The Kitan Club: Strange Stories & Curious Tales
Friday, January 19th, 2018
The most iconic of all S&M magazines would have to be The Kitan Club (1947-1975). It was a dark, powerful and often sinister Japanese fetish magazine that combined multinational photography with highly imaginative graphic illustration and fiction. Strong production values and attention to craft has made it a sought after collectable.
There is a phrase in Japan “beauty in suffering”; it’s this phrase that separates the Eastern and Western ideas of BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism). If The Kitan Club appears to be a study of torture, it’s because the terms sadism and masochism weren’t around in Japan until the Western influence of the 1950s. Japanese culture has a strong tradition in this study of torture. And it’s worth keeping in mind that Japanese practices and this magazine were about the release of emotion in this context of pain.
