New Styles of Torture

SPECIAL FEATURE: TORMENT NEW STYLES OF TORTURE Written and illustrated by Kita Reiko She screams and struggles to shake off my gift. Yet the caterpillar necklace shines as a purple ring around her throat, dripping blue fluid as it writhes. THE CATERPILLAR NECKLACE I indulge in many sorts of fantasies. When I am drawing, an idea will gradually take flight and lead me toward something outrageous. I cannot always tell whether it truly represents a new form of torment, but I can at least be certain that nothing quite like it existed in the past. We no longer live in an age of grandiose sadism. For those of us who have begun assimilating torment into everyday life, the old theatrical apparatus remains only as nostalgia for a vanished era. A brightly printed necktie replaces the traditional dotted-cloth gag, while vivid blue or orange nylon replaces the pink restraint sash. I do not mean that the old cloth gag or pink sash is bad. Each possesses its own virtues. Yet the ordinary things surrounding our generation can awaken different sensations and furnish us with new forms of torment. In contemporary torment there may no longer be blood-soaked hatred. Instead, it has become a stimulating variation of affection, an act that fills or disguises the emotional distortions of those who employ it. In such surroundings, it is only natural that new styles should emerge. I offer a heartfelt gift to a naked young woman whom I have bound. A woman looks lovelier, I thought, when she wears at least one object connected to daily life rather than some conventional implement of perversion. I therefore decide to present her with a necklace. It is not extravagant. I intend only to cherish her more tenderly. I thread a cotton needle and collect fifteen caterpillars from the pine tree behind the house. I string them together like prayer beads. Pierced through their bodies by the thread, they twist in agony and release blue fluid. The young woman says that she does not want me to place it around her neck. Screaming, she struggles to shake away my gift. Yet the caterpillar necklace glows in a purple ring around her throat, dripping blue fluid while she screams and writhes. THE REFINED ELECTRIC MASSAGER Mr. K uses an electric massager in his games with his wife. It is not one of the modern four-legged electric massage devices sold in department stores. It is an older type, sold more than a decade ago, with a long handle and a rounded head. It resembles a baby's rattle. A metal rod projects sideways from the center, and various rubber attachments can be fitted to its end. There were approximately three forms: one resembling an octopus sucker, one covered with small knobs, and one shaped like a round ball. When switched on, the metal rod vibrates with a humming sound. The attached implement appears to come alive, trembling so rapidly that its motion can scarcely be followed by the eye. Normally it is pressed against different parts of the body and moved slowly to give the muscles a pleasant stimulus and achieve the effects of massage. According to Mr. K, however, when applied to certain places, it acquires an exquisite quality as an instrument of erotic torment. Perhaps it resembles a form of bee torment. The rubber attachment is small enough to pass through a circle made by joining the thumb and index finger. That description may give certain readers an idea of what he means. I asked whether the subtly feminine humming sound coming from a bedroom at night might arouse the suspicions of other family members. He replied: “It would be inconvenient in the middle of the night, but no one worries because it is merely an electric massager. I am more concerned by the sounds my wife makes unconsciously. Of course, simply hearing them makes her seem so adorable that my affection for her doubles.” Once the punishment is over, his wife becomes completely exhausted and sleeps like mud. By daylight, however, she appears vigorous, cheerful, and full of energy. It is an amusing phenomenon. Although it differs somewhat from an electric massager, I once heard of a woman being made to embrace an electric iron. This happened in Okayama in March of this year. Readers of the local papers may remember it. Someone sent me the clipping. It was merely a lovers' quarrel and received only thirteen lines in two columns. A man's mistress had apparently been unfaithful, and her construction-contractor patron pressed a heated iron against her abdomen. The report was brief, but I found it so striking that it has remained in my memory. If he repeatedly forced her to hold the hot iron against her body, however, he would merely prolong her burns and prolong the anticipation of the act. TORMENT STRIPTEASE Following the caterpillar necklace, one might imagine earthworm bracelets, beetle earrings, or a slug belt. These gifts of torment were inspired by young women's fashions. In one detective story, however, a snake is placed inside the heroine's pantaloons. Drawers are ordinarily fastened securely with elastic at both waist and legs, forming something like a sealed bag. What would happen if this construction were exploited in reverse and a snake, or some other creature, were placed inside? The heroine's legs are also bound, and she raises anguished cries. She may desperately wish to remove the single garment containing the snake, yet doing so would expose her body to the lecherous men standing before her. Perhaps this is the psychological subtlety of the torment. A young man tells her that he will remove the snake-filled garment whenever she wishes. After stirring up her shame, however, he pokes her here and there with the end of a slender bamboo rod. As long as she stands perfectly still, the pantaloons remain in place. The slightest movement causes them to descend by an inch or two. They fall rather slowly from the waist, the narrowest part of the torso, toward the hips, its broadest point. Once they pass the hips, however, they slide rapidly down toward the knees. The author devotes seven manuscript pages to the journey from waist to hips, describing it with lingering elegance. After the garment passes the hips, his pen becomes still more inspired. It is astonishing that such a work found its way into print. It may indeed be a masterpiece capable of making an aesthete drool. As readers know, Balkan Krieg contains a similar scene. Two aristocratic young women are sentenced to whipping for resisting an invading army. Ashamed to become naked before the assembled soldiers, one woman asks the commander, “Please allow me to hold my skirt in my mouth.” She believes that although her hands will be suspended from the ceiling as she stands to receive the whip, the skirt held in her teeth will conceal her breasts from the soldiers. The soldiers surrounding the women know from the beginning what will happen. The request merely prolongs their pleasure and expectation. When the whip strikes her back and she cries out, the skirt she had desperately begged to hold falls from her mouth to the floor. THE GIRL WHO LONGED TO BE DISSECTED The wooden-horse torment that Gyōsei-shō named Pony in “Screaming Youth” was introduced in the July issue. What would happen if a purgative were administered by a similar method? Magnesium sulfate is a powerful laxative and also extremely bitter and difficult to swallow. It differs little from making someone drink salt water to provoke urination. It may be especially suitable for a sadist with coprolagnic interests. On the other hand, it is said that most feces-and-urine enthusiasts are masochists. Is that really true? For a period in the past, I had opportunities to observe surgery. Some patients told me that fear clung to them without release until the very moment they entered the operating room. I sometimes experienced a sadistic excitement when watching a young woman with appendicitis curl her bare white back upon the sinister operating table while a male medical worker held her and performed a lumbar puncture. The needle was roughly as long and thick as a tatami needle. There was a particular thrill in seeing it sink into bare skin that had been painted with iodine tincture and wiped clean, beneath the cold light of the shadowless operating lamp. As readers know, patients entering an operating room were naked, depending upon the site of the operation. Apart from the medical purpose, the atmosphere might closely resemble a chamber of torment. The surgical instruments glitter under fluorescent light upon the sterilized cloth covering the instrument table. Under spinal anesthesia, only the lower half of the body loses sensation. Because the patient remains conscious, she cannot avoid hearing the instruments clattering beside her head. For abdominal surgery, part of the body is shaved. This is done for disinfection, yet it sometimes gives the young woman's body a strangely heightened beauty. Before covering the patient with sterile drapes, the doctors test whether the anesthetic has taken effect. Asking, “Does this hurt?” they cut into her white abdomen without the least hesitation, their eyes smiling above deep surgical masks. There is an expression in that profession about a demon's scalpel within a Buddha's heart. One imagines that a person must be capable of enduring another's suffering for years in order to perform such work. At that time I also assisted with a number of autopsies. Nurses generally dislike dissections, but a small, pretty nurse named U would eagerly volunteer whenever an autopsy was announced. She entered the gloomy dissecting room beside the mortuary and assisted with the bloody work, becoming the subject of hospital gossip. Later, this young woman frequently visited the lodgings of a young doctor. A peculiar scandal arose, and she was eventually unable to remain at the hospital. U and the young doctor were lovers. She possessed an abnormal psychology and reportedly pleaded with him to dissect her body however he pleased. After she made this request repeatedly, he began to play along. He stripped U naked, bound her hands and feet, laid her on her back, and rubbed a paper knife or similar object across her soft abdomen, imitating the motion of an incision. She writhed, shook her limbs, and became excited. Thereafter, whenever she had time to leave the hospital dormitory, she visited his rooms to enjoy being “dissected.” Eventually they even carried scalpels, abdominal knives, needle holders, and clamps from the operating room to his lodgings. She reportedly had him draw an actual scalpel over her abdomen while she moaned, acting out the sensation of dissection. Such a powerful desire to be tormented may place her among the standard-bearers of masochism. She must long have wished to be cut apart like one of the corpses. I remember seeing her remove the pale pink intestines from a body, separate the mesentery, immerse them in a basin filled with water, and slit them open while water rushed from the tap. She appeared to enjoy herself enormously. Perhaps at such moments her fantasy leapt toward imagining that she herself had been dissected and that the intestines she washed were her own. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand how she could work so cheerfully, almost humming, amid a stench capable of turning one's stomach. THE SWIMSUIT WITH A HOLE CUT INTO IT A sculptor in Kyoto whom I know well has, in addition to his wife, a woman who might be described as a girlfriend or informal second partner. From time to time he subjects this woman to punishment. He does not torment her out of genuine anger. His conduct belongs more to the category of an artist's eccentricities, although from another perspective it may certainly be regarded as torment. After a lovers' quarrel, an ordinary person might refuse to speak for a while. This man instead takes the woman to the cinema. In winter, however, he allows her to wear nothing but an overcoat and what lies directly beneath it. To anyone watching they appear ordinary, but in reality the removal of a single coat would leave her entirely naked. Her psychological humiliation and physical cold make her dejected, while the artist enjoys a sense of superiority. A woman who calmly obeys such commands must herself possess a considerable masochistic element. Last summer they went to the seaside. After she kept him waiting and irritated him, he succumbed to his familiar impulse and cut a vertical opening about ten centimeters long in a certain part of her swimsuit. He then ordered her to wear it into the sea as punishment. She could not risk sitting carelessly on the sand and reportedly spent nearly all her time immersed in the water. After issuing such commands he becomes extremely cheerful, watching her awkward movements with a broad grin. Even when they visit a restaurant, he may bind her hands behind her back and make her pour beer in that helpless condition. It is astonishing that he does this calmly in a room where waitresses come and go. Yet he always has an escape ready: “It is only a game. Perhaps you would like to try too, miss? I shall double your tip if you can pour it well.” With such a reply, perhaps people do not find the scene quite as strange as one might expect. The End.