Edit Issue Analysis

Fuzoku Kitan · August 1960: Special Issue on the Fantastic, Supernatural, Strange, and Cruel

Summary

The August 1960 issue of Fūzoku Kitan combines two dominant editorial programs: a special feature on lesbian life and techniques of same-sex love, and a broad collection of supernatural, grotesque, sadomasochistic, and sensational narratives. The cover announces both the lesbian feature and a collection of frightening stories about ghosts and uncanny transformations. As in other issues of the magazine, purported sexology, personal testimony, historical anecdote, fiction, crime reporting, and staged erotic imagery occupy the same editorial terrain.

The opening section is visually substantial. It begins with reproductions of Japanese erotic prints, a formal table of contents, Western erotic imagery, and an extended gravure sequence of women bound in domestic interiors. The photographs explore standing restraint, soft-rope bondage, bamboo-frame torment, kimono and bathrobe bondage, wrists raised overhead, compact doubled positions, and poses framed as pleasurable suffering. These portfolios are followed by four illustrated bondage fantasies drawn by Ejima Hidehisa, whose scenes transpose restraint into ruined huts, medical rooms, industrial spaces, and torture settings. No photographer or model credits are evident for the gravure sequence.

The principal textual feature opens with Ōtachi Kinji’s survey of lesbian practices and social types, discussing relationships between masculine and feminine partners, sexuality among married women, prostitution, prisons, schools, and different methods of physical intimacy. Kabiya Kazuhiko follows with a more narrative account of lesbian courtship and technique in Japan and abroad. Pierre Robis contributes a dialogue-based piece, while Kawashima Hayato examines cultural fantasies surrounding Lesbos and lesbian seduction. These articles mix observation, hearsay, translated material, case history, and period sexological terminology.

The later surviving sections shift decisively toward death, haunting, possession, crime, and historical curiosity. Nanbara Kiyoshi’s “Sunflower” is a macabre tale of murder, decomposition, and flowers nourished by a corpse. A Meiji-period miscellany collects sensational historical reports. Other contributions describe an acquired fascination with women’s underwear, sexuality and supernatural transformation, a young woman haunted by a dead spirit, a man summoned by the ghost of a murdered woman, regional tales of monsters and animal spirits, revenge from beyond the grave, dressing-room sexual anecdotes, pearl-diving women, and the notorious mutilation of a boy’s buttocks. The issue concludes with reader correspondence, brief editorial matter, publication notices, advertisements, and the colophon.

Themes

Enter one theme per line, or separate themes with commas.

Highlights

Add, remove, reorder, or correct highlights.

Highlight 1

Text

PDF pages

Category

Highlight 2

Text

PDF pages

Category

Highlight 3

Text

PDF pages

Category

Highlight 4

Text

PDF pages

Category

Highlight 5

Text

PDF pages

Category

Highlight 6

Text

PDF pages

Category

Highlight 7

Text

PDF pages

Category

Highlight 8

Text

PDF pages

Category

Highlight 9

Text

PDF pages

Category

Highlight 10

Text

PDF pages

Category

Analysis Notes

The formal printed table of contents appears on PDF viewer page 4. The scan contains a substantial unnumbered opening section on PDF pages 1–31. The main text begins with printed page 40 on PDF page 32, creating an eight-page offset through printed page 57. The next surviving page is printed page 82 on PDF page 50, indicating that printed pages 58–81 are absent from the attached issue. The formal contents page lists material assigned to this missing interval, including sadism and masochism correspondence and related first-person features, but no PDF viewer pages exist for those contributions, so they are not assigned invented page ranges in toc_entries. From printed page 82 onward, the normal offset is thirty-two pages. The gravure portfolios on PDF pages 6–26 do not show reliable photographer, model, or director credits. Ejima Hidehisa is explicitly credited for the illustrations on PDF pages 27–30. Several personal names, including Shinkai Yonetarō, Shinoda Fujimi, Umyōin Itta, and Kashihara Shōzō, require human confirmation of their romanized readings. The cover and several interior leaves show tears, abrasions, edge loss, staining, and binding damage, but the principal surviving titles and article sequence remain legible.

Cancel