Kasutori magazines were cheap pulp periodicals that flooded postwar Japan, printed on poor paper and symbolising the media history and sexual-expression history of the early postwar years.

Kasutori zasshi were popular magazines issued in great number in Japan from around 1946 into the early 1950s. Printed on coarse recycled paper, with a sensational woman’s image on the cover, they centred on sex, the grotesque, crime, erotic fiction, and celebrity gossip. Known as an emblem of the publishing culture of the period, they form the starting point of the postwar liberation and popularisation of sexual expression and are a subject of media and social history.

Overview

Kasutori magazines arose against a mix of factors: the liberalisation of publishing immediately after the defeat, paper shortage, occupation censorship, and a public hunger for entertainment after wartime repression. Priced cheaply at 5 to 30 yen, they were sold on the street, at station kiosks, and from stalls. Most were issued by small publishers, and most folded after a few issues. Representative titles include Ryoki (founded 1946), Riberaru (1946), Kitan Club (1947, later specialising in SM), Shinso (1946), and Fufu Seikatsu (1949). These differed greatly in subject, editorial line, and lifespan, a diversity hard to treat as one.

Etymology

The name has several proposed origins. The leading one derives it from kasutori shochu, the rough distilled liquor of the black market, by a shared point: “drink three measures and you collapse” punning on “put out three issues and you collapse.” That most kasutori magazines folded before a third issue made the name a fitting jibe at the form’s low durability and a symbol of the improvised, ephemeral character of early-postwar publishing.

Historical background

After the defeat of August 1945, the publishing industry changed sharply. Wartime controls were partly relaxed under GHQ policy while a new occupation censorship (the Press Code) was imposed. GHQ strictly policed anti-occupation and anti-democratic speech but took a relatively tolerant stance toward sexual and entertainment publishing. The wartime extreme of shortage and control produced a strong public demand for entertainment, and the lifting of paper controls and the supply of recycled paper created the material conditions for cheap popular magazines. Under these combined conditions, kasutori magazines arose in volume.

Ryoki sold over 100,000 copies of its 1946 launch issue, and its second issue, carrying Kitagawa Chiyozo’s “Wife of Colonel H,” was banned for distribution of an obscene text, drawing attention as the first postwar literary censorship case. Kitan Club (founded 1947) began as a general popular magazine but specialised from the 1950s in bondage and SM, surviving until 1975 and holding an important place in the history of Japanese SM culture.

Decline

Kasutori magazines declined from the early 1950s as paper supply improved, publishers consolidated, the end of occupation censorship (1952) raised the quality of general publications, and the start of television broadcasting (1953) diversified entertainment media. The end of licensed prostitution under the Anti-Prostitution Law (enacted 1956, fully effective 1958) changed the social setting of the sex industry and relativised the relevance of magazines centred on it.

Content and form

The typical subject matter fell into “erotic, grotesque, nonsense”: sex and sexual curiosities, crime and the cruel and weird, and celebrity gossip and parody. These carried on the same-named genre of 1930s urban culture while adding subjects peculiar to the postwar confusion (occupation soldiers, street prostitutes, the black market, demobilised men). In the sexual field, the red-line districts, street prostitutes, and relations with occupation soldiers were frequent subjects, of value as social record but often lacking regard for the human rights of those depicted, requiring a critical view in present-day history.

Formally, the magazines used coarse recycled paper, strong-coloured covers, exaggerated headlines, erotic-grotesque illustration, and fragmentary, short-run article construction, typically running 50 to 80 pages with a mix of fiction, articles, reader contributions, and photo pages. The cover and illustration artists included figures in the lineage running on to later graphic novels and erotic manga, placing the form at the start of postwar Japanese visual sexual culture.

Cultural-historical significance

Kasutori magazines, as the starting point of postwar Japanese sexual-expression media, form a prehistory of the later erotic manga, pink film, and AV lineage, while also holding continuity with prewar shunga and Taisho erotic-grotesque culture. As a primary source on the popular culture and psychology of the postwar confusion, they hold an important place in present-day historical research, even as their objectifying, sensationalised treatment of sexual exploitation in occupied Japan requires critical reading. Collections have been organised at the National Diet Library, Meiji University, and other institutions, with digitisation and research access advancing.

See also

• History of AV
• Pink film
• Erotic manga
• Shunga
• Cabaret culture
• Erotic fiction