First published in May 1949, Wacky Magazine was devised as a more lighthearted spinoff to the popular kasutori magazine Mysterious Magazine. Whilst Mysterious Magazine focused on fairly explicit topics, Wacky Magazine took a more surreal approach to content though still maintained the same air of casual eroticism.
Each issue of Wacky Magazine begins with a short illustrated tale mixing sexiness, some light horror, and above all, weirdness. One of the more bizarre tales is The Ass that Eats Things, published in the June 1951 issue which is written by Shozo Murakami and illustrated by Hiroshi Tsuda. With a story so unbelievably bizarre, we had to put in the effort and translate it! (perhaps making this the first ever kasutori story to be read outside of Japan)
I shouldn’t have been so careless. Instead of a thong, I danced on stage wearing an Okame Noh mask, a masterpiece by Katsuragi Choho VIII.
Mamie Machino, a stripper who had just started out, wanted to try something new in her routine and discarded her usual thong. She instead wore an Okame mask around her waist before performing a bewitching dance for her audience. Although the stunt was well received, later that night her lower back suddenly began to hurt and she was unable to continue her performance.
No one could have imagined there would be such a horrifying outcome…
Chapter 2 – Returning Home
The pain in her back grew worse and worse. Mamie Machino decided to give up dancing completely and returned to her hotspring resort hometown to rest for a while. When she got on the train and sat down, her ass became burning hot. She thought the pain in her lower back had returned and she became even more worried.
However, she thought that with rest she would make a full recovery within a month.
Chapter 3 – Bumpy Ass
Mamie’s house was an inn called Otsukaya. When she returned home she would stay inside all day because she felt anxious about her body and didn’t want her family worrying about her. She would then take a hot bath every day so that no one would see her, soaking her sore ass in the hot water in hopes of recovering as soon as possible.
After a few days, the soreness had gone but the skin on her ass became loose and bumpy.
‘I’m in trouble. What should I do?’
Mamie was very disappointed with the bumpy abscess that had formed; as a stripper, she regarded her body as her prime asset.
One day she looked at her ass in the mirror. Then she gasped. Surprisingly, the shape of her plump ass had healed, but there was a protruding bump in the form of an Okame face.
Chapter 4 – Human Face Sore
It was a human face sore. In the centre of her left cheek, the face of an Okame had formed and its expression looked as if it was about to burst into laughter.
Mamie was so upset that she became almost hysterical. At midnight she went alone to the large bathhouse, climbing in and out of the bathtub, unable to sit still as she was overcome with fear and despair.
‘I’m hungry. I want something to eat.’
The Okame face on her ass had started talking! Mamie recoiled in shock at the sound of the voice.
‘Hurry up and give me something to eat.’
Her ass started to talk and make faces all by itself. At the same time, what had previously been a dull ache became a sharp pain. Unable to endure this sudden pain, she rolled around naked on the tiled floor. She cried and cried, but the pain did not subside.
She got up, put on her kimono, and went back to her room weeping. She opened her cupboard, took out a piece of the yellow caramel that her mother had given her, and fed it to the Okame which quickly gobbled it down.
‘Give me more,’ the Okame complained.
After eating five more pieces of caramel, the Okame fell silent, and the pain in her ass mysteriously stopped.
Chapter 5 – Angry Okame
‘It is really strange. But we can’t leave it as it is. I wonder if we could give some kind of medicine to the Okame face.’
One day, when Mamie’s father saw her ass, he became very worried and tried to give her some medicine, but the Okame was so angry that it bit its lip and refused to open its mouth.
‘Alright, perhaps if we put pepper in some candy it will stop speaking.’
Her father put a large amount of chili powder in a monaka sweet and fed it to the Okame. The Okame burst into tears and Mamie’s ass began to burn like it was on fire.
‘Dad, quickly, water! Water!’
In a panic, he quickly poured water into the Okame’s mouth; the Okame gargled the water before spitting it out.
Word of Mamie’s predicament soon spread throughout the entire hotspring resort town.
Chapter 6 – Gather Round
When this became well known in the hotspring town, people began to show their curiosity in such a freak occurrence.
‘I don’t like it. I absolutely don’t want to be exposed to the world.’
At first, Mamie tried to resist people’s attention as much as possible, but when a number of people said they were willing to pay 3000yen, or offer her a roll of meisen silk, in order to look, she reluctantly agreed to show them in private.
When people heard about this, they would come to see her, holding out their money. Thanks to her, the inn was full of customers and her savings purse was bulging. She would invite them to the bathroom and let them watch her ass while she bathed in the bathtub. Then she would sit backward on a raised table, showing off the Okame face that had appeared on her ass. People marvelled at the Okame face, and would stuff handfuls of chocolates, caramels, and other sweets into its mouth for amusement.
After eating as much as it could, the Okame would close its eyes and fall asleep. The guests were entranced both by the strange Okame face and Mamie’s beautiful skin.
‘The Okame face is strange, but what beautiful fair skin this girl has,’ a lustful old man whispered surreptitiously when he passed another man waiting to enter.
Chapter 7 – Virgin Love
Among the guests who would often come to see the Okame, there was a newcomer: a young man named Kinsho Takebe, who quickly fell in love with Mamie. After some time, Mamie also began to develop feelings for him, and soon a passionate love affair developed.
Chapter 8 – The Human Face Sore Disappears
‘I can’t get married like this,’ Mamie said when Takebe proposed to her and turned him down.
‘No, it is okay. You have been cursed by a Noh mask. I will take you to a shrine and we can have you purged.’
He took Mamie to a nearby shrine. He then had Mamie strip naked and sit on the floor of the temple in order to purify her before the gods.
‘It’s fine now. There are times when the Noh face may try to return but when that happens I am sure you will be able to cleanse yourself.’
Takebe took Mamie by the hand and took her to his house. On the morning on the second day, as expected, the human face sore that had caused so much commotion had disappeared without a trace. The couple were secretly happily married later that day.
(The end)
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Hi, I have a borderline obsession with Japanese showa-era culture with much of my free time spent either consuming or researching said culture. Apparently I’m now writing about it as well to share all the useless knowledge I have acquired after countless hours surfing the web and peeling through books and magazines.