Conversation about the first experience of "underlay of a four-and-a-half-tatami-mat fusuma sliding door" - Nagai Kafu and his postwar youth (1965-1970s)

Conversation about the first experience of "underlay of a four-and-a-half-tatami-mat fusuma sliding door" - Nagai Kafu and his postwar youth (1965-1970s)

In the chaotic period immediately after the war, knowledge about sex was rarely discussed at school or at home, and the existence of the opposite sex was a mystery to the boys of the old junior high school system. They relied on obscene books and rumors among their peers, and a novel by an unknown author, "Yonmahan fusuma no shimabari," became a special part of their lives. When Gozo, the son of an innkeeper, brought in a worn paperback book, his fellow students would read it in a corner of the classroom as if competing for it. Struggling with the literary style, the boys were shocked by the graphic descriptions that exceeded anything they had ever heard of obscene stories, and they earnestly tried to interpret them. When confronted with the sentence, "Teasing the vital point with your thumb," the boys debated how to use their fingers, and Gozo surprised them by explaining, "There is a small one attached to it. Such innocent and earnest exchanges were the epitome of youth des
perately trying to construct reality through the printed word.

When it was circulated again after the war, it sparked a fierce debate over whether it was "literature or obscenity," which eventually led to the "Yonjohan Fusuma no Shimobari" trial. The court case involved comparisons with works by Nagai Kafu and Tanizaki Junichiro, and the boundary between sexual expression and literariness was questioned. Kafu was a writer who documented Edo's amorous literature and brothel culture, and attempted to sublimate sex into literature despite frequent bans. This work was read in the same vein, and was regarded as an existence that oscillated between obscenity and literature. In the student movement and social changes of the 1960s, the debate over sexual liberation became a major theme of the era, and the boys' "first experience with Harumoto" was not just a memory, but also an event that symbolized the conflict over the sexual norms and freedom of expression in postwar society.