KSB Magazine N° I-24

Nothing ever comes back better

Really? We hope this quotation from “The burning wood” by our longtime contributor Noirot isn’t true at all!

We coming back with this renewed magazine and it will be better, stronger, even more diverse, interesting and impactful.

We went through quite a metamorphosis. Life changed. The environment changed. The scene changed. This sometimes burns… But burning – the very symbol of transformation – is sometimes necessary for renewal, for rebirth.

Metamorphosis! We wanted to make a fundamental change. The reborn magazine is thicker (76 content pages now!), has better, high-quality binding and a cover with a surprise inside… We also print in a slightly higher edition.
We emphasize photography much more than before, with two new sections in addition to the already familiar “Featured Artist”: traditional (Japanese) aesthetics next to a fresh (European) perspective.

We continue to focus on researching the cultural roots of Japanese rope bondage, the movements that influenced it, the persons who moulded it to what it is today. We also keep the inspirations, the illustrations, the fiction and the poetry.

We are very happy that we could again bring together the content – the work, the voices – from a broad, diverse range of contributors, from inside and outside of Japan, from different walks of life – professionals and passionate amateurs (as we are!). We are especially proud and honored that we can start the traditional aesthetics with a contribution from Sugiura Norio Sensei himself. He did one of his long, demanding shoots with Natasha back in 2023, researching “Misery.”

In this magazine, we deal with the transformations we go through – individually and as the scene. We investigate in “The metamorphosis of power” the thin varnish that separates the good man from the monster. We learn about the “Body in rebellion” and take a look at another Japanese cultural institution – Buto – from a fresh perspective. We feature a great contemporary Ero Guro artist and a photographer from Berlin, who uses an old, I would say alchemical, process to create unique specimens of images in a process in which the timing of a Kinbaku session gets attuned with the one of analog photochemistry.

I hope you, dear reader, keep finding delight in it. I wish you wonderful feelings.

Alexander MA