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Kitan Club · Kitan Club, May 1956: Masterpiece Fiction Special Issue

Summary

The May 1956 issue of Kitan Club identifies itself as the fourth issue following the magazine’s revival and presents itself as a special issue devoted to notable fiction. Its editorial mixture is broader than that label suggests: extended serialized and stand-alone fiction appears alongside prison reportage, autobiographical confessions, fetish studies, reader testimony, photographic portfolios, imported American imagery, and reports on staged performances. The front matter establishes the issue’s visual identity through Takashi Shima’s theatrical bondage illustration, an editorial photographic portfolio titled “Expressions of the Models,” images reproduced from the American magazine Bizarre, and Shōhei Miyazaki’s dramatic illustration of a stewardess tied to an aircraft.

The main body opens with the second installment of Rōko Matsui’s “The Red Flowers Are Crying,” a domestic melodrama of marriage, jealousy, betrayal, and violent possession. Ichirō Haruta’s “Ten Months Imprisoned” then shifts into documentary prose, describing prison hospitals, punishment, isolation cells, medical care, correspondence, and the experiences of prisoners and their families. Other early pieces move between sensual confession and darker domination narratives: “Taste of the Devil” recounts obsessive sensory and bodily experiences, while “Complete Submission” portrays paternal cruelty, punishment, and a child’s conflicted attachment. Seiryū Kishimoto’s “The Chilling House of Strange Tales” provides a substantial account of prewar and postwar sideshow performances, including suspension, staged torment, haunted-house effects, and public spectacles involving restrained women.

The middle portion is especially varied. Reisaku Karii’s “Body-Odor Diary” uses bodily scent as the organizing principle of an erotic memoir. Shōhaku Aizawa’s “The Palace of King Jie” presents a modern allegory of power modeled on a legendary tyrant’s court, escalating through scenes of humiliation and coercion. “A Late Awakening,” “The Gray Notebook,” and “Crucifixion in a Box” continue the issue’s interest in awakening desire, memory, captivity, and abnormal experience. A one-page “Letter from a Female Sadist to Her Slave” leads into first-person experiential essays on self-injury, unusual ascetic practice, fetishism, bladder control, and physiological compulsion.

The later fiction includes “Crimson Demon Palace,” “Older Sister and Younger Brother,” “Longing for the Shadow Flower,” and “The Beauty of Bygone Days,” followed by Yasuko Segawa’s long women’s grotesque tale “Sad Wind over the Dusty Plain.” The final literary section contains shorter editorial selections, an abnormal monologue, and “The Woman Who Laughs under Torture.” Reader correspondence and editorial notices occupy the closing pages, interwoven with classified notices, club information, photographic offers, and publication records. Taken as a whole, the issue combines literary melodrama, documentary testimony, bodily confession, fetish taxonomy, historical spectacle, and participatory reader culture, illustrating Kitan Club’s role as both an erotic magazine and a meeting place for a dispersed community of specialized interests.

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