KK Correspondence, July 1954

Translation

【KK Correspondence No. 21 / Published July 1, 1954】

【Readers’ Forum】
Recently the newspaper world has treated publications issued under the name of customs magazines as convenient material for discussing their supposed influence on sexual crime, and I feel that influence has been exaggerated. As an avid reader of this magazine, I cannot claim that my own view is perfectly impartial. Even so, judging as calmly as I can, if I am asked whether the good or the harm is greater, I have no hesitation in saying that the good overwhelmingly outweighs the harm. Itō Seiu once described the purpose of the art of torment as providing a buffer zone for human instincts that otherwise demand naked exposure. I agree completely.

【Suppression of Expression and the Reverse Course / Murasame Haruo】
During the war, when not even a single publication of this sort was permitted to be printed, sexual offenses were at their most numerous. If that fact is considered, the spread of sexual crime cannot simply be blamed on the influence of magazines. At its root lies a cancerous symptom produced by poverty of every kind.

The greatest poverty is political poverty in society and a lack of affection in the individual. Bribery and corruption have become commonplace, while elections are accompanied by coercion. When government itself takes the lead in trampling on the Constitution and sets the example, what is to become of people who have also been expelled from the realm of human affection? Sexual wrongdoing cannot be explained merely as the result of magazines. Human beings possess impulses capable of becoming destructive, and what restrains them is sublimation. One need not invoke Freud at length to see the point. It is precisely through sublimation that these impulses may fulfill a higher function, and publications of this kind therefore possess an extremely important social value.

Under the beautiful slogan that Japan was leader of the peoples of Greater East Asia, military men inflicted plunder, brutality, and violence upon innocent people and upon the peoples of Asia. We cannot yet have forgotten the nightmare of only a decade ago. Yet it seems that an invisible web of oppression is once more being spun around us. Good, mild, trusting people must not be deceived by skillful rhetoric. We should remember the violence and shamelessness of wartime and resist the return of such conditions.

【A Dream of an Aestheticist / Okada Yoshio】
I cherish beautiful restraint. Again and again I have thought that if only I could put into an album the scenes of torment that I imagine while contemplating their beauty, I might make visible the fantasies I ordinarily keep to myself. What follows is my abnormal fantasy narrated by an imaginary model, an explanation of what might perhaps more properly be called the second collection of Beautiful Restraint.

[Photograph caption] Asano Sueno’s voluptuous back style.

When I was asked to become the model for the third collection of Beautiful Restraint, I gladly agreed. Being tied and tormented is, for a masochist like me, the greatest pleasure imaginable. But as the photographs show, this time I was made to endure a great deal of pain and humiliation. Even so, I experienced sensations that are impossible to describe. Please read while looking at the various poses.

Leaf One: Preparations for Torment
Usually I remove my drawers before the rope is applied, but today, before I had even taken them off, I was pushed down where I stood. My arms were twisted behind me and tightly bound. Then another person removed my drawers. I had expected to be naked, but the humiliation of having another person strip them from me was of another order. The rope binding my wrists soon ran upward, around my upper arms and chest, increasingly biting into me.

Leaf Two: The Caterpillar
Binding my hands behind me was no longer enough. The free end of the rope was wound once more around my lower abdomen and then passed downward, tightening me into a posture resembling a fully trussed body. I became a suffocating, helpless figure like the bound woman shown in an earlier issue. A narrow hemp rope extended in front of me from the arrangement.

Leaf Three
I was turned on my side and bound from behind. A taut rope passed near my hands and the thin cord bit painfully into my body. I was photographed in that condition.

Leaf Four: Candle Torment
Candle torment here does not mean merely placing a candle. The pose was devised so that embarrassment and pain would be experienced at the same time. My head was lowered against a support, my hands secured, and my ankles pulled forcefully apart. The pressure through my lower body became almost unbearable.

Leaf Five: Shrimp Torment
After being released from the post I had only a moment of relief. My thighs were forced open as far as possible and my ankles were secured to bars. A rope was then placed around my neck and its free end led back toward the hands bound behind me. The posture pulled upon the flesh of the buttocks.

Leaf Six: Reverse Shrimp Torment
When the previous pose ended I was bent backward. My ankles were tied together, and the rope ran up my back toward my neck. It was tightened as much as possible, thrusting my lower abdomen forward. Another photograph shows me from the front.

Leaf Seven: Reverse Shrimp Torment
The reverse-shrimp arrangement is continued, joining the bound hands and legs so that the body is strongly arched.

Leaf Eight: Wooden-Horse Torment
There is hardly any need for explanation. The apex of the triangular support presses upward into the body. With a body weighing around fourteen kan, my own flesh became my enemy. Whenever I tried to twist to lessen the pain, ropes stretched in front and behind prevented movement. Look at my face distorted by the pain.

Leaf Nine: Trussed-Monkey Suspension
At last my hands were released from the previous binding, but now came suspension. At first my hands and feet were tied together. My body kept revolving, making photography difficult, until at last I was steadied long enough to make the exposure.

Leaf Ten: Inverted Suspension
After the previous scene I was suspended again. A rope was passed through an opening and I was hoisted. The sensation made even a short interval feel extraordinarily long. These are precious photographs.

Leaf Eleven: Inverted Suspension and Candle Torment
This is the sort of thing that, once one comes to enjoy it, becomes impossible to abandon. With my legs spread as far as they would go, I was hung upside down and candles were applied. Merely imagining it is enough to make one shudder. A single photograph like this is enough to justify the entire album.

Leaf Twelve: Gag
Even now the sensation remains in my body. The gag is, as you can see, made from drawers. Since they were my own, one might imagine the humiliation was less, yet the use of an intimate garment as a gag produces a special sense of degradation. Rough rope was also applied over my upper body and breasts, intensifying the feeling of restraint.

【Mutual Torment and Women’s Combat】
Since the color plates in the July issue, we have been making photographs of women in new forms of torment that do not depend entirely upon rope. Both sadistic and masochistic women have served as models. This time Satō Shirō, who has made a particular study of women’s combat, proposed not one-sided torment but mutual torment, in which two women attack and torment one another. Among the women currently being trained for this sort of performance, one who appeared in last year’s October issue is said to be especially capable.

【On Fujimi’s Timid Sadist / Watanabe Nosuke】
I read Fujimi’s Romantic Sadism in the opening pages of the July issue and, as a fellow sadist, felt considerable sympathy with his position. Yet something about his phrase timid sadist does not quite fit my own conception. There are differences between individuals, of course. In Fujimi’s confession he describes a light kind of sadism. Borrowing his own words, he calls gently to a woman named Taeko, tells her that she is too adorable to be allowed to go home, and says that perhaps he should tie her hands and feet so that she cannot leave. He then binds her wrists behind her with a sash and lightly secures her ankles.

Such a scene can be understood as the sadist’s possessiveness, the desire to make one woman entirely one’s own. The female body is described brightly and beautifully, and expression and bodily posture convey more than words. But the state of mind I call sadism involves acting upon the partner’s body in a more thorough way, mobilizing its various parts and reactions. There have been writers who, with great courage, confessed strange inventions of erotic cruelty and brought their scenes to a climax. By comparison Fujimi seems almost to say that he is not one who takes pleasure in merely looking at a woman’s face distorted by suffering.

Yet the very scene he describes, in which a woman is restrained while twisting with embarrassment, already reveals another side of sadism. She binds him with a thin cord, draws him up, and turns restraint into a reciprocal drama. What especially impressed me was the courage involved in publishing scenes in which a male masochist and a female sadist appear together. The differing expressions of pain, embarrassment, and pleasure in the two partners are precisely what attracts me.

I therefore sympathize with Fujimi’s advocacy of sadism that does not simply revel in cruelty. My own drawings and remarks sent to the editors likewise attempt to approach sadism through sincerity, fantasy, and the aesthetic effect of the body rather than simple brutality.

【Thoughts on the Magazine’s Censored Characters】
In wartime there were people who roared that certain practices must be stamped out absolutely. Even now, once something is declared an enemy, authorities can become absurdly zealous. A small phrase is enough for someone to call it obscene. Editors therefore cannot relax for an instant. Yet the officials themselves are salaried employees and must appear to be doing their jobs, otherwise people may wonder what they are doing. In that sense one might even pity them.

What, then, should a magazine do? Experienced readers understand perfectly well what is being discussed even when words are censored, whereas outsiders may have no idea at all. Rather than treating censorship marks as simple mutilations, we can make them part of the imaginative game between publication and reader.

Take a rendezvous between a man and woman. One may place her hands behind her back in a position resembling bondage and lead her by one wrist. If she jokes that she looks as though she has been tied, he can answer that these are the bonds of his love. Unless passersby intervene, there is often no open resistance. Likewise, a wrist held behind the back can be raised toward the shoulder until the woman gives a small cry. Often she retains the posture even after being released. Such behavior, the writer suggests, can be treated as the first stirrings of masochistic feeling.

The essay continues by playing with the names of hairstyles, undergarments, cords, sashes, and other items as substitutes for prohibited expressions. The point is that censorship can itself stimulate the reader’s imagination. A missing character, suggestive substitute, or euphemism can become an erotic device rather than merely an obstacle.

【Members’ Correspondence】
The June issue has at last restored the proper character of Kigu. The addition of the new model Hagi and the forty-eight forms of rope give us much to look forward to. Please continue the series of forty-eight bindings. A systematic presentation of different forms of tying and torment, photographed from different directions, is both useful for study and enjoyable because it allows the imagination to range widely. Some of the drawings, however, seem to me insufficiently bound. Perhaps more rope is necessary. I was especially interested in the feature on the construction and destruction of bondage. It helped me understand how much work lies behind the photographs, though one may spend a long time tying a model only to expose the photograph in an instant. [Kawabata]

Kawabata, thank you for responding so promptly to what I had hoped to see. I look forward to next month’s issue. I had expected a great deal from the title Boomerang Torment, but much seemed to have been cut. Please give us a masterpiece next time. I also think it is time for a new album. Since the incident in the March issue the photography in the magazine has seemed somewhat subdued, so I especially hope for special albums. Why not publish a Model Album? There are now nearly twenty models. Show, for each, a photograph from the first time she was bound, followed by the form of restraint or torment in which she is most effective, preferably from both front and rear.

I saw the bromides of women tormenting women that appeared in KK Correspondence. They were amusing but somewhat monotonous. I hope the next project will have greater variety. In some photographs perhaps only the tormentor should remain clothed while the victim is nude; in others the reverse. A contrast of this kind may be more stimulating than making both women completely nude. I am enclosing sketches illustrating the idea. [Y.O.]

I am a twenty-six-year-old masochist who constantly desires to have my exposed buttocks whipped or otherwise degraded, and I even fantasize about consuming a woman’s excretions. I suffer from an impulse to show other people photographs of my own bound nude body. I want to be stripped naked, tied hand and foot, hung upside down, or suspended with my legs spread from separate branches. I want mischievous women to torment me. I long to become the common plaything of many sadistic women and receive a slave’s education from them. I imagine women dressed as nurses or prostitutes raising and training me. I would also accept belonging to one particular woman. So long as I am not maimed, stabbed, or have my bones broken, I will accept almost any method. I seek a sadistic woman under forty who will thoroughly torment me. As a slave I would obey my queen absolutely, even under a contract lasting one or two years. I would gladly surrender body and mind completely. [Suzumura Hisahiko]

I seek a sincere homosexual partner. Perhaps because of excessive fantasy, I have not yet met the person I imagine as ideal and have passed lonely days. Reading the recent numbers of this magazine brought a certain brightness into my mind. I obtained the April issue, retired alone to a room at an inn, and enjoyed it to my heart’s content. I even made a drawing in the margin and enclose it for your amusement. I was attracted to a contribution in that issue, although the pursuit of the woman seemed much stronger than that of the man. I myself am not a masochist and am interested only in the male nude. Could you include somewhat more photographs of naked men? Would it not also be useful to establish local groups of readers? [Ordinary Man]

Today’s satisfaction becomes tomorrow’s dissatisfaction. Something beastlike sleeps in a corner of my mind, perhaps something even more frightening than that. I passed through life without understanding it, yet one instant of embarrassment gave birth to ecstasy. A friend’s confession of love became both his life and mine. A few lines of literature evoke an unknown world and summon the desire to explore it. O Kigu, book of singular desire. [Chōsuisei, reading uncertain]

I will state my wishes frankly, so please do not take offense. The writing I like best is that which feels ordinary and unpretentious while nevertheless treating unusual desires boldly. Such work has reality and is pleasant to read. I dislike writers who try too hard to rationalize abnormality or make it appear normal through elaborate theories. I also dislike confessions that leave only a diseased, gloomy aftertaste. I read the magazine not because I need someone to justify abnormality to me as normal, nor because I want everything elevated into art. I want to see things that I cannot ordinarily obtain. The article on the construction of bondage and ideas of torment was interesting, but not every point satisfied me. Specialists may care about the rope itself, but the ordinary reader often wants the beautiful body and the tense pose that rope produces. Give us what is difficult to see elsewhere while avoiding censorship as intelligently as possible. I especially enjoy illustrations in which the nude is left relatively natural with less rope. Detective stories, reports on sensational incidents, and investigations of unusual districts would also be welcome. I would also like some kind of index or catalogue of bondage photographs already published, even if reproduced rather small in KK Correspondence.

【Supplementary Notes to Iroha Jin】
The editors print a long series of corrections, substitutions, and supplementary readings keyed to page and line references in an earlier work. Among the passages restored or clarified are descriptions of complete nudity, bodily excitement, light slapping of the lower abdomen, the pleasure produced by repeated blows, a woman’s upper body protruding from bedding, kissing, exposure of the waist and lower body, and other erotic phrases lost or distorted in the earlier printing.

A longer restored passage describes Taeko, a small but unexpectedly solidly built woman, leaning her body against the narrator as his hand touches her. Although she protests verbally, she offers little actual resistance. He strokes her back, rolls a bound woman across the bedding, climbs over her, showers her face with kisses, and treats her body in ways compared to shrimp-binding and playful animal-like licking. Such caresses, he explains, form his foreplay. Elsewhere the corrected text describes a woman tied on bedding, her body pressed, caressed, kissed, and struck lightly by the palm. These errata are presented not simply as typographical corrections but as restoration of the intended erotic intensity of the original text.

【A Wayward Review of the June Issue / Miyagawa Hajime】
Under the brilliant sunlight of May, I lie on the green grass and read the June issue of Kigu, which has just arrived.

The opening picture, the Madwoman of Yoshii Rope [title reading uncertain], is another old-style torment picture, and a splendid one. Since the days of Itō Seiu it has been rare to see such work. I am the kind of reader who buys a magazine for its frontispieces and illustrations; however good the prose may be, I have little desire to buy a magazine with poor pictures or scarcely any illustrations. Kigu is one of the few magazines that consistently satisfies both requirements.

I hope such pictures will continue to appear every month. The illustrated feature at the beginning, Construction of Bondage and Ideas for Torment, was also valuable. It showed the difference between the reader’s wishes and the editor’s practical difficulties in arranging, binding, and photographing actual nude models. The detailed explanation was extremely useful. One begins to appreciate how much labor lies behind each photograph.

The essay Beautiful Bondage also struck me. Fiction sometimes becomes so intoxicated with masochistic fantasy that imaginary women are exaggerated beyond recognition and the violence becomes grotesque rather than attractive. The author rightly argued that the charm of women can disappear when cruelty is overemphasized. I share that view.

The feature on using clothing as part of the design was also stimulating. A woman’s clothing, girdle, skirt, corset, or other garment can be made part of an imagined scene. Photographs of Western fetish clothing were strange and fascinating, even when they seemed detached from ordinary Japanese reality. They draw the reader into a world of fantasy.

【Collection of Strange Blades / compiled by Ōtomo Baka-mochi】
A page of comic pseudo-classical waka rewrites the diction and names of ancient poetry around bondage, torment, gagging, suspension, and erotic restraint. Famous names such as Kakinomoto, Fujiwara, Arima, and imperial or courtly figures are parodied as authors of verses about bound maidens, ropes, hanging, and sadistic pleasure. The humor depends upon collision between the prestige of classical poetry and contemporary fetish vocabulary.

[Photograph caption] Waist Wrap. Miss Hagi Chieko.

A short commentary praises the issue’s overseas material, asks for more foreign features, jokes that a confession by a male transvestite or hormone user reads almost like a comic story, and expresses skepticism about some of the more fantastic forms of torture described elsewhere, such as rat torment and cold-water confinement.

【Fragments of Torment Ideas】
The editors introduce several suggestions sent by enthusiasts. Many proposed devices have already appeared as photographs, drawings, or items handled by the agency, but these are printed in the hope that new ideas will generate still more ideas.

1. Rubber-Ball Torment
One reader describes using inflated rubber balls as instruments of restraint. A woman is tied with her hands behind her, a rubber ball is placed between the thighs or legs, and the ankles are secured. Because the ball is soft but highly elastic, it becomes useful as a torment device. Air may be pumped into it through a tube while the woman remains restrained. As the ball expands, it presses against the body while the surrounding rope bites more deeply into the skin. The reader recommends experimenting with different sizes, positions, and multiple balls. A foot-operated pump may be useful when greater pressure is wanted. He hopes the magazine will incorporate some of these ideas into future photographs. [A.K.]

2. A Woman Turned into a Parcel
Another contributor proposes placing a nude woman whose hands are tied behind her inside a cloth sack and sealing the opening, reducing her literally to a piece of luggage. Another idea is to suspend a bound woman by an L-shaped fitting in a deliberately strange pose. A third is an elaborate total-body restraint in which hands, feet, ears, nose, breasts, anus, and other parts are incorporated into a bizarre system of cords and plugs. The writer dreams of finding a sufficiently adventurous model to attempt such scenes and then writing fiction based upon her actual reactions. [Sakura Ichirō]

3. Baptism of Spit
Magazines sometimes show sadistic or masochistic acts involving saliva or urine, but spitting directly in a woman’s face could itself be a severe humiliation, especially for an inexperienced woman. One might announce, I will baptize you, hold her face, and spit upon it. From either the sadist’s or masochist’s side this could produce unusual excitement. Striking or smearing the face with saliva might likewise be used as a cruel form of torment. [M.]

【My Method of Torment, No. 13 / Takarazuka Fumio】
This installment combines an illustration of a woman in Japanese dress with another woman suspended in the background and a text discussing women, clothing, underarms, ropes, and improvised torment.

One example describes a married woman arriving in an unusually stylish one-piece dress. Her hands are raised and secured above her in the narrator’s room, evoking a theatrical captive. The writer’s attention turns especially to the exposed underarms, their softness, hair, and vulnerability. Summer clothing, he suggests, makes this kind of torment particularly enjoyable because restraint can be applied while preserving the visual attraction of the costume.

The woman may then be tied with her hands behind her, ankles brought together, rope connections drawn tight, and the body folded forward or backward until the posture becomes difficult. The author is interested not only in the force of the restraint but in the small involuntary reactions: a short cry when the wrists are raised, a woman’s attempt to retain composure, the marks different materials leave on skin, and the contrast between soft silk, hemp, narrow cords, waist sashes, spring-like cords, nets, and other tying materials.

The installment repeatedly returns to the erotic value of clothing and restraint together. A woman need not always be stripped. A sash, undergarment, fashionable dress, or soft cord can intensify rather than diminish the effect. Rope, fabric, posture, and the woman’s facial expression together create the scene.

【Editor’s Mail】
Various storms have been blowing through the publishing world, enough to make many magazines founder, but Kigu, under its veteran pilot, has weathered the turbulence and is now running before a favorable wind. Readers may rest easy.

A curious new magazine recently appeared. Its cover resembles a July extra issue, its title page calls it an inaugural number, yet the publication date says June 1. It looks like a miscellaneous compilation. Perhaps it will prove to be both first and last issue.

We must apologize for the great delay of KK Correspondence No. 21. It was not simply that the weather was too pleasant and we played too much. Nervous exhaustion and back pain struck the editorial office at the same time, and we ask your understanding.

The July issue of the main magazine should have reached readers somewhat earlier than usual. Printing of the August number is already advancing. The color and pictorial material will again be lavish. One of the principal photographic features will pair Kasuga Rumi and Ibuki Masako in Active and Passive Beautiful Poses, a new series of carefully constructed scenes devised by the magazine’s photographic staff.

For masochistic material an actual reader who volunteered to appear will be matched with Kasuga Rumi and subjected to uninhibited action. Scenes include being sat upon, capricious play, striking, and use as a footrest.

Foreign material includes The Silent Partner and unusual devices involving a white mask and neck restraint. The concluding pages of the punishment-picture series will include forms of historical punishment such as crucifixion and the Iron Maiden. The regular satirical illustrated feature will take up swimwear for August, but in the artist’s characteristically unexpected fashion.

Itō Seiu’s August torment picture will depict a tragedy at a river junction. Because of an editorial mishap the master was asked at short notice, but his contribution arrived in time. Further experiments in torment without ordinary rope are planned, including tears and pinching, as well as photographs using celluloid rings on the breasts. Another fantastic abnormal illustration is also being prepared.

The bondage-method feature continues, this month taking advantage of summer clothing such as nylon blouses. Other fiction and essays include works on unhappy marriage, fluorescent light as an instrument or setting of torment, and a prize-winning piece that transforms the grim subject of seppuku into something dreamlike. Several prize manuscripts are currently being revised because portions remain unsuitable for publication.

The editors thank readers for the many confessions and memoirs submitted. Individual replies are sent whenever possible, but some manuscripts contain too much that cannot be publicly printed. Gradually, however, publishable material is accumulating and will enliven future numbers.

【Brief Correspondence】
Excellent works continue to arrive, and the editors hope to publish an enlarged autumn issue.

The present number was badly delayed, but the following issue should be delivered soon afterward.

Through Tsujimura’s arrangements, an affluent reader provided his private automobile for an outdoor photography expedition on a fine May day. Model Ibuki Masako was taken along and a valuable group of unusual bondage photographs was obtained. The next issue is expected to contain both Tsujimura’s account of the expedition and the photographs.

The editors comment jokingly on the uncertain life expectancy of new magazines that announce long serials in their first issue. Kigu itself has carried a number of long works successfully, but a publication that may not survive more than a few numbers should perhaps hesitate before announcing a grand first installment.

One correspondent introduces a recently read book involving sadistic scenes set around the American Civil War, giving the original English title approximately as The Memories of Dally Morton and naming Count George and a Japanese translator. The passage that most interested him concerns a woman being stripped slowly by a man named Stevens. She is left wearing only drawers designed with an opening at the rear. He calls the others over to look, mocks the decorative ribbons and lace, and jokes crudely about why her husband might have chosen such a garment. The woman is overwhelmed by humiliation as everyone laughs.

【Publication Information】
KK Correspondence No. 21. Published July 1, 1954; issued once monthly on the first day. Publisher: Yoshida Minoru. Editor: Sasada Kyōji. Published by Akebono Shobō, Osaka. Price: 20 yen.