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Fuzoku Kitan · May 1960: Special Issue on Homosexuality and Pleasurable Humiliation

Summary

The May 1960 issue of Fūzoku Kitan presents an unusually concentrated examination of homosexuality alongside the magazine’s customary mixture of sadomasochistic photography, sexual folklore, criminology, fiction, confession, historical miscellany, and erotic visual culture. Its substantial opening section begins with Japanese erotic-print reproductions, photographs of sexually suggestive natural forms, a signed foreign comic illustration, a color fantasy image, and an extended sequence of staged bondage photography. Most of these gravure portfolios are editorial features without printed photographer, model, writer, or director credits. The identifiable opening artists include Suzuki Harunobu for the bathhouse print and Hérouard for “The Swing.” A concluding art portfolio reproduces European paintings, including works identified in captions with Rubens, while leaving the magazine compilation itself uncredited.

The central special feature approaches homosexuality through several competing postwar frameworks. Ōtachi Kinji’s opening survey attempts to classify male and female homosexuality, gender presentation, bisexuality, and sexual behavior using psychological and medical terminology characteristic of the period. Subsequent essays shift between personal testimony, criminal case history, historical anecdote, and sensational reportage. Yuasa Shigeji presents a feminine man’s romantic memoir, while Kido Giichi reconstructs the emotional development of a homosexual youth who committed murder. Takabayashi Shingo examines same-sex relations among Sengoku-period warriors, connecting famous military figures and literary traditions with male-male intimacy. Other contributions treat vernacular sexual language, female same-sex relationships, masochism, and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s private contracts and domestic arrangements.

The issue broadens outward through accounts of ghosts who marry human partners, female-specific tortures, ritual suicide, erotic tattoos, tangled marriages, historical sexual customs, cannibalistic crime, harem cruelty, fetishistic attraction, and nocturnal violence. Fiction and quasi-documentary narratives repeatedly join sexuality to coercion, jealousy, murder, disguise, imprisonment, and punishment. The magazine’s illustrations and photographic sequences translate these motifs into both historical fantasy and contemporary Japanese interiors.

Later sections return to recurring Fūzoku Kitan genres: Meiji-period sexual curiosities, violent crime, razor mutilation, dangerous conversation, sexual autobiography, advertisements for sexological books, short reports, contributor information, and the colophon. Across the issue, medicalized explanation, historical curiosity, lurid crime, erotic fantasy, and staged visual performance coexist without a stable boundary, giving the magazine its characteristic blend of research pretension and sensational entertainment.

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Analysis Notes

The formal printed table of contents appears on PDF viewer page 4. The issue contains a substantial unnumbered opening section on PDF pages 1–28. Suzuki Harunobu is explicitly credited for the right-hand bathhouse print on PDF page 2, and Hérouard is credited for “The Swing” on PDF page 5. The creator credit for the left-hand print on PDF page 2 is present but not sufficiently clear for reliable romanization. The bondage gravure portfolios on PDF pages 8–23 do not print photographer, model, writer, or director credits. The European-art compilation on PDF pages 24–27 is editorially uncredited, although individual artwork captions identify some painters or subjects. The principal numbered text begins with printed page 32 on PDF viewer page 29, producing a consistent offset of three pages for most of the main body. Several leaves show edge wear, staple damage, stains, faint printing, and small tears. The readings Sō Shunzō, Kosen Kyōta, Tsuki Kyōsuke, Hanajima Seiji, and Takashima Shinroku require human confirmation. The final article is interleaved with short reports and publication matter near the end. Source:

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