Sniper, easily Japanese most famous S&M magazine, is folding after the November 2008 number. Here’s a short tidbit of history about Sniper and S&M magazines in general by Nuit De Tokyo (I could not have said this any better):

S&M Sniper magazine was started in 1979 and was the sole survivor in its style of several magazines including, among others, SM spirits, SM spiral, SM select, SM fan, SM collector, SM frontier, SM king, Punch SM (the so called pre-internet golden wave). They represented the second wave (i.e. with color photos) of magazines following the first wave (started in the 1950s) which folded around 1978 (Kitan Club, Fuzoku Kitan, Uramado).

It is hard to say why SM sniper survived longer although it did has special content in the form of photos by star photographer Araki (whom I believe is a part owner of the magazine but I could be wrong) and also serialized novels by Yuki Kaoru whom in his prime is clearly in my view among the top 3 best ever Japanese SM writers.

Nureki Sensei was the main publisher of the first wave and eventually discovered Dan Oniroku who as a writer, if not a rope expert, straddled the 2 waves, first publishing in Kitan club then in SM fan (which makes the SM fan old issues rather thought after).

Are surviving the internet (rather in Japan the mobile phone version of it) publications which are very specialized, such as Mania Club which offers SM with some rope but always with the inclusion of a scatological element (Dan Oniroku was still publishing in it last year). Mania Club has a number of sister publications looking at the anal side of things in its numerous variants (diapers, shitting in her pants etc…) are also surviving magazines which concentrate on the serialized novel aspect: SM Mania, SM Novels but their readership is probably limited.

There are also a number of SM publications ( a sort of third wave) which are essentially DVD digests of the recent SM videos (probably not really of interest for people on the rope side) which explains why SM Sniper felt compelled to include a DVD (as did SM mania) in some recent issues as these magazines were taking away some of the “looking for an easy wank” salary man clients.

 

RopeMarks