{
    "export_format": "krp_article",
    "export_version": 1,
    "exported_at": "2026-09-29T16:15:17+00:00",
    "magazine": {
        "id": 4,
        "title": "Fuzoku Soshi",
        "slug": null
    },
    "issue": {
        "id": 140,
        "title": "June 1953: Masochism Special Issue",
        "slug": null,
        "issue_date": "1953-06-01T00:00:00.000000Z",
        "original_filename": "soushi.pdf",
        "pdf_page_count": 197
    },
    "article": {
        "id": 2586,
        "toc_entry_id": 2882,
        "sort_order": 13,
        "title": "Mania Correspondence",
        "author": "",
        "printed_page_label": null,
        "pdf_page_start": 128,
        "pdf_page_end": 134,
        "original_language": "Japanese",
        "original_text": "まにあ通信\n読者のための秘密ロサン\n向後 等\n\n一　少女愛好狂の中年男\n\n三十二才の会社員です。妻帯者、五才の男児があります。二年ほど前より困った病気にとりつかれて、そのため夫婦生活もうまくいかない状態です。\n\nそれは、少女でなければ恋愛的な感情も性欲も起らないという病気なのです。その原因らしいものを考えてみますと、三十才の春、薄給で生活が苦しいためアルバイトに家庭教師をしてからです。\n\n最初に頼まれたのが、近所の十四才になる女子中学生の勉強を見てやることでした。その父親というのは会社の重役とかいう人で、広い邸に住んでおり、娘の部屋を両親の居間とは、はなれた二階の隅にありました。そこで、その少女と二人きりで、英語やら数学やらを見てやっているうちに、私は彼女の汚れのない清純な顔や態度に、成人の女性からは味えぬ大きな魅惑を覚えるようになってしまったのです。\n\n私はいくたび彼女に手を伸ばそうと思ったか知れません。伸ばそうと思えば訳なく間にあう彼女なのです。しかし、無理に抑えつけました。\n\nそれから私の少女狂愛癖がはじまったのです。道を歩いているとき、或は電車の内などで、十四、五才の可愛い美しい少女を見ると、私はもう堪らなくなって、尾行したり、傍に寄ったりしてしまうのです。\n\nこのままこの病癖が昂進すれば、かの織田芳男やウグイス男のような犯罪をしでかさぬともかぎりません。私はそれがおそろしいのです。\n\n（北海道　池野釣一）\n\n（解答）\n\n少女偏愛は男のサジーズムから来ている。少女は、大人から見ると、ひ弱さ・可憐らしさがある。そのひ弱さ、いじらしさが、成年男子のサド的欲情をかきたたせるのである。\n\nあなたが家庭教師中、教え子の少女の清純さに魅惑を覚えたというのも、やはりあなたのサド性から来ている。それは成年の女性では得られぬ清純さに対する征服欲であり攻撃欲である。\n\n男も三十四になると、性愛の心理が非常にサジックになって来る。そのサジックな愛欲を満足させるには、少女が最も好対象なのである。\n\n或る女学校で、生徒の誘惑被害の状態を調べたところ、電車内などで女学生の臀を撫でたり手を握ったり性的な悪戯をするのは、三十才から四十才位までの男、それも紳士風の男が、断然首位を占めていた。これによっても、少女好愛者は中年男に多いということが分る。\n\nこうした少女好愛が、盲信に入ると、病的な色情的少女愛狂となり、少女姦などを犯すにいたるのである。\n\nあなたの場合は、文面によると、一度も過失を犯したことがないらしいから、自制心の強い人といえる。\n\n私の知人に少女好愛症の男があって、彼は妻を常に少女風の髪形、服装にさせて、幸くも己が性癖の脱線を防いでいるのがあるが、そのような附焼刃より、一度精神科の医師に相談されることをすすめる。\n\n二　女の悪臭に陶酔する青年\n\n僕は婦人の体臭に特別の狂崇を覚える廿五才の青年です。独身者ですし、比較的収入の多い仕事をしておりますので、時々芸者遊びなどもしますし、キャバレーや特飲街にも出掛けますが、その際相手の女の体臭を嗅いだだけで充分満足してしまうのです。\n\n相手の女の肉体から発する女性特有のにおい、それは髪油や白粉などの匂いの混じったいわゆる芳香よりも、むしろワキの強い臭いの方に欲情を駆られることが多いのです。\n\nそうした意味で、僕の最も好きな女の臭いは、\n一、わきがの女の臭い\n一、月経時の女の臭い\n一、男の肌を知らぬ女がもつ特有の臭い\n一、性的疾患をもつ女の臭い\n一、女性のあらゆる分泌物（排泄物ではありません）の臭い\n等々です。\n\n長年の経験から、私は、女性に会うと、その臭いを嗅いだだけで、この女は今メンスだとか、この女は婦人科的疾患を患っているとか、或はこの女は男を知らぬなどということが、すぐ見別けられます。\n\nですから、女遊びの際にも、以上のような臭いをもつ女とだけ性的交渉をするようにして、それ以外の女とは文字通りの遊びだけにとどめておくのです。\n\n私のような男が他にもあるのでしょうか？\n\n（東京　岡松史郎）\n\n（解答）\n\n体臭と性愛とは大きな関係のあるものである。香料として尊ばれている麝香が、交尾期に異性をひきつけるために、麝香猫、麝香鹿などの動物の身体に発生するものであること、或はもっと手近な例では、交尾期の犬猫が互に仲間の異性の尻を嗅いで歩くことによってもそのことは明瞭だが、それは動物だけでなく、人間においても同じである。\n\n異性の体臭から性欲を誘発されるという例は非常に多い。決してあなたばかりではない。ただ、体臭の微細な日本人の間では少なく、それの強い欧米人に多いらしい。東洋人ではインド人や中国人に多い。たとえば、インドでは相愛の男女がおたがいに汗の湿った腕巻を交換しあって着ける風習があることも、その一例である。\n\nわきが（腋臭）も、普通の人には嫌われる悪臭だが、中には、この臭いを嗅ぐとすこぶる興奮をそそられるという人もある。\n\n或る女性は、ふだんは異性の体臭に興奮を覚えないけれども、愛人の腋臭を嗅ぐと、たちまちオルガスムすると告白している。\n\nあなたの云われるように、体臭でその人の処女か否か、或は病気か否か、或は月経時か否かなどを嗅ぎ分けることができるという学者もいる。\n\nただ嗅覚は人によって非常にその感じ方が違うもので、自分の感じを他人に云い現わしにくい。たとえば、或人は或る臭いを腐ったバタのようだというし、或人はそれをチーズのようだというし、或人はそれをチーズのようだというように、一定しない。つまりその臭いの如何は、当事者の主観的のものである。\n\nあなたの場合は、相当狂的な体臭愛好者と云っていいだろう。\n\n三　偶像狂の女性\n\n二十三才の独身女性です。職業は中学校教師です。\n\n忘れもしません、女学校四年、十七才の秋でした。修学旅行で東京に来まして、ちょうど上野の美術館で開かれている美術展覧会へ行ったのですが、その彫塑室で、一つの男子裸像を見たとき、私は、いままで生身の異性からも覚えたことのないような恋情と、正直にいえば性的興奮をすら感じたのです。\n\nそれは銅製の等身大の彫刻で、体躯全体、筋肉が隆々と盛上り、その顔形も魁偉とでも表現するような強面の風貌で、しかも彫像ながら全体がテカテカと黒光りし、今にも襲みかかって来そうな力強さを現わしておりました。\n\n実際、私は、そのとき、その像に抱みかかれたように錯覚し、思わず身震いしたくらいです。全身が痺れるような、快い身震いでした。私はその像に完全に恋着してしまいました。\n\nそして出立前に自由行動を許されたとき、引率の先生には親戚の家へ行くからと偽って、ひとり上野の美術館へ、その彫刻をもう一度見に行ったほどです。\n\n旅行を終って家に戻ってからも、しばらくはあの裸像を忘れることができませんでした。或るときその幻を思い浮べてひとり楽しんだり、夢にまでも見ました。\n\nそれから私は、生身の男性よりも、かの裸像に似た彫刻やら仏像を愛するようになってしまったのです。\n\n学校を出て、職につくようになってからは、見て廻るだけでは我慢できなくなり、少い給料の中から貯金して、その金で或る彫刻家に頼んで、自分のアイデアを話し、上野美術館で見た裸像にそっくりの彫刻を製作してもらい、それを自分の部屋において、朝夕、恋人に接するように愛撫してというよりは、自分の気持では彫刻に愛撫されて、何よりの愉悦としております。\n\n私はこの彫像さえあれば、生身の異性などすこしも欲しいとは思いません。\n\n（京都　紀子）\n\n（解答）\n\n偶像愛好性は一般の人の中には、多くはあるものだが、あなたの場合は、完全なピグマリオニズム（偶像愛）といえる。そのピグマリオン的な偶像狂愛者である。\n\n昔、ギリシャの彫刻家ピグマリオンという人は自分で製作したガラテアの像に恋着し、ついにはその像に生命が通って夫婦になったという伝説から、この言葉が生れたのだが、概してこの偶像狂愛は女性よりも男性に多い。\n\n昔の江の島の弁天像は、一般には非公開だが、一縷まとわぬ裸像なのである。船員など長い航海中に、寂寥を慰めるために使うといういわゆる「閨人形」なども、異性の代用物のためではあるが、反面一般人の中にもある偶像愛の現れと見ていいだろう。\n\n私が考えるのに、あなたの場合は、一種の男性恐怖から、現実の異性を避けて偶像に恋着するようになったのではないだろうか。もし、あなたの前に、上野美術館で見たという彫刻のような、容貌魁偉、筋骨隆々たる、生身の男性が現れて、あなたに求愛するならば、あなたの偶像狂愛性は治るのではないかと思われる。\n\n四　女性の脚を狂愛する男\n\n私は女性の脚に狂熱的な愛慕を抱く男です。\n\n女性を見るとき、私の眼は顔や姿よりも、まずその脚に注がれます。そして、惚々と或は呪みえるように、それに見惚れるのです。\n\nといっても、いわゆる大根足といわれるような格好の悪いそれは嫌いで、あくまで脚線美の整ったものでなければなりません。美しい脚ならば、それがむきだしの脚だろうとナイロン靴下の脚だろうと構いません。そのような脚を見ると、それに触れてみたい衝動に駆られてなりません。\n\nストリップ・ショウなどを見に行っても、私は、他の男の観客のように、乳房や臀部などには目もくれません。注視するのは脚、脚、脚です。よくストリッパーが、観客の愛慕欲を満足させるために客席へおりて来て、手を握らせたり乳房に触れさせたりすることがありますが、そんなとき、私は思わずその踊り子の脚に触ってしまい、失笑されたことが度々です。\n\n読者の中の私と同じ脚マニヤよ、お便り下さい。\n\n（埼玉　岩本健）\n\n（解答）\n\n久米の仙人は、洗濯をしていた女の白い脛を見て、通力を失って下界に落ちたという話は何人も知っている。しかし、それがほんとうの話だということを知っている者は少ない。いずれも架空の作り話だと思っている。これは現代人の疑い深い悪癖である。\n\n久米の仙人の話はほんとうの話だが、勿論天界の仙人の話ではなく、仙の法を修行していた者なのだ。それが、取日高所から女の白い足を見たために、フラフラとなって女の前に落ちたのである。\n\n久米は後にその女を妻としたといわれている。久米仙人のごとき修行者にして然り、況して煩悩（もろもろの欲望）に支配されているわれわれが、女の脚に魅惑されるわけはない。フェチシズムの一つである脚フェチシズムは非常に多いのである。\n\n試みに電車の内、或は駅のホームの階段などを昇り降りする男性の様子を窺ってみるがいい。その大半の男の目が女性の臀部でなく、脚に注がれていることに思い至るであろう。\n\nが、単に見て楽しんでいるうちはよいが、これが、マニヤックとなると、女の脚を幻像しながら自慰したり、或は、女の脚に強く触れたり、又は女の足に蹴れ踏まれることを欲求したりする。\n\nこのように男には脚フェチシズムのものが多い。女性たるもの、脚の美容に留意すべきであろう。\n\n五　色情老耄症の老婆\n\n私の親戚に今年七十六才になるおばあさんがいるのですが、この年令になって、誰彼となく男を欲しがり、独り住居の隠居所へ始終男をつれこんで、村中の噂の種をまいている始末です。\n\n相手になる男は大抵四十、五十の人が多いのですが、中には二十三才の若い男もある様子です。縁につながる者として、恥しくて困るのですが、このような年令になっても、そんな気が起るのはどういうわけでしょうか。又そんな老婆でも男女関係ができるのでしょうか。\n\n（解答）\n\nその老婆は色情老耄症といって、老年になってますます性欲が旺盛になる病気である。勿論、性欲というものは、個人個人みな違うので、八十才以上になっても、性生活をいとなむ人もあって、必ずしも病気とはいえないが、それにも程度があり、夜毎に異性を欲しがるというようなのは、病的といってよい。\n\nこのような老婆は、大抵が幼時に性的早熟であって、月経も人より早い。月経が早ければ閉止期も早いものと多くの人は思っているようだが、事実は閉止期が遅く、五十五、六才から六十才ころになって閉止する。\n\n女性の性欲は閉止期とは関係なく、大体閉止後十年位は盛んなのであって、六十七、八になって男がなくては淋しいという女は案外に多い。\n\n以上がこのような老令になっても男の肌を欲しがるのはどういうわけかという問に対する答である。\n\n次に、そんな老婆でも男女関係ができるかとの質問であるが、普通の老婆の場合、性的器官の分泌物がなくなるのだが、老耄症の老婆は、非常に滑沢で、又緊張力もなくなっていないのである。\n\nこんな老婆の実例がある。それは八十二才の高齢に及ぶ老婆で、彼女は初めの夫と死別以来再婚すること五回、月経閉止は六十一才のときだったが、閉止後もますます盛んで、五回目の夫がなくなってからは、夫をもつよりも独り身でいた方が、性の対象に不自由せぬとして、その後は独り暮しをつづけた。\n\n八十二才のとき、街で不良のような若い男を数人ひろった。金を遣るからと老婆にすがりついて来た青年たちは、面白半分に、老婆の相手になった。若者たちがフト気がついたときには、老婆はすでに冷たくなっていたので、あわてて医者を呼んだり、警官が来たりして大騒ぎになったというのである。\n\n又、更に高齢なのでは、百余歳の老婆で常に男の肌を求めてやまぬという例がある。\n\nその老婆は十三、四才の少女時代から淫奔を以て村中に有名であった。独り娘なので養子をもらったが、いくら健康な養子をもらっても永続せず、死ぬとか、逃げだすとか、凡そ二十七、八人も養子がかわった。\n\n老齢になっても、性の欲望は一層盛んで、近郷近在の青年を相手にしていた。それを彼女は、「稽古代」と称していた。\n\nすなわち、未婚の青年に性的行為を実験によって教える、その実験が稽古代なのである。未婚の青年ならば、どんなときでも快くこれを教え、拒んだことがなく、伝授された青年の数は、長年月に亘るため、無慮数千人と推定されるという。\n\nそして二十数人も養子を迎え、又この稽古代（老婆が青年にそれを払うのである）のために、代々裕福だった家産の大部分を失ったということである。百余歳の高齢に達して、朝夕殆んど床に就いたままで、時々遺尿するようになっていたが、それでも顔には白粉を塗ってシワを隠して、ウワ言のように男の肌を欲しがり、年若い青年を物色しかねない意気があったという。\n\n（附記）\n\n以上の数例が示すごとく、凡ゆるマニアの通信を歓迎します。なるべくできるだけ克明に自己の習癖について記してください。年令、職業なども附記されれば、尚結構です。宛先は春光社内マニア通信係向後等宛のこと。",
        "translation_draft": "MANIA CORRESPONDENCE\nA Confidential Salon for Readers\nKōgo Hitoshi\n\n1. A Middle-Aged Man Obsessed with Young Girls\n\nI am a thirty-two-year-old company employee. I am married and have a five-year-old son. For about two years I have been afflicted by a troublesome condition, and because of it my married life has not been going well.\n\nThe condition is that unless the object is a young girl, I feel neither romantic emotion nor sexual desire. When I think about what may have caused it, I trace it back to the spring when I was thirty. My salary was small and life was difficult, so I took a part-time job as a private tutor.\n\nThe first student I was asked to teach was a fourteen-year-old junior-high-school girl in the neighborhood. Her father was some kind of company executive and lived in a large residence. The girl's room was in a corner of the second floor, separated from her parents' rooms. As I sat there alone with her teaching English and mathematics, I began to feel, toward her unspoiled and innocent face and manner, a powerful attraction that I could not experience toward adult women.\n\nI cannot say how many times I thought of reaching out to her. If I had wanted to, she was right there within reach. But I forcibly restrained myself.\n\nThat was the beginning of my obsessive attraction to girls. When I am walking along the street, or riding on a train, if I see a pretty, beautiful girl of fourteen or fifteen, I can no longer contain myself and end up following her or moving close beside her.\n\nIf this tendency keeps growing stronger, I may someday commit a crime like Oda Yoshio or the so-called Uguisu Man. That possibility terrifies me.\n\n(Hokkaidō, Ikeno Chōichi)\n\nAnswer:\n\nA preference for young girls comes from male sadism. Seen from an adult's perspective, a girl possesses weakness and a touching vulnerability. That weakness and pathos stimulate the sadistic desires of an adult man.\n\nThe fascination you felt for the purity of the girl you tutored likewise came from your sadistic disposition. It was a desire for conquest and aggression directed toward a purity that cannot be obtained from an adult woman.\n\nWhen a man reaches about thirty-four, the psychology of sexual love becomes markedly more sadistic. To satisfy such sadistic erotic desire, the young girl becomes the most suitable object.\n\nAt one girls' school, an investigation was made into cases in which students had been subjected to sexual advances. It found that the men who fondled schoolgirls' buttocks on trains, took hold of their hands, or committed sexual pranks were overwhelmingly men between thirty and forty, and often men of respectable appearance. This, too, supposedly shows that men attracted to girls are especially common among the middle-aged.\n\nWhen such attraction becomes obsessive, the answer says, it can turn into pathological erotic fixation and lead to sexual crimes against girls.\n\nFrom your letter, however, it appears that you have never actually committed such an offense, so you may be regarded as a person with strong self-control.\n\nI know a man with this attraction who always has his wife arrange her hair and clothing in a girlish style, and by doing so has fortunately kept his tendency from going off the rails. Rather than relying on such a makeshift measure, however, I recommend that you consult a psychiatrist.\n\n2. A Young Man Intoxicated by Women's Bad Odors\n\nI am a twenty-five-year-old man who feels an extraordinary obsession with the smell of women's bodies. I am unmarried and have a relatively well-paid occupation, so from time to time I entertain myself with geisha, and I also go to cabarets and special drinking and pleasure districts. Yet on such occasions, simply smelling the woman's bodily odor is enough to satisfy me.\n\nOf the odors peculiar to the female body, rather than the so-called pleasant fragrances mixed with hair oil and face powder, I am more often driven to sexual desire by strong smells such as underarm odor.\n\nIn that sense, my favorite female odors are:\n1. The odor of a woman with strong underarm smell.\n2. The odor of a menstruating woman.\n3. The distinctive odor of a woman who has never known a man sexually.\n4. The odor of a woman with a sexual disease.\n5. The odor of every kind of female secretion, although I do not mean excrement.\n\nFrom long experience, when I meet a woman I can supposedly tell merely by her odor that she is menstruating, that she has some gynecological illness, or that she has never known a man.\n\nThus, even when I go out with women, I have sexual relations only with women possessing one of the odors mentioned above. With other women I restrict myself literally to ordinary amusement.\n\nAre there other men like me?\n\n(Tokyo, Okamatsu Shirō)\n\nAnswer:\n\nBodily odor and sexuality are closely related. Musk, which is prized as perfume, is produced by animals such as musk cats and musk deer in connection with attracting the opposite sex during the mating season. A more familiar example is the way dogs and cats in heat go about smelling the hindquarters of animals of the opposite sex. The answer claims that the same connection exists in human beings.\n\nThere are many cases in which the smell of the opposite sex arouses sexual desire. You are certainly not alone. The article claims that this is less common among Japanese, whose bodily odor is comparatively faint, and more common among Westerners, whose bodily odor is stronger. It likewise claims that among Asians it is more common among Indians and Chinese, citing an alleged Indian custom in which lovers exchange sweat-dampened arm bands.\n\nUnderarm odor, too, is considered a bad smell by ordinary people, yet some people become strongly excited by it.\n\nOne woman is said to have confessed that she is ordinarily not aroused by the bodily odor of the opposite sex, but that smelling her lover's underarm odor immediately brings her to orgasm.\n\nThere are even scholars, the answer claims, who say that a person's odor can reveal whether a woman is a virgin, ill, or menstruating.\n\nThe sense of smell, however, differs enormously from person to person, and one's own perception is difficult to communicate to others. One person may describe a smell as resembling rancid butter while another compares it with cheese. The character of a smell is therefore subjective.\n\nIn your case, the answer concludes, you may fairly be called an extreme devotee of bodily odors.\n\n3. A Woman Obsessed with Idols\n\nI am a twenty-three-year-old unmarried woman. I work as a middle-school teacher.\n\nI will never forget it. I was seventeen, in my fourth year of girls' school, during the autumn. We came to Tokyo on a school excursion and visited an art exhibition at the Ueno museum. In the sculpture room I saw a nude male statue, and at that moment I felt toward it a romantic emotion, and, to be frank, even sexual excitement, unlike anything I had ever felt toward a living man.\n\nIt was a life-sized bronze sculpture. The whole body was powerfully built, its muscles swelling prominently, and its face was imposing, almost formidable. Although it was only a statue, its entire surface gleamed darkly, and it seemed to possess the strength to spring into motion and attack at any moment.\n\nI actually had the illusion that the statue had taken me into its arms, and I shuddered involuntarily. It was a pleasant shudder that seemed to numb my entire body. I fell completely in love with the statue.\n\nBefore we departed, when we were allowed some free time, I lied to our supervising teacher and said that I was going to visit relatives. Instead, I went alone to the Ueno museum simply to see the statue once more.\n\nEven after returning home from the trip, I could not forget the nude statue for a long time. Sometimes I would summon its image and enjoy myself alone, and it even appeared in my dreams.\n\nFrom then on I gradually came to love sculptures and Buddhist images resembling that nude figure more than living men.\n\nAfter leaving school and finding employment, merely going around to look at them was no longer enough. I saved money from my small salary and commissioned a sculptor. I explained my own ideas and had him make a sculpture closely resembling the nude statue I had seen at Ueno. I keep it in my room and caress it morning and evening as though it were my lover, or rather, in my own imagination, I feel that the statue is caressing me. It is my greatest pleasure.\n\nAs long as I have this statue, I do not feel the slightest desire for a living man.\n\n(Kyoto, Noriko)\n\nAnswer:\n\nSome degree of attachment to idols or images exists among ordinary people, but your case can be described as complete Pygmalionism, or erotic love of an image. You are an obsessive Pygmalionist.\n\nAccording to the old Greek legend, the sculptor Pygmalion became enamored of a statue of Galatea that he himself had created. The image was eventually given life and became his wife. The term originates in this legend. Generally speaking, the answer says, this form of image-love is more common among men than women.\n\nThe old Benzaiten image at Enoshima was ordinarily kept from public view and was said to be completely nude. There are also so-called bedchamber dolls used by sailors during long voyages to relieve loneliness. These may serve as substitutes for the opposite sex, but they can also be regarded as manifestations of image-love.\n\nMy own view, the respondent writes, is that in your case a certain fear of men may have caused you to avoid real members of the opposite sex and become attached instead to an image. If a living man were to appear before you who possessed the same imposing appearance and magnificent musculature as the statue you saw at the Ueno museum, your obsessive love of statues might perhaps disappear.\n\n4. A Man Obsessed with Women's Legs\n\nI am a man possessed by an intense erotic love of women's legs.\n\nWhenever I look at a woman, my eyes are drawn first not to her face or figure but to her legs. I stare at them in fascination.\n\nThat does not mean I like badly shaped legs of the sort sometimes called daikon legs. They must have beautiful lines. If the legs are beautiful, I do not care whether they are bare or covered by nylon stockings. Whenever I see such legs, I am seized by an irresistible urge to touch them.\n\nEven when I go to strip shows, unlike the other male spectators I pay no attention to breasts or buttocks. I watch legs, legs, legs. Strippers sometimes come down among the audience to satisfy the spectators' desire to touch them, allowing men to hold their hands or touch their breasts. At such moments I have repeatedly found myself touching the dancer's leg instead, sometimes provoking laughter.\n\nReaders who are leg maniacs like me, please write.\n\n(Saitama, Iwamoto Ken)\n\nAnswer:\n\nEveryone knows the story of Kume the Immortal, who saw the white calves of a woman washing clothes, lost his supernatural powers, and fell from the heavens. Few people, however, know that there is truth behind this story. Most assume it is simply an imaginary tale. Such skepticism, the answer says, is one of the bad habits of modern people.\n\nThe story of Kume is said here to be based on a real tradition, although of course it was not literally about an immortal living in heaven but about a religious practitioner cultivating the arts of the immortals. From a high place he saw a woman's white legs and, overcome by desire, lost his composure and fell down before her.\n\nKume is later said to have taken the woman as his wife. If even a practitioner such as Kume could be overcome in this way, how much more easily can those of us ruled by worldly passions be captivated by women's legs. Leg fetishism is said to be one of the most common forms of fetishism.\n\nTry watching men on a train, or those ascending and descending the stairs of a railway platform. You will realize that the eyes of a great many men are fixed not on women's buttocks but on their legs.\n\nThere is nothing particularly troubling about merely enjoying the sight. But once it becomes obsessive, the man may masturbate while imagining women's legs, develop a compulsion to touch them, or even desire to be kicked or stepped on by women's feet.\n\nLeg fetishism, the answer concludes, is therefore very common among men. Women would do well to pay attention to the beauty of their legs.\n\n5. An Elderly Woman with Senile Hypersexuality\n\nI have a female relative who is seventy-six years old. At this age she has begun craving men indiscriminately, constantly bringing men into the little retirement house where she lives alone and becoming the subject of gossip throughout the village.\n\nMost of the men are in their forties or fifties, although apparently there has even been a young man of twenty-three. As one of her relatives I find the situation deeply embarrassing. Why should such desires arise at such an age? And can an elderly woman like this really still engage in sexual relations?\n\nAnswer:\n\nThe old woman is described here as suffering from what the article calls senile hypersexuality, a condition in which sexual desire becomes unusually strong in old age. Sexual desire naturally differs greatly from person to person, and there are people who continue sexual activity beyond eighty, so old-age sexuality by itself is not an illness. But there are degrees, and when someone demands partners night after night, the behavior can be regarded as pathological.\n\nWomen of this type are said to have often matured sexually early in childhood and to have begun menstruation earlier than average. Many people suppose that early menstruation means an early menopause, but the article asserts the opposite, claiming that menopause is often delayed until roughly fifty-five or sixty.\n\nFemale sexual desire, it continues, is not directly determined by menopause, and may remain strong for about ten years afterward. It is therefore said to be surprisingly common for women of sixty-seven or sixty-eight to complain that they are lonely without a man.\n\nThat is the article's answer to the first question, why an elderly woman might continue to desire men's bodies.\n\nAs for whether such a woman can still have sexual relations, the response claims that although genital secretions generally decrease with age, women with this supposed condition may retain considerable lubrication and muscular tension.\n\nAn example is then given of an eighty-two-year-old woman. She had remarried five times after the death of her first husband. Her menstruation ceased at sixty-one, but her sexual appetite allegedly increased afterward. After her fifth husband died, she decided that remaining single gave her greater freedom in choosing sexual partners and therefore lived alone.\n\nAt the age of eighty-two she supposedly picked up several delinquent-looking young men in town. She offered them money, and the men, partly as a joke, agreed to become her partners. When the young men eventually noticed what had happened, the woman had already become cold. They panicked, summoned a doctor, and the police arrived, causing a great commotion.\n\nThe article then gives an even more extreme example, a woman said to have lived beyond one hundred while constantly desiring male partners.\n\nShe had allegedly been notorious in her village for sexual promiscuity since the age of thirteen or fourteen. Because she was an only daughter, adopted husbands were brought into the family, but none remained for long. Some died, others fled, and altogether twenty-seven or twenty-eight adopted husbands supposedly came and went.\n\nHer sexual desire allegedly became even stronger with age, and she took young men from neighboring villages as partners. She called the arrangement \"lesson fees.\"\n\nIn other words, she supposedly taught unmarried young men sexual behavior through practical experience. Because she welcomed virtually any unmarried young man, the article claims that over the course of many years the number of those she instructed may have reached several thousand.\n\nBetween the many adopted husbands and the money she paid as these so-called lesson fees, she was said to have dissipated much of a family fortune accumulated over generations. Even after reaching more than one hundred years of age, when she spent nearly all day in bed and sometimes suffered urinary incontinence, she allegedly still put face powder over her wrinkles and murmured almost deliriously about wanting a man's body, retaining enough spirit to seek out young men.\n\nEditor's Note:\n\nAs the examples above indicate, we welcome correspondence concerning every variety of mania. Please describe your own habit or fixation as precisely as possible. It would also be helpful to include your age and occupation. Send correspondence to the Mania Correspondence section, care of Shunkōsha, addressed to Kōgo Hitoshi.",
        "translation_final": "MANIA CORRESPONDENCE\nA Confidential Salon for Readers\nKōgo Hitoshi\n\n1. A Middle-Aged Man Obsessed with Young Girls\n\nI am a thirty-two-year-old company employee. I am married and have a five-year-old son. For about two years I have been afflicted by a troublesome condition, and because of it my married life has not been going well.\n\nThe condition is that unless the object is a young girl, I feel neither romantic emotion nor sexual desire. When I think about what may have caused it, I trace it back to the spring when I was thirty. My salary was small and life was difficult, so I took a part-time job as a private tutor.\n\nThe first student I was asked to teach was a fourteen-year-old junior-high-school girl in the neighborhood. Her father was some kind of company executive and lived in a large residence. The girl's room was in a corner of the second floor, separated from her parents' rooms. As I sat there alone with her teaching English and mathematics, I began to feel, toward her unspoiled and innocent face and manner, a powerful attraction that I could not experience toward adult women.\n\nI cannot say how many times I thought of reaching out to her. If I had wanted to, she was right there within reach. But I forcibly restrained myself.\n\nThat was the beginning of my obsessive attraction to girls. When I am walking along the street, or riding on a train, if I see a pretty, beautiful girl of fourteen or fifteen, I can no longer contain myself and end up following her or moving close beside her.\n\nIf this tendency keeps growing stronger, I may someday commit a crime like Oda Yoshio or the so-called Uguisu Man. That possibility terrifies me.\n\n(Hokkaidō, Ikeno Chōichi)\n\nAnswer:\n\nA preference for young girls comes from male sadism. Seen from an adult's perspective, a girl possesses weakness and a touching vulnerability. That weakness and pathos stimulate the sadistic desires of an adult man.\n\nThe fascination you felt for the purity of the girl you tutored likewise came from your sadistic disposition. It was a desire for conquest and aggression directed toward a purity that cannot be obtained from an adult woman.\n\nWhen a man reaches about thirty-four, the psychology of sexual love becomes markedly more sadistic. To satisfy such sadistic erotic desire, the young girl becomes the most suitable object.\n\nAt one girls' school, an investigation was made into cases in which students had been subjected to sexual advances. It found that the men who fondled schoolgirls' buttocks on trains, took hold of their hands, or committed sexual pranks were overwhelmingly men between thirty and forty, and often men of respectable appearance. This, too, supposedly shows that men attracted to girls are especially common among the middle-aged.\n\nWhen such attraction becomes obsessive, the answer says, it can turn into pathological erotic fixation and lead to sexual crimes against girls.\n\nFrom your letter, however, it appears that you have never actually committed such an offense, so you may be regarded as a person with strong self-control.\n\nI know a man with this attraction who always has his wife arrange her hair and clothing in a girlish style, and by doing so has fortunately kept his tendency from going off the rails. Rather than relying on such a makeshift measure, however, I recommend that you consult a psychiatrist.\n\n2. A Young Man Intoxicated by Women's Bad Odors\n\nI am a twenty-five-year-old man who feels an extraordinary obsession with the smell of women's bodies. I am unmarried and have a relatively well-paid occupation, so from time to time I entertain myself with geisha, and I also go to cabarets and special drinking and pleasure districts. Yet on such occasions, simply smelling the woman's bodily odor is enough to satisfy me.\n\nOf the odors peculiar to the female body, rather than the so-called pleasant fragrances mixed with hair oil and face powder, I am more often driven to sexual desire by strong smells such as underarm odor.\n\nIn that sense, my favorite female odors are:\n1. The odor of a woman with strong underarm smell.\n2. The odor of a menstruating woman.\n3. The distinctive odor of a woman who has never known a man sexually.\n4. The odor of a woman with a sexual disease.\n5. The odor of every kind of female secretion, although I do not mean excrement.\n\nFrom long experience, when I meet a woman I can supposedly tell merely by her odor that she is menstruating, that she has some gynecological illness, or that she has never known a man.\n\nThus, even when I go out with women, I have sexual relations only with women possessing one of the odors mentioned above. With other women I restrict myself literally to ordinary amusement.\n\nAre there other men like me?\n\n(Tokyo, Okamatsu Shirō)\n\nAnswer:\n\nBodily odor and sexuality are closely related. Musk, which is prized as perfume, is produced by animals such as musk cats and musk deer in connection with attracting the opposite sex during the mating season. A more familiar example is the way dogs and cats in heat go about smelling the hindquarters of animals of the opposite sex. The answer claims that the same connection exists in human beings.\n\nThere are many cases in which the smell of the opposite sex arouses sexual desire. You are certainly not alone. The article claims that this is less common among Japanese, whose bodily odor is comparatively faint, and more common among Westerners, whose bodily odor is stronger. It likewise claims that among Asians it is more common among Indians and Chinese, citing an alleged Indian custom in which lovers exchange sweat-dampened arm bands.\n\nUnderarm odor, too, is considered a bad smell by ordinary people, yet some people become strongly excited by it.\n\nOne woman is said to have confessed that she is ordinarily not aroused by the bodily odor of the opposite sex, but that smelling her lover's underarm odor immediately brings her to orgasm.\n\nThere are even scholars, the answer claims, who say that a person's odor can reveal whether a woman is a virgin, ill, or menstruating.\n\nThe sense of smell, however, differs enormously from person to person, and one's own perception is difficult to communicate to others. One person may describe a smell as resembling rancid butter while another compares it with cheese. The character of a smell is therefore subjective.\n\nIn your case, the answer concludes, you may fairly be called an extreme devotee of bodily odors.\n\n3. A Woman Obsessed with Idols\n\nI am a twenty-three-year-old unmarried woman. I work as a middle-school teacher.\n\nI will never forget it. I was seventeen, in my fourth year of girls' school, during the autumn. We came to Tokyo on a school excursion and visited an art exhibition at the Ueno museum. In the sculpture room I saw a nude male statue, and at that moment I felt toward it a romantic emotion, and, to be frank, even sexual excitement, unlike anything I had ever felt toward a living man.\n\nIt was a life-sized bronze sculpture. The whole body was powerfully built, its muscles swelling prominently, and its face was imposing, almost formidable. Although it was only a statue, its entire surface gleamed darkly, and it seemed to possess the strength to spring into motion and attack at any moment.\n\nI actually had the illusion that the statue had taken me into its arms, and I shuddered involuntarily. It was a pleasant shudder that seemed to numb my entire body. I fell completely in love with the statue.\n\nBefore we departed, when we were allowed some free time, I lied to our supervising teacher and said that I was going to visit relatives. Instead, I went alone to the Ueno museum simply to see the statue once more.\n\nEven after returning home from the trip, I could not forget the nude statue for a long time. Sometimes I would summon its image and enjoy myself alone, and it even appeared in my dreams.\n\nFrom then on I gradually came to love sculptures and Buddhist images resembling that nude figure more than living men.\n\nAfter leaving school and finding employment, merely going around to look at them was no longer enough. I saved money from my small salary and commissioned a sculptor. I explained my own ideas and had him make a sculpture closely resembling the nude statue I had seen at Ueno. I keep it in my room and caress it morning and evening as though it were my lover, or rather, in my own imagination, I feel that the statue is caressing me. It is my greatest pleasure.\n\nAs long as I have this statue, I do not feel the slightest desire for a living man.\n\n(Kyoto, Noriko)\n\nAnswer:\n\nSome degree of attachment to idols or images exists among ordinary people, but your case can be described as complete Pygmalionism, or erotic love of an image. You are an obsessive Pygmalionist.\n\nAccording to the old Greek legend, the sculptor Pygmalion became enamored of a statue of Galatea that he himself had created. The image was eventually given life and became his wife. The term originates in this legend. Generally speaking, the answer says, this form of image-love is more common among men than women.\n\nThe old Benzaiten image at Enoshima was ordinarily kept from public view and was said to be completely nude. There are also so-called bedchamber dolls used by sailors during long voyages to relieve loneliness. These may serve as substitutes for the opposite sex, but they can also be regarded as manifestations of image-love.\n\nMy own view, the respondent writes, is that in your case a certain fear of men may have caused you to avoid real members of the opposite sex and become attached instead to an image. If a living man were to appear before you who possessed the same imposing appearance and magnificent musculature as the statue you saw at the Ueno museum, your obsessive love of statues might perhaps disappear.\n\n4. A Man Obsessed with Women's Legs\n\nI am a man possessed by an intense erotic love of women's legs.\n\nWhenever I look at a woman, my eyes are drawn first not to her face or figure but to her legs. I stare at them in fascination.\n\nThat does not mean I like badly shaped legs of the sort sometimes called daikon legs. They must have beautiful lines. If the legs are beautiful, I do not care whether they are bare or covered by nylon stockings. Whenever I see such legs, I am seized by an irresistible urge to touch them.\n\nEven when I go to strip shows, unlike the other male spectators I pay no attention to breasts or buttocks. I watch legs, legs, legs. Strippers sometimes come down among the audience to satisfy the spectators' desire to touch them, allowing men to hold their hands or touch their breasts. At such moments I have repeatedly found myself touching the dancer's leg instead, sometimes provoking laughter.\n\nReaders who are leg maniacs like me, please write.\n\n(Saitama, Iwamoto Ken)\n\nAnswer:\n\nEveryone knows the story of Kume the Immortal, who saw the white calves of a woman washing clothes, lost his supernatural powers, and fell from the heavens. Few people, however, know that there is truth behind this story. Most assume it is simply an imaginary tale. Such skepticism, the answer says, is one of the bad habits of modern people.\n\nThe story of Kume is said here to be based on a real tradition, although of course it was not literally about an immortal living in heaven but about a religious practitioner cultivating the arts of the immortals. From a high place he saw a woman's white legs and, overcome by desire, lost his composure and fell down before her.\n\nKume is later said to have taken the woman as his wife. If even a practitioner such as Kume could be overcome in this way, how much more easily can those of us ruled by worldly passions be captivated by women's legs. Leg fetishism is said to be one of the most common forms of fetishism.\n\nTry watching men on a train, or those ascending and descending the stairs of a railway platform. You will realize that the eyes of a great many men are fixed not on women's buttocks but on their legs.\n\nThere is nothing particularly troubling about merely enjoying the sight. But once it becomes obsessive, the man may masturbate while imagining women's legs, develop a compulsion to touch them, or even desire to be kicked or stepped on by women's feet.\n\nLeg fetishism, the answer concludes, is therefore very common among men. Women would do well to pay attention to the beauty of their legs.\n\n5. An Elderly Woman with Senile Hypersexuality\n\nI have a female relative who is seventy-six years old. At this age she has begun craving men indiscriminately, constantly bringing men into the little retirement house where she lives alone and becoming the subject of gossip throughout the village.\n\nMost of the men are in their forties or fifties, although apparently there has even been a young man of twenty-three. As one of her relatives I find the situation deeply embarrassing. Why should such desires arise at such an age? And can an elderly woman like this really still engage in sexual relations?\n\nAnswer:\n\nThe old woman is described here as suffering from what the article calls senile hypersexuality, a condition in which sexual desire becomes unusually strong in old age. Sexual desire naturally differs greatly from person to person, and there are people who continue sexual activity beyond eighty, so old-age sexuality by itself is not an illness. But there are degrees, and when someone demands partners night after night, the behavior can be regarded as pathological.\n\nWomen of this type are said to have often matured sexually early in childhood and to have begun menstruation earlier than average. Many people suppose that early menstruation means an early menopause, but the article asserts the opposite, claiming that menopause is often delayed until roughly fifty-five or sixty.\n\nFemale sexual desire, it continues, is not directly determined by menopause, and may remain strong for about ten years afterward. It is therefore said to be surprisingly common for women of sixty-seven or sixty-eight to complain that they are lonely without a man.\n\nThat is the article's answer to the first question, why an elderly woman might continue to desire men's bodies.\n\nAs for whether such a woman can still have sexual relations, the response claims that although genital secretions generally decrease with age, women with this supposed condition may retain considerable lubrication and muscular tension.\n\nAn example is then given of an eighty-two-year-old woman. She had remarried five times after the death of her first husband. Her menstruation ceased at sixty-one, but her sexual appetite allegedly increased afterward. After her fifth husband died, she decided that remaining single gave her greater freedom in choosing sexual partners and therefore lived alone.\n\nAt the age of eighty-two she supposedly picked up several delinquent-looking young men in town. She offered them money, and the men, partly as a joke, agreed to become her partners. When the young men eventually noticed what had happened, the woman had already become cold. They panicked, summoned a doctor, and the police arrived, causing a great commotion.\n\nThe article then gives an even more extreme example, a woman said to have lived beyond one hundred while constantly desiring male partners.\n\nShe had allegedly been notorious in her village for sexual promiscuity since the age of thirteen or fourteen. Because she was an only daughter, adopted husbands were brought into the family, but none remained for long. Some died, others fled, and altogether twenty-seven or twenty-eight adopted husbands supposedly came and went.\n\nHer sexual desire allegedly became even stronger with age, and she took young men from neighboring villages as partners. She called the arrangement \"lesson fees.\"\n\nIn other words, she supposedly taught unmarried young men sexual behavior through practical experience. Because she welcomed virtually any unmarried young man, the article claims that over the course of many years the number of those she instructed may have reached several thousand.\n\nBetween the many adopted husbands and the money she paid as these so-called lesson fees, she was said to have dissipated much of a family fortune accumulated over generations. Even after reaching more than one hundred years of age, when she spent nearly all day in bed and sometimes suffered urinary incontinence, she allegedly still put face powder over her wrinkles and murmured almost deliriously about wanting a man's body, retaining enough spirit to seek out young men.\n\nEditor's Note:\n\nAs the examples above indicate, we welcome correspondence concerning every variety of mania. Please describe your own habit or fixation as precisely as possible. It would also be helpful to include your age and occupation. Send correspondence to the Mania Correspondence section, care of Shunkōsha, addressed to Kōgo Hitoshi.",
        "translator_credit": "KRP",
        "article_summary": "This six-page reader-correspondence feature, beginning on PDF page 129 after an unrelated page 128, presents five purported first-person cases of erotic fixation and follows each with an explanatory response. The cases concern attraction to adolescent girls, arousal by women's bodily odors, erotic attachment to a male statue, fetishistic fascination with women's legs, and intense sexual desire in old age. The feature is historically significant as an example of early-1950s Japanese popular sexology: private confession, fetish taxonomy, folklore, psychiatry, and pseudo-clinical explanation are combined in a magazine format that invites readers to classify and disclose their own desires. The responses repeatedly invoke sadism, fetishism, Pygmalionism, bodily odor, menstruation, menopause, and psychiatry, but many of their biological, racial, and psychological claims are speculative, prejudicial, or obsolete and should be read as period discourse rather than modern medical knowledge.",
        "research_notes": null,
        "translation_notes": "PDF page 128 is not part of \"Mania Correspondence\"; it is the final page of the preceding article, so the substantive article begins on PDF page 129 and ends on PDF page 134. The heading reads まにあ通信, with the vertical subtitle 読者のための秘密ロサン and the name 向後等. The role and reading of 向後等 are not fully secure; it appears to function as the section's named editor or correspondence addressee rather than as a conventional article byline, so author remains null. 解答 is translated as \"Answer.\" サジーズム/サジック are period forms of \"sadism\"/\"sadistic.\" 特飲街 refers to postwar \"special drinking\" districts associated with sexual commerce. わきが/腋臭 means strong underarm odor or osmidrosis. メンス is a period colloquialism from \"menses.\" ピグマリオニズム is Pygmalionism, erotic attachment to an image or statue. 閨人形 literally means \"bedchamber doll.\" The Kume the Immortal passage invokes the traditional story in which Kume loses supernatural power after seeing a woman's exposed lower legs. 色情老耄症 is an obsolete and stigmatizing period expression for supposed hypersexuality in old age. The article's claims about age, sadism, national or racial differences in body odor, virginity detectable by smell, menopause, and sexuality in old age are not reliable modern medical conclusions.\n\nUncertain readings:\n- The vertical subtitle beside the title reads 読者のための秘密ロサン; the final word is visually clear as ロサン but its intended lexical meaning is uncertain.\n- The name 向後等 appears with the feature and in the final correspondence address. Its reading is uncertain, and it may identify the section editor or addressee rather than an author.\n- The first correspondent's signature appears as （北海道　池野釣一）; the personal name reading is uncertain.\n- The first letter refers to 織田芳男 and ウグイス男 as examples of criminals; the exact historical identification of these references is not established from the article itself.\n- The leg-fetish answer contains a faint phrase before 高所 in the Kume the Immortal anecdote; it has been conservatively translated as \"from a high place.\"\n- The sentence in the leg-fetish letter immediately after 「私の眼は顔や姿よりも、まずその脚に注がれます」 contains a slightly unclear printed expression; the translation preserves the clear sense that the writer stares at beautiful legs in fascination.",
        "research_status": "published",
        "translation_status": "approved",
        "translation_updated_at": "2026-08-15T15:19:40+00:00",
        "translation_reviewed_at": "2026-08-15T15:19:40+00:00",
        "translation_reviewed_by": "Zetsu",
        "translation_approved_at": "2026-08-15T15:19:40+00:00",
        "translation_approved_by": "Zetsu",
        "created_at": "2026-08-02T05:38:39+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2026-09-03T18:28:10+00:00"
    }
}