There was a writer who pushed postwar Japanese SM literature out of the corner of a fetish magazine and onto the shelves of mainstream bookstores. Born Matsujiro Kuroiwa in 1931 in Hikone, Shiga Prefecture, his signature work Hana to Hebi (Flower and Snake) appeared in 1962 and was later adapted many times for film and adult video, shaping the lineage of modern kinbaku and SM representation. This is Dan Oniroku.

Dan Oniroku (団鬼六, real name Matsujiro Kuroiwa; 16 September 1931 – 6 May 2011) was a leading postwar Japanese SM novelist, playwright, and stage director. This article covers his life, his period at the fetish magazine Kitan Club, the establishment of the bondage-literature genre exemplified by Hana to Hebi, the film and AV adaptations of his work, and his later involvement in publishing go and shogi magazines.

Life

A native of Hikone, Shiga Prefecture, he graduated from the law faculty of Kansai University and worked as an English teacher and a magazine reporter before beginning his writing career in 1958 with the short story “Kuroi Mon,” submitted to Kitan Club. In 1962 he began serialising Hana to Hebi in the same magazine. This became his signature work and set the direction of postwar SM literature.

From the 1960s into the 1970s he published numerous full-length novels. Not confined to the writer’s study, he was active across stage direction, scriptwriting, and live performance production. From the 1990s he also ran the shogi magazine Shogi Journal, developing a distinctive double-track career in literature and shogi. He died of esophageal cancer on 6 May 2011, at the age of 79.

Literary characteristics

The features of Dan’s SM fiction are the precision of its bondage and SM bodily description; the inversion and reconstruction of the master-servant relationship between perpetrator and victim as a narrative structure; the projection of prewar Japanese aesthetics (traditional arts, the michiyuki lovers’ journey, ukiyo-e composition) onto SM scenes; and a style in which lyricism and violence intersect.

Hana to Hebi takes the kinbaku training of an heiress as its subject while rendering the psychological transformation of the victim’s side through interior description, and it was read as a literary work beyond mere sadistic depiction. It is held to have exerted direct and indirect influence on the narrative structure of later SM literature and AV.

Screen adaptations

Hana to Hebi was first adapted in 1974 as a Nikkatsu Roman Porno film directed by Masaru Konuma and starring Naomi Tani, and was filmed several more times thereafter. In 2004 it was remade by director Takashi Ishii, starring Aya Sugimoto, and developed into a series. Many AV adaptations were also produced, giving the work a foundational position in modern Japanese SM representation.

Screen adaptations of Dan’s work continued across Nikkatsu Roman Porno, pink film, V-cinema, and AV, forming one pillar of the history of Japanese sexual-expression media.

Influence

Dan’s literary influence extends to the direction of the SM authors who followed him; the establishment of bondage masters and bondage as a performing art; the narrative structure of the SM genre in AV; and, through translation abroad, the Western BDSM scene.

As a mediator who expanded postwar Japanese sexual expression from the margins of fetish magazines to mainstream bookstores, cinemas, and home video, his place in literary history is settled.

See also

• SM culture
• Kinbaku
• BDSM
• Adult video