Summary
The December 1947 Kitan Club, identified on the cover and contents page as No. 2 and as an Eccentrics and Abnormal People issue, develops the magazine's early postwar fascination with unconventional sexuality, unusual personalities, erotic customs, medical and sexological observation, and sensational urban life. A formal contents page organizes the magazine around profiles of unusual people, a recurring taxonomy of abnormal sexual desire, sexual folklore, foreign travel and nightlife, first-person testimony, erotic commerce, prostitution, and historical curiosities. The editorial tone oscillates between quasi-scientific explanation, humorous anecdote, sensational reportage, and sympathetic personal narrative.
The issue opens with Yuge Shinobu's Profiles of Eccentrics and Unusual People, an extended portrait of individuals whose behavior, relationships, and sexual lives depart from contemporary norms. A neighboring illustrated feature describes a man obsessed with women's bare feet. The recurring Portraits of People with Abnormal Sexual Desires appears at several points in the issue, treating voyeuristic, masochistic, sadistic, and fetishistic tendencies as distinct categories. The series reflects the period's imported sexological terminology while presenting case histories in an accessible magazine style. Nobuta Haruo's Erotic Men's Amorous Conduct Records shifts toward historical anecdote, using notorious figures from earlier periods as examples of extravagant sexual behavior.
Other articles broaden the geographic and cultural frame. Ukita Tsugio describes the erotic atmosphere of Singapore's side streets, while Mizuhara Junko gives a first-person account of working as a nude model. Sakai Sanjin continues the previous issue's study of genital worship and sexualized folk objects, discussing phallic stones, shrines, ritual symbols, and fertility beliefs. Yabe Bunkichi's investigation of supposedly primitive sexual customs ranges across circumcision, genital modification, ritual practice, and ethnographic material, illustrating how early Kitan Club mixed anthropology, folklore, and sensational sexuality.
The later half turns increasingly toward contemporary urban life. Asakawa Gyōji's Curious Business: The Matchmaking House describes a commercial intermediary for men and women. The Dark Women's Ecology material follows women who have fallen into prostitution or unstable urban livelihoods, while Aoki Tomiji's Tour of Foreign and Unusual Baths compares bathing practices and sexualized bath culture in Japan and abroad. A report on a woman who accumulated a large sum through black-market activity and Nakahara Harumi's Confession of My Male Mistress add further portraits of postwar survival, sexual unconventionality, and marginal relationships.
The closing pages continue the male-mistress confession, add a humorous Edo-period erotic anecdote, and present The Whereabouts of The Carnal Prayer Mat, which discusses the transmission and publication history of the Chinese erotic novel Rouputuan in Japan. Membership notices, manuscript solicitation, editorial remarks, advertisements, and the colophon close the issue. Taken as a whole, the number shows Kitan Club rapidly consolidating an editorial identity based on sexological classification, erotic folklore, urban reportage, fetishism, marginal sexual lives, and the circulation of erotic literature.
Highlights
Profiles of Eccentrics and Unusual People opens the issue with an extended examination of people whose sexual behavior and private lives depart from conventional expectations, establishing the issue's central interest in human variation.
Portraits of People with Abnormal Sexual Desires recurs in several installments, distinguishing voyeuristic, masochistic, sadistic, and fetishistic tendencies through contemporary sexological categories and case narratives.
Erotic Men's Amorous Conduct Records uses historical figures and anecdotes to connect legendary sexual excess with the magazine's broader catalog of unusual desire.
The Singapore feature presents tropical urban space through nightlife, dress, flirtation, hotels, and sexual commerce, reflecting the magazine's fascination with foreign erotic modernity.
Foreign sexual culture
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A Nude Model Tells All offers a first-person account of posing nude, discussing professional modeling, bodily exposure, artistic settings, and the social assumptions surrounding women who model.
The continuation of the study of genital worship examines phallic stones, shrines, ritual symbols, and fertility beliefs, extending Kitan Club's early interest in sexuality as folklore and religious practice.
Exploring the Abnormal Life of Primitive Peoples surveys circumcision, genital modification, ritual sexuality, and ethnographic examples, revealing the magazine's mixture of anthropology and sensational sexual curiosity.
The Dark Women's Ecology and related narratives portray prostitution, economic precarity, and women's survival strategies in the immediate postwar city.
Tour of Foreign and Unusual Baths compares bathhouses and bathing customs across different places, treating communal nudity and bathing as both cultural practice and erotic spectacle.
The Whereabouts of The Carnal Prayer Mat traces the transmission and publication of Rouputuan, connecting Kitan Club's contemporary erotic culture to an older Chinese and Japanese history of erotic literature.
Analysis Notes
The cover identifies the publication as Kitan Club No. 2, and the contents page labels it 変態奇人號 第二號. The colophon gives December 10, 1947 as the printing date and December 15, 1947 as the publication date. PDF page 2 is a formal printed table of contents. Printed page numbering corresponds directly to PDF viewer numbering from page 2 through page 27. Several early-postwar sexological compounds, pen names, and small-type contributor names are difficult to read with complete certainty; provisional romanizations and title readings are identified in the relevant entry notes. The final page contains membership solicitation, manuscript guidelines, editorial remarks, advertisements, and the colophon.