A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF JAPANESE BONDAGE – Masami Akita

Published by Bibliotheca Nocturna – 1996 – Japan

16 x 22 cm – 317 pages in b&w – Hard cover in a slip box

The book “Nihon Kinbaku Shashin-shi” (The History of Japanese Bondage Photography) is an attractive and relatively useful reference that charts the course of kinbaku photography from the early post WW II years of Itoh Seiyu and Minomura Kou through to Nureki’s mid 1990’s Kinbiken publications. In fact, a lot of the material in the book comes from the Fuji Kikaku offices that printed the Nureki material and, through Nureki, had access to photos used in Uramado magazine, Minomura Kou’s justifiably famous SM periodical of the early 1960’s. The best part of the volume is it’s large number of photos that show the various styles of “bondage photography” offered in SM magazines over the last half of the 20th century. The commentary, written by Masami Akita with much of it drawn from Nureki’s recollections, is also quite interesting as to some of the major personalities, photographers and publishers of that era (Ueda Seishiro, Minomura Kou, Itoh Chikusui, etc.).