Translators Wanted for NawaPedia
NawaPedia is an online encyclopedia of Japanese bondage and related kinky activities. It is the English sister site of SMpedia which is in Japanese. The founder of SMpedia also set up NawaPedia in order to get this hard-to-come-by information out to a much larger audience.
I took it upon myself to help out with this project so I set up a Group at FetLife called NawaPedia Fan. There is a lot of great information accumulating at SMpedia and the goal is to get as much of it as possible translated into English for NawaPedia. And so we are putting out the call for volunteer translators -- people who are able to read and write Japanese who would be willing to lend a hand with this project. If you're literate in Nihongo and think you might be able to help, contact me by leaving a private comment here at the blog. Alternatively, you can go to NawaPedia and use the email contact there or get in touch at the NawaPedia Fan Group on FetLife.
Someone asked me what the difference was between NawaPedia and that other famous online encyclopedia. The main difference is that NawaPedia will be much more comprehensive. While you will find information on the really big names of Japanese SM at the other place, nothing at all can be found there on lesser-known, yet important, figures. In addition, all the information is in one place at NawaPedia and very easy to find.
I was looking around for the Japanese DVD of the movie SM Hunter, which I wrote about recently. I didn't come across a DVD but did find this old VHS tape. I thought you might be interested to see what it looked like when it came out in Japan.
Also, as I was surfing the net, I came across a few interesting sites I thought you might like to take a look at. SM Hunter stars Saotome Hiromi and you can find some old photos here of Ms. Saotome and even Osada Eikichi, the original live show SM performer in Japan.
Site 1
Site 2
Site 3
Site 4
Osada Eikichi at ACB Hall and Atami Ryokan
I recently was privileged to see a video with Osada Eikichi which came out in 1982. It was the first time I had actually seen him in action and it was a sight to behold. I think this video is very rare. Part of it was shot at a venue in Shinjuku called ACB Hall and the rest was shot at the Atami Ryokan in Ueno (now a parking lot). I don't know anything about the company that put out this video. The opening just gives the company name as Bordeaux, and that's it.
You may or may not have heard of a nawashi by the name of Nagaike Takeshi. It seems like he's done quite a few things but, for whatever reason, just isn't that well known.
I first saw him in an old video produced by B&D Enterprises out of Southern California. It appears that he made at least two videos for them that came out around 13 years ago.
I didn't know who he was at the time and had pretty much forgotten all about him by the time I got to Japan. Then, one day a few years ago, I found a couple of his how-to videos at my local rental shop and decided to give them a try. I'm not a big fan of how-to videos -- I mainly wanted to see if it was the same guy. It was.
Since then, thanks to a thread at the Kinbaku Group at FetLife, I learned that Nagaike had set up some sort of bondage place in San Francisco. His company is called AMS which apparently started out as the Adult Mate Society but then changed to The Association of Masochism and Sadism. I don't know if the place in San Francisco is still open but his organization in Tokyo is still around. His website also uses the name The Amsterdam SM Circle.
I wasn't able to find any of his Japanese videos online but below is a photo of a couple of his book projects.
The American videos list the director as Ernest Greene. As I recall, Ernest Greene was based in San Francisco so maybe he was Nagaike's American contact. All in all, another interesting avenue that invites further exploration.
This brings me back to the mission of NawaPedia. It's going to be a real challenge getting this information translated from Japanese to English, but if we can do it, a lot of invaluable information will become easily available that simply wasn't available before. SMpedia already has an entry on Nagaike Takeshi. NawaPedia is blank.
And I doubt you'll ever find an entry on Nagaike Takeshi on that other online encyclopedia.
KabukiJoe
Thanks to rida for finding the link to Saotome Hiromi's filmography.
