KK Correspondence, May 1954

Translation

KK CORRESPONDENCE, NO. 20
May 1, 1954

READER FORUM: THE BEAUTY OF THE BOUND FEMALE BODY
Kaga Mijun

When we speak of the beauty of the bound female form within the torture of women, merely seeking variety in the pose is ultimately a peripheral matter. The most important and final element, I think, is its relation to sex. In other words, it must remain thoroughly masochistic. Beauty as a picture, pictorial beauty, and fantastic beauty are of course important elements that cannot be ignored. Yet for a man with masochistic tastes, unless there is an expression of pain, shame, intoxication, and pleasure, the result can only be unsatisfying. If one pursues fantasy too far, the image becomes too detached from reality. It is regrettable to put rope on a woman’s body and yet fail to receive any convincing emotion from it.

If I were to summarize the essential point in expressing pain, the pain must above all be bodily pain. For this purpose, bondage is indispensable. In binding a woman, tightening the ankles, wrists behind the back, thighs, or narrow waist until the rope bites deeply is localized bondage, and even this can inflict nearly unbearable pain. But there is also the method of winding rope finely around the whole body until it clings everywhere, what we might call being tied up hand and foot, almost like wrapping a parcel. Combining this with the localized restraints described above produces a greater effect.

Pain produced by bondage can be divided into concentrated pain and generalized pain. By combining the two, one can heighten the effect further. The manner of tying should also depart from the ordinary. Simply putting the hands behind the back and tying a woman to a pillar is by no means bad, but there is no doubt that unusual methods are more effective because they intensify the pain. One-leg suspension, ebi torture, and bindings that assume acrobatic poses of the sort used by dancers are particularly effective expressions of the suffering inherent in bondage beauty.

Imagine wrists tightened until they turn purple, or a cord circling the upper arm so tightly that the flesh swells between its turns, the taut skin seeming ready to spurt blood if touched with the point of a needle. Such a sense of binding gives the viewer a peculiar shock. I find the beauty of the bound female body precisely amid this sort of physical pain. Yet when I read opinions previously published in magazines, many writers seem to take women’s torture in the direction of mental suffering, that is, humiliation. I have also learned that this position has many supporters. I therefore have little difficulty imagining that these remarks of mine will be challenged by them. I welcome such criticism where there is reason behind it. My contention is that the torture of a woman presupposes the infliction of physical suffering, and I look forward to objections to this view.

MY TREASURE
Masuoka Kinkichi

The woman sitting beside me had exactly the sort of face I liked. On the screen, a film about a female spy had reached its torture-scene climax. The heroine had been discovered and was being tortured. She was tied with her hands behind her and hoisted up. There was something touching in her helplessness, and my body began to tremble. Hot wax from a candle ran onto the wounds of her white feet. A drawn-out groan of anguish escaped her mouth.

The theater had gone as quiet as an empty wilderness, yet an oppressive tension filled it. Young couples must have been gripping each other’s hands and holding their breath. Sadists and masochists alike were surely staring at the screen with bloodshot eyes. I glanced at the woman beside me. Her expression was rigid, her lips slightly open, and she was staring at the picture, breathing hard.

I was delighted. A scene in which a beautiful woman was tortured had captured the hearts of so many people. A whole theater full of spectators was being struck by the extraordinary beauty that emerged from the transformation of a woman deprived of her freedom and subjected to torture. I was not the only man who desired the beauty of bondage.

When the film ended and the audience rose, I followed the young woman. At the entrance to a residential neighborhood she stopped and turned toward me.

‘Is there something you want from me?’

She stared at me for a moment and questioned me in a crisp voice. Her eyes, accusing me of following her, made me falter.

‘Forgive me. You’re so beautiful that I simply found myself following you. I’m terribly sorry. But I’m not some delinquent, so please believe me on that point. Since I’ve already been rude, may I at least walk you home?’

I apologized frankly.

‘Well… heh… you are honest. But my house is just over there.’

Perhaps she decided I was not a bad man, because she answered without anger. Call it fate if you like, but from then on it became the opportunity for us to grow close. I became an extraordinarily fortunate man. She had no parents and had a younger sister and a younger brother.

As our intimacy increased, she confessed that during that film she had imagined herself in the heroine’s place and had watched in a kind of rapture. In time she also began to respond to my wishes.

When a desire I had cherished for years finally became reality, I was intoxicated by a joy beyond words. Before my own eyes stood a lovely young woman I had bound with my own hands, writhing as though she might disappear into a mixture of shame and delight. Without conscious artistry, a beautiful picture had been created. Her arms were raised high behind her. Her white, smooth, youthful upper arms swelled beautifully, while rope crossed her body and bit deeply into it. Together with the particular fragrance rising from her body, the sight seemed to carry my heart to heaven.

Human desire, however, has no limit. The bondage must have awakened the masochistic sensation in her flesh.

‘Tighter. Tie me tighter…’

She began to plead with an ecstatic expression. I tried every sort of binding I could devise. However painful it was, she willingly accepted it. Rope marks ran vertically and horizontally over her skin.

She was giving me permission to do such things to the precious skin of a maiden. I could have cried. Her affection seemed to become a great solid mass rising from the bottom of my heart. Then another impulse came over me. I embraced her while she was half naked and bound, and I pressed my lips to hers. More than two months had passed since she first agreed to be tied. This was the first time I embraced her and the first time I touched those flowerlike lips. They were filled with a sweet fragrance.

She twisted her body and accepted my caresses. A single tear appeared in her round eye and slowly ran down her cheek. I did not know what kind of tear it was, but it doubled my love for her. A woman tortured, tied, and wet with tears: could anything in this world be so beautiful? I gazed at this ultimate beauty in a state close to ecstasy.

A PROPOSAL
Yokota Jinzo

I am deeply grateful for the continued efforts of everyone on the editorial staff. My shelves now hold more than thirty issues of Kitan Club. Recently I sorted my books and sold a considerable number of other magazines as waste, but I could not bring myself to part with a single copy of Kitan Club. That is because I feel it contains a rich body of material that readers want. If it loses this documentary value, will it not decline into the same short life as an ordinary magazine?

I would like to offer two or three proposals for your consideration. Above all, the problem concerns bondage. I can understand the public editorial policy that must be proclaimed in a commercially published magazine, but I cannot believe this necessarily expresses the publication’s full purpose.

Because this is a specialized magazine, maintaining the confidence of its readers and responding to their aspirations are especially important. I therefore find it reassuring that the editors continue to act according to their own point of view.

I suggest that the readership might be divided into three levels. The first would consist of ordinary readers for whom the magazine serves as an introduction to fellow enthusiasts. The second would provide a path into the organization of regular KK Correspondence members. The third would consist of regular members who would preserve materials and form a research group.

Such materials are not easy to gather and cannot be produced from the heads of two or three people alone. It pains me to think that the excellent material already accumulated could remain buried and unpublished. For its scholarly use, trustworthy people could perhaps be selected from among the special members to preserve material that cannot be published, original texts underlying published material, and other documents, making controlled viewing and exchange possible. With such a system, I believe healthy and orderly communication could be achieved.

IN RESPONSE TO A PROPOSAL
The Editor

We remember receiving similarly thoughtful proposals about a category of special members before. Until now we have answered such inquiries privately by letter, but so many similar questions have accumulated that it has become impossible to answer every one individually. We had already been thinking of replying collectively in these pages.

We are grateful that Mr. Yokota recognizes the documentary value of Kitan Club, and we too hope to develop the magazine in that direction. As for restrictions on expression, we had formerly understood that considerable freedom existed so long as the Penal Code was not violated, but it is plainly not the case that everything outside the literal reach of the law can therefore be done without difficulty.

On the proposed division of the readership, we are largely in agreement. Yet the functions of a magazine and those of a membership organization are not identical. Undertaking plans without a reasonable prospect of success merely invites embarrassment. How to handle submissions, drawings, photographs, and materials of lasting documentary value, and how to preserve and use them for research, are matters that deserve further consideration.

BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE JUNE ISSUE

The proof sheets of the illustrations have arrived. There are problems everywhere. Spaces that were apparently intended for titles have been filled with type; although the original art is beautiful, some of the lettering and reproduction need attention. Looking at the foreign pictures and photographs that characterize each issue is one of the proofreader’s pleasures.

There is material related to Ito Seiu, photographs by contributors, chair bondage, and much else. Proofreading brings its usual plague of typographical errors, and before final approval we would like everything to be made sufficiently clear that mistakes can actually be caught.

THE GAP IN PERIOD SENSIBILITY AND THE BEAUTY OF JAPANESE DRESS
Shirogane Koji

Setting aside detailed documentary arguments for a moment and speaking on a simpler plane, the controversy in KK Correspondence No. 19 over loincloth versus panties ultimately comes down to a difference in sensibility between generations. Japan spent a long period as an isolated East Asian island nation. If Western panties had suddenly been introduced among common people whose visual culture was formed by ukiyo-e, the resulting pictorial style would surely have been very different.

For that reason I doubt that repeating the argument over loincloth or panties by itself will take us very far. I suspect that the division of opinion corresponds in part to the difference between younger readers and middle-aged or older readers.

The gap in period sensibility cannot simply be denied. Yet when one notices that many confessions and contributions in Kitan Club still center on kimono and Japanese dress, one must also acknowledge the continuing force of the older aesthetic.

I am not trying to use the loincloth to suppress panties. Kimono and panties each possess their own beauty. Photographs and paintings reach our eyes through camera technique and printing technique. If an image is aesthetically unsuccessful, the proper object of criticism is not necessarily the garment itself but the technique by which it is represented.

I have spent some of my spare time classifying and studying illustrations accompanying stories in magazines. Whether drawing or photograph, the personality of the maker appears strongly. There may be imitation, but the individual originality of a real artist does not disappear.

If the greatest visual climax in the process of undressing Japanese clothing lies in the waist cloth, then the task of an admirer of Japanese dress is to express that garment at its highest level. When a woman’s body is bound, every line of the body participates in the action, both objectively and psychologically. The resulting forms can press a strange erotic force into the male imagination.

With sufficiently advanced photographic and printing methods, the possibilities are extremely broad. Nagajuban, visiting kimono, formal silk garments, obi, datejime, obiage, obijime, collars, tabi, and other elements of dress can all become part of this investigation. I hope that admirers of Japanese dress throughout the country who gather around Kitan Club will contribute material and explore the erotic beauty of Japanese clothing from every possible angle.

HOW I TORMENT, PART THREE
Hozuka Fumio

From spring toward early summer, and again from early autumn into the season of red leaves, these are ordinary everyday costumes and ordinary everyday forms of torment.

One of the young women is to be brought by my own hand and put to work at Tamiko’s establishment. Her limbs are long and youthful. There is an early-morning coffee scene in Kimie’s dining room, the familiar drawing room, a large teak door, and a woman in an efficient office uniform with white Japanese tabi. Beneath the businesslike appearance, however, lies the familiar erotic costume of the waist cloth.

‘The president?’

‘What do you think we’re going to do!’

‘Our specialty. Strip her feet and throw her over there!’

Another episode takes place after six in the evening, when work in the dining room has ended. Kimie, Teruko, Masako, Suzuko, and the others become participants. Hands are tied behind the back with cords ordinarily used for hanging towels or cloths. Hemp rope is tightened around wrists and upper arms until the muscles can scarcely move. One woman holds the rope while another’s office skirt is lifted and her drawers removed. There is the tactile pleasure of smooth skin and the ridged impressions of rope.

When Kimie is present the games approach their limit. One woman is placed between the others, their wrists drawn to either side, all three closing their eyes. Then comes foot torment: remarks about whether the legs are thick or thin, their color, their size. There is twisting, licking, teasing, and handling.

The women move their legs lightly left and right. The so-called harmonica kiss becomes a rhythm of biting, sucking, licking, and teasing, speed increasing and decreasing until the tongue supplies the finish.

Another scene takes place in the office, with its drawers, mahogany-colored cushion, and revolving chair. A bound woman is perched on the table, her dangling legs and feet placed directly before the tormentor. The feet are played with as she sits there. Again there are verbal taunts about thickness, thinness, color, and size, followed by twisting, licking, and other teasing.

One unforgettable New Year’s Day episode involved removing white tabi, binding both ankles, and tightening the restraints until a woman who normally laughed through everything finally cried, ‘Enough.’

Then there was Hatsuko, an ordinary factory girl of about eighteen, already fully grown. After five o’clock she remained alone doing accounts in the office. When I appeared she stuck out her tongue and ran. She wore a scarlet sweater and black tights and fled from the workshop toward a storeroom. She clearly knew what was coming and seemed almost to enjoy the chase. I caught her, forced her down, and the torment began.

MAY ISSUE: A WAYWARD REVIEW
Toyama Ji

At a time when publications are being subjected to increasingly strict controls and books can disappear from shop shelves overnight, the May issue of Kitan Club appeared on schedule. I had privately worried whether it would actually be published, so I felt a particular happiness when I finally held it in my hands.

Among the frontispiece material, the little horse pulling a vehicle caught my eye. It is reproduced from a foreign publication, and I never tire of looking at such material. Overseas material is also valuable because it shows directly that people with these tastes exist not only in Japan but throughout the world.

Among the prose pieces, Prison Diary of a Boy has a vividness that comes from the author’s own experience. One feels almost as though one had been standing nearby. The Room of Evil changes direction sharply and moves quickly, which is effective although initially disorienting. Some of the other arguments and reports are persuasive, while others invite disagreement.

As always, I bow to the labor involved in searching literature from East and West and translating valuable writings faithfully rather than carelessly paraphrasing them. Together with overseas material on sadism and studies of seppuku and related subjects, such work greatly increases the documentary value of Kitan Club.

TO KK MEMBERS

This is only a modest pamphlet, but with the present issue KK Correspondence has reached No. 20. It is easy enough to produce a spectacular flash for a moment. It is much harder for a small bulletin of this kind to continue appearing steadily month after month. Thanks to your support, however, we have continued our quiet and dependable progress.

To make KK Correspondence an even more useful organ for its members, we welcome reader debates, personal accounts, confessions, member correspondence, opinions about editing, ideas for torture and torment, requests concerning photographs and drawings, criticism of preceding issues, information from the abnormal world, and especially reports of unusual subjects appearing in newspapers and magazines around the country.

Issues through No. 8 are sold out. Only a few copies of No. 9 remain, while limited stocks of Nos. 10 through 19 are still available. Back issues are twenty yen each and will be mailed on receipt of payment.

CORRECTIONS AND SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES TO THE MAY ISSUE

A lengthy errata section follows, identifying specific printed pages and lines and correcting words and expressions. Among the corrected terms are passages involving sucking, nudity, pubic hair, the whole body, tongue, binding, penis, breathing, physical relations, spread legs, damp paper, stains, and inner thighs. Because the corrections refer to pagination and line numbers in another publication, their function here is primarily bibliographic and editorial.

MEMBER CORRESPONDENCE

I read the May issue with tremendous excitement. The photographs of women bound over their whole bodies were splendid and fulfilled a wish I have had for years. If I may ask for more, I would also have liked to see them directly from the front. I always pay particular attention to the hands of a bound woman. The pain of bondage should be visible in the hands as well. In photographs I would like to see the embarrassment of a completely naked virgin expressed clearly. If photographs of this sort continue, the issues will eventually make a wonderful album.

I am forty-seven. I am especially attracted to scenes in which a young woman bends forward, exposes her body, overpowers an ineffectual man, straddles him, squeezes his neck with all her strength, or seems ready to finish him with a large kitchen knife. Would it be possible to publish illustrations of that kind? Even scenes inspired by sensational recent crimes would be fascinating to me.

I returned from Siberia after the war and am now forty-seven years old. I am strongly attracted to the sight of a woman bending forward and exposing herself, and especially to women tormenting men. I am fascinated by scenes in which a man who cannot resist is dominated by a woman.

Every month I buy various magazines in addition to Kitan Club, but none of them publishes torture photographs in full natural color. Why is that? Could Kitan Club not take the lead? Full-color photographs would surely have much greater force and delight many readers.

Prison Diary of a Boy was especially interesting to me because I am a sadist and it described things I have often imagined doing. It reminded me of the treatment of young recruits during the war. Yet after seeing the pictures I began to feel increasingly that I did not merely want to torment others. I also wanted to be tormented. Life would be a hundred times more enjoyable if one had a partner with whom one could alternate between tormenting and being tormented.

EDITORIAL NOTES

How is everyone? We have passed through the storms and flowers of spring and have reached the refreshing season of new greenery. While struggling to complete the June issue, the cherry-blossom season has already begun to feel like yesterday’s memory.

Some magazines collect advance subscriptions and then fail to appear. We have no intention of behaving in that careless fashion, so please do not worry. At the same time, recent publication bans have again shown how unreliable newspaper reports can be. Compare three or four newspapers describing the same incident and even such elementary matters as when, where, and what happened may differ. Perhaps journalists will say that this is because they must report events quickly, but one rarely sees corrections afterward. Do they assume that readers are fools and therefore accuracy does not matter? Or are newspapers reluctant to expose the errors of other newspapers because they belong to the same trade?

One gentleman who regularly deplores irresponsible journalism himself stamped a rumor with the phrase ‘there is no mistake about the facts’ and sent it into circulation. In the June issue our editor will answer him. Numa Shozo has also demanded correction of a report in another magazine claiming that its April issue was banned. Being told that something was banned when no such official announcement exists is irritating enough, but seeing the words ‘there is no mistake about the facts’ stated so pompously makes one genuinely angry.

We should also apologize for a small misprint in the preview of the July issue involving the name of a boy used as a footstool. In addition to the items already announced for June, we expect to include the confession of a masochistic man, a story concerning seppuku, material involving an eye patch and mask, and other unusual confessions and fiction.

Kasuga Rumi, who declares that she wants to torment men, has offered her full cooperation. We therefore expect future masochistic photo features to be worth watching. We have for the first time recruited male masochistic models through the magazine, and applicants have already appeared. Once photographing begins in accordance with her wishes, it will be interesting to see what kind of scenes develop.

EDITORIAL PHOTOGRAPH CAPTIONS

Above: Chair Torment.
Below: Gagged.

Someone claims that the subject ‘was not actually restrained.’ Is that really so? At present we can only smile at the claim.

SHORT MESSAGES

A reader has provided the magazine with treasured, previously unpublished photographs of bound women wearing traditional Japanese coiffures.

An artist whose frontispieces have been well received is busily exploring new territory. Several new works are already being prepared for later issues.

For the first time we have publicly recruited male masochistic models. Who will be the first applicant?

Kasuga Rumi, a beauty who enjoys tormenting men, is waiting eagerly for a suitable male subject. Once the photography begins, we can only imagine what scenes may result.

One man who describes himself as a genuine sadist has volunteered and claims to be exactly twenty-five years old. The editors joke that a suitably matched masochistic model must therefore also be found.

Others complain that controls on publishing amount to oppression and worry that unusual books will become impossible to obtain. The editors answer with characteristic sarcasm that if someone can show them something genuinely rare and interesting, perhaps all the noise will at least have produced one useful result.

Further short comments mock unreliable newspaper reporting, rumors of publication bans, fashionable war talk, and people who repeat whatever they have recently read without understanding it.

KK Correspondence, No. 20. Published May 1, 1954. Published by Akebono Shobo. Price: 20 yen per copy.