Database offering cross-sectional access to potentially around 430 popular entertainment / adult magazines published between the 1950s and 1970s.
The easing of restrictions on publishing in Japan after WWII led to an explosion in new popular entertainment magazines. Research on the "kasutori magazines" of the post-war Occupation years has to date mainly been undertaken with materials such as those in the Gordon W. Prange Collection at the University of Maryland, but the absence of institutions collecting / providing open access to publications of this type from the 1950s, when GHQ censorship ended, to the early 1970s, has previously made it difficult to acquire a clear overall picture of the genre. There is no comprehensive collection at any library, or elsewhere, of the 28 magazines contained here, making a survey of any of these titles difficult. Diverse in content, their pages include academic treatises, essays, reader letters and personal ads, encompassing subjects from novels, performing arts and movie information, to same-sex love, cross-dressing, and sado-masochism, as well as a great deal of reporting, maps etc. covering entertainment districts across Japan, "red-line zones" and so on around the time the Prostitution Prevention Law came into force.
Magazines can be viewed by title, number, and date of publication, and also searched by article title, writer, publisher etc., allowing ready access to thousands of articles.
A magazine archive that fills a gap in the historical record, and a database that will open up new horizons in fields from gender and sexuality, to modern history, modern literature, publishing history, and more.