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Fuzoku Kitan · January 1961: Special Issue on Sodomy and Lesbianism

Summary

The January 1961 issue of Fuzoku Kitan is built around a major special feature titled Sodomy and Lesbianism, but its editorial range extends well beyond homosexuality. The issue opens with Western erotic and punishment illustrations, followed by a formal contents spread and a long visual sequence devoted to bondage, restraint, fetish clothing, sadistic tableaux, and staged humiliation. The monochrome gravure material presents women in kimono and underwear bound in domestic interiors, with recurring motifs of suspension, blindfolding, breast bondage, cruciform restraint, inversion, floor bondage, chains, beds, and other positional variations. This is followed by a more playful two-person domination portfolio and a Leather Fetishism sequence emphasizing boots, gloves, leather garments, and female authority. A group of full-page illustrations develops related fantasies involving suspension from buildings, snow punishment, candles, chains, and railway tracks.

The principal prose feature begins with Okumura Sekio's On Urning, an essay addressing homosexuality, sexual desire, pederasty, and the terminology surrounding same-sex behavior. Shishimura Yutaka's Beauty Beauty then shifts into lesbian-themed fiction. Other contributions approach same-sex sexuality from biographical, criminological, and cultural directions: The Season of Rime Ice by Arikawa Masako, The Entire Art of Love by Kabiya Kazuhiko, Famous Sodomites, and Portraits of Famous Lesbians. These pieces mix literary narrative with popular sexology, celebrity biography, sensationalism, and historical anecdote, illustrating the magazine's characteristic refusal to maintain a firm boundary between sexual research and entertainment.

The later issue moves away from the central homosexual theme toward a broader catalogue of fetish, masochistic, and sadistic interests. The novella The Flower Rocking Horse is followed by shorter pieces on unusual erotic behavior, earrings as fetish objects, bodily practices, and erotic curiosities. The recurring Masochist's Letters section includes The Shame of a Woman Being Tormented and other essays examining humiliation, demonstrative sadism, female bodily sensation, and memories of mistreating women. Shinoda Fujimi's Crabs Crawling on a Woman's Skin transforms an unusual tactile fantasy into an extended erotic essay.

The substantial closing fiction, The Woman of the Etsugyaku Club by Aoyama Miekichi, returns the issue to organized erotic cruelty and club culture. It is followed by Reader Salon, whose letters and editorial responses show that the magazine functioned as a participatory sexual subculture as well as a venue for fiction and illustration. Final pages include editorial notices, publication information, and advertisements for related erotic and abnormal-culture publications. Taken as a whole, the issue combines kinbaku photography, fetish fashion, homosexuality, lesbianism, sadomasochistic fantasy, sexual folklore, correspondence, fiction, and popular sexological commentary in a deliberately heterogeneous editorial package.

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Analysis Notes

The formal contents page is PDF page 4. The issue has discontinuous printed pagination. In the principal special feature, printed page 51 corresponds to PDF page 39 and printed page 88 corresponds to PDF page 76. The next surviving page, PDF page 77, is printed page 108, indicating that printed pages 89–107 are absent. A second discontinuity occurs after the material around printed page 149: the next major surviving article begins on printed page 157, so a further block of printed pages is absent. Consequently, several items named in the printed contents are not represented in the surviving PDF and have not been assigned artificial PDF ranges. The most conspicuous omitted item is the contents-listed feature on tattooing beginning around printed page 150. The closing pages after Reader Salon contain pictorial publication notices, advertisements, editorial information, and publication data. Contributor names are romanized from the printed Japanese; several pen names and uncommon personal names appear without furigana, so their exact author-specific readings may require authority-file confirmation.

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