrated Flowers in Combat in the Ōoku presents rivalry among women of the inner palace through prose and numerous period-style illustrations of confrontation, intrigue, and punishment. (PDF pp. 143–154).
  • The Mad Consort's Trap is a substantial late historical narrative by Fujimi Iku, returning to the special issue's central concerns with court sexuality, manipulation, danger, and entrapment. (PDF pp. 193–206).
  • Records of Wicked Women and Villains combines Edo-period criminal and erotic material with illustrated episodes involving deception, violence, and socially transgressive women. (PDF pp. 219–232).
  • Chronicle of the Ōjō Group carries the issue into a modern underworld setting and occupies most of the final substantive pages before publication notices and the colophon. (PDF pp. 243–260).

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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