Nakagawa Ayako 中川彩子

Nakagawa Ayako (中川彩子) was the name the Japanese painter Fujino Kazutomo (藤野一友) used for illustrations in SM magazines. Nawapedia, which reads the name as Ayako, describes Nakagawa as the surrealist artist Fujino, who also made SM illustrations for a number of SM magazines, and gives the dates of birth and death as October 12, 1928 and October 11, 1980. The Kawade Shobō Shinsha author note and the Fukuoka Art Museum also give the years 1928 and 1980.

Fujino Kazutomo

Under the Fujino name the artist was a painter of detailed fantastic pictures. The Fukuoka Art Museum, which held a Fujino exhibition in 1982 and owns many works and papers, says Fujino was active from the 1950s mainly in the Nika association, drew on myth, classical Western painting and surrealism, and also worked in stage direction and design, poetry and fiction, book design, illustration and film. The museum notes that Fujino’s pictures went on appearing on the covers of science-fiction novels after the artist’s death. Kawade Shobō Shinsha lists among the works the painting Chūshōteki na Kago (抽象的な籠), the production of the film Tabeta Hito, and cover art and stage design for works by Mishima Yukio, and its book description calls Fujino a friend of Mishima and of Shibusawa Tatsuhiko. The Fukuoka Art Museum announced a two-person exhibition of Fujino and collage artist Okanoue Toshiko for 2022–2023, describing it as the first Fujino retrospective there in forty years; Kawade published its official catalog in 2022.

The SM illustrations

Nawapedia dates the debut of the Nakagawa name to the magazine Fūzoku Sōshi in 1953, where an October 1953 picture feature appeared, and its gallery shows Nakagawa illustrations in Uramado in 1962 and 1963, in Gahō Fūzoku Kitan in 1960 and in SM Fan in 1973 and 1975. It also lists the 1970 Rope and Woman picture collection from Misaki Shobō. Nawapedia notes that some accounts say Nakagawa also wrote stories for Uramado, but that the accounts contradict each other.

The writer Tadao Harada, in a 2010 book review reposted on note in 2020, explains the split between the names: Fujino signed the art paintings, while the work for Fūzoku Sōshi and Uramado carried the Nakagawa name, and the pictures made for those magazines show bound or restrained figures. Harada lists Nakagawa illustrations in Uramado from June 1961 to January 1964, including picture stories, and identifies Harukawa Mitsuhiko as a pen name Fujino used for writing in the same magazine.

Tenshi no Kinbaku

In August 2002 Kawade Shobō Shinsha published 天使の緊縛 (Tenshi no Kinbaku), a collection of the work of “Fujino Kazutomo = Nakagawa Ayako”. The publisher’s description says it gathers Fujino’s representative paintings, among them those known from Philip K. Dick paperback covers, together with little-known SM pictures signed Nakagawa. Harada notes that the book prints many Nakagawa works but that its closing chronology follows only Fujino, a gap Harada calls unfair.