A favorite of Mishima, Terayama, and Shibusawa
In the legendary magazine
There was a lucky ear.

I never thought I would be introducing the work of a Showa-era eroticist in Fragile Books. Well, I hope you will take this as a blessing from my good ears and listen to it at your leisure.

I found a pair of white petal-like ears folded demurely in the middle of this book. It was right at the top of the page of Yoshino Mayumi's "New Bride Training Method," which follows Dan Oniroku's serial novel "Flowers and Snakes." Although the lucky ears were an unintentional machine error, the coincidence of which book and which page they appeared on and how they appeared stimulates our imagination.

First published in 1947, Kitan Club is a legendary SM magazine that continued for 29 years, despite being banned many times, until it ceased publication in 1975. It was also the magazine that first published some of the most famous SM novels that even I know, such as Dan Oniroku's Flower and Snake and Numa Shozo's Yapoo the Livestock Man. Loyal readers included Mizoguchi Kenji, Mishima Yukio, Terayama Shuji, and Shibusawa Tatsuhiko, and the magazine would solicit vivid submissions from the general public and publish them. Nosaka Akiyuki is said to have submitted his own stories using the pen name "Toyama Kazuhiko."

It was founded in the postwar period of chaos in Osaka by Yoshida Minoru, a reporter for the local newspaper Senshu Nippo. It was a time of scarcity and lack of quality paper, so it is said that the magazine was founded with a business sense or a frivolous attitude, thinking, "If we have paper, we can print something and sell it to make a profit." The late 1940s was a boom for rag magazines, and many popular magazines dealing with erotic, grotesque, and nonsensical content were born. It started as a "rag magazine," named after the illegal "rag shochu" that would "go to bankruptcy after 3 go (issues)," and it is strange that it managed to survive for nearly 30 years despite being targeted by the authorities and sometimes even being imprisoned, and the policies, skills, and coordination of the founder and publisher Yoshida Minoru were extraordinary.

Kiku (nickname for Kitan Club) is known as a magazine for pervert enthusiasts, focusing on "blame" and "bondage." It attracted enthusiastic readers from all over Japan by meticulously exploring peripheral sexualities such as sadism, masochism, and fetishism. As early as the late 1940s, it also featured articles on "female sumo" and "female professional wrestling," which were popular among some fundoshi enthusiasts, as well as "male prostitutes" and "male concubines."

It was in the early 1950s that the magazine began to steer towards the SM direction that it is known for, and finally in 1952 it began its SM line with "Special Issue on War and Sexual Desire" and "Confessions of Perversion", and the following year "Beautiful Bondage". The man who drove this was Suma Toshiyuki, who was called in by Yoshida Minoru to join the editorial department. Suma, who also served as editor-in-chief from 1951 to 1953, was an artist influenced by Komura Setsutei and Ito Seiu, and later became a master known throughout the SM world, tying up women as a bondage artist, writing SM novels, and taking SM photographs. He also produced many works under the pen names of Minomura Akira and Kita Reiko.

The circumstances surrounding this are detailed in Nureki Chimuo's "The Artists of 'Kitan Club'" and "Kitan Club and its Surroundings," both published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha. Incidentally, Nureki Chimuo was the pen name of Iida Toyoichi, who was an avid contributor to Kitan Club. Iida was also an editor, and a major figure in the SM world who founded and served as editor-in-chief of the successor magazines to Kitan Club, "Uramado" and "Suspense Magazine."

What makes Kitan Club so interesting, however, is its editorial policy of "listening" to the eccentric tastes of a minority. By turning the "anonymous (pen name) posts" sent in by readers into popular content, the magazine keeps the monthly cycle going, fostering a sense of club where readers can face sexual doubts that they are afraid to ask others about, such as "Are my desires strange?" or "Is this a crime?", and it has become a source of comfort for both contributors and non-contributor readers. This cycle is very well-established. In one issue, there was a post that read, "I get excited when I tie up women, but I don't want to hurt them. I think it's more of a sign of trust," and in another issue, an anonymous man's confession was published that "On the contrary, I feel relieved when I'm dominated by a woman." For the abnormal minority, Kitan Club was a unique bulletin board where they could confirm the median of their unfathomable feelings.

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"Kitan Club June Issue"

"table of contents"

A word on the front page: "The Curved Speech"/Shigeru Ashida
Thoughts on the married woman, Kuno Shinobu
"Gag Situations" in Historical Dramas/Nohei Naruyama
The Phantom Play "One Photo"/Tadao Chigusa
Confession: "Sadistic awakening?" / Akira Arikawa
M's Garden in a Sloping Jar (2)/Masago Jyushirou
Renmin Novel "Great Eruption" <21st>/Aoni Chiba
Gomuhism Series Kyoko's Suffering Chronicles/Toshio Sugawara
Japanese Harakiri: The Blue Eyes of Fear/Hiromichi Nakayasu
Scenario "Strange Tale: The 300 Million Yen Incident"/Furyu Yakuza
The Literature of Disgrace "Portrait of Mr. Masochist M" and KK Magazine/Shinjuku Townspeople
Impressions after reading "A Playground in the Mountains"/Yoshio Senbe
Three-part novel “The Vixen” (Part 2)/Toho Mitsutani
Daughter Sumo Story: Flower Girls Tomi (20)/Kota the Fighter
Masohisumu Temporary Cataract (3) "Catheter"/Ichiro Izumi
SM Camera Hunt <Keiko Ito> "Escape from loneliness"/Takashi Tsujimura
Confession: Is "Enema" the last party?/Masahiro Okawa
Confession novel "The Journey of Abuse" (2)/Michiko Yuri
Binding Essays: Big Fish/Yumeji Hayaki
My Life Story "M's Journey"/Shinichi Namiki
Confession "Breast Tattoo"/Goro Izumi
Serial novel "Flowers and Snakes" (continuation, Part 63)/Dan Oniroku
To Goro Yamamoto: The Disarray of the Hem/Takashi Maki
The Pitfalls of Youth (7) "How to Raise a New Bride"/Mayumi Yoshino
Camera Report: Binding a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Beauty/Tetsuzo Tsukamoto
Random thoughts of "S・M・P"/Tsuyoshi Sanjo
Original work "Lesbienne"/Takeshi Hayashi
The Second Youth "May Issue Miscellaneous Thoughts"/Sokichi Matsuyama
Essays on SM in Boys' Manga/Kouji Yumeno
The Gentleman's Behavior: M-Faction Friendships (6)/Oniyama Kensaku
Reader's News/Editor's Selection