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Uramado · April 1961

Summary

The April 1961 issue of Uramado combines illustrated erotic fiction, bondage photography, sexual and psychological commentary, crime and historical narratives, reader-oriented miscellany, and international reportage. Its formal contents reveal an editorial design that alternates between explicitly sadomasochistic material and the magazine's broader interest in taboo sexuality, unusual behavior, popular psychology, crime, and sensational cultural subjects. The opening fiction, The Torture-Device Maker, is heavily illustrated and follows an elderly craftsman obsessed with constructing devices for restraint and punishment. It is interrupted by other features and resumes later, giving the early portion of the issue a deliberately serialized rhythm within a single number.

The visual center of the opening section is Hanging Torment, photographed by Yoshida Hisashi, a stark black-and-white sequence in which a nude woman's wrists are secured overhead. The Devil's Lips follows as an illustrated first-person masochistic narrative, while The Cursed Breasts turns to a historical crime tale involving a woman subjected to public restraint and punishment. Kuroda Shirō's Temptation to Masochism then moves into popular psychological and cultural commentary, discussing cruelty, domination, social hierarchy, sexual behavior, and examples drawn from contemporary life and film. Subsequent fiction and essays range from Toraji Should Be Bound and Possessed by Sound to Akashi Shioko's historical memorandum and Nagai Takujirō's Hungry Eyes Shine on the Stairs.

The middle of the issue again emphasizes visual eroticism. The Rough Rope and Black Hair Composition is an extended Yoshida Hisashi photographic study of a woman bound with coarse rope, followed by the illustrated tale The Binding Curse of Princess Teru and the feature Shōji and Woman. The Strange Island of Female Guardians develops a longer exotic or fantastic narrative before the magazine shifts into the Uramado Town miscellany section, mixing brief observations, cultural notes, sexual anecdotes, and topical commentary. Shima Fuji's Black-Hair Confession continues the autobiographical and erotic-confessional mode.

The later pages broaden considerably. The World Beneath the Skirt, installment three, considers voyeuristic interest in women's clothing and bodies. Uramado Miscellany and New Film Introductions provide cultural notices before Moriwaki Hikaru's The Underground Organization of Neo-Nazism turns toward international political extremism and postwar clandestine organizations. A roundtable remembering the artist Seiu provides an important historical and artistic reflection on erotic illustration and bondage culture. The substantial final narrative, The Prayer of the Female Slave, returns to domination and submission, after which a photographic collection and a selection of illustrations from earlier Uramado issues close the volume. Together these sections show Uramado operating simultaneously as an SM magazine, erotic literary journal, visual archive, popular-sexology forum, and eclectic magazine of abnormal or marginal culture.

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