I created this page as a place where I can periodically write my thoughts, beliefs, and answers to questions regarding Shinomiya Shiho and S&M. Not just for my own records, but as a place to reveal them to people who are interested.
1. What awakened you to S&M?
[Early stages of personality and sexual preferences ~Girlhood~]
This is the question I get asked most.
Honestly, I’m not really sure. And I think that’s the case for most people. Even if there’s one clear incident I can remember, it surely wasn’t the only factor. Various events built up as I experienced them, and the next thing I knew… That’s how it was for me, and how I believe it happened for a lot of other people as well.
There is a lot of discourse about whether or not personality and sexual preferences are determined by genes. I don’t really think they are — I think they’re also dependent on things like family environments, and depend on the person, so I don’t think they’re always influenced by genes. Personality may be influenced a bit, but sexual preferences? I imagine there’s very little influence, if anything at all. People can be influenced by novels, art, TV, magazines, partners they’ve dated… We really can be influenced by all sorts of things.
Incidentally, I grew up in a pretty normal household. My mother was rather on-hands when it came to education, so I probably ended up studying and taking a more different types of lessons compared to other kids, but I also got to take part in normal children’s activities and games, so I think my family was pretty “normal.”
Since I was still a child at the time, I can’t be sure as to whether any of these things were actual “sexual preferences,” but I can still remember the things I “liked” as a child, and I believe they’re connected to my current sexual preferences.
Here’s a simple example. Lots of girls like princesses and beautiful female warriors (bishojo senshi), but I always dreamed of becoming the evil “queen.” Instead of girls in frilly pink dresses, I was drawn to mature women in tights…
Take “Lady,” the armaroid from Cobra. She isn’t a villain, but from the first time I saw her, to this very day, she still touches my heart. Back then, I didn’t even know what the word “rubber” meant, and didn’t know that such costumes existed, but Cobra was an anime series that featured a lot of women wearing rubber-esque bodysuits.
Even when it came to books and film, ever since I was little, I was always interested in scary stories, fantasy worlds, darkness, demons, and vampires. I loved things with those motifs, as well as stories where the characters got tortured and killed.
When my friends talked about male and female pop idols, I could never understand what was so interesting about them. The musicians I Liked (BUCK-TICK and X) sang about things like darkness, demons, blood, and roses. In their music videos, people would get tied up, cut up, bleed, and die, which I saw as romantic eroticism.
At the time, I didn’t know that it was part of my sexual preferences, but I knew that I liked it.
It really makes me laugh to think that I’m doing the same exact things I did back then! Drawing pictures with blood and so on. I was already doing that back when I was in elementary school!
“As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.”
*Later on, I discovered Hermann Nitsch, an Austrian artist who used a large amount of blood (probably animal blood) to paint huge-scale paintings and installations where people would get painted in it. I’d been doing the same since I was elementary school too, so I felt kind of jealous.
(By the way, about six years ago Lady Gaga became famous for wearing a meat dress. I wore a meat dress as well and did a photo shoot in it, but it didn’t make me famous… It’s not fair. LOL)
[From “likes” to the awakening of sexual preferences ~Adolescence~]
Then came middle school.
The “very good student” inside me went off somewhere, never to return. School was a very small world where the “standard score” determined your value. I was dissatisfied with education principles centered around a world where, if your standard score was low, you’d get slapped with a label that was supposed to symbolize just how valueless you were.
I tried carrying all those expectations on my shoulders, feeling guilty and sorry that I would never be able to be the person my family hoped I would be, and pretty much wanted to die just about every day. (But eventually, after all my frustration, I just stopped caring.)
I realized that I was somewhat different from my friends. That I was off a bit. Not just when we discussed things like film, novels, or music, like I touched on earlier, but also due to the fact that I had absolutely no interest in romance, nor did I feel anything when I looked at any boys. I thought that this was simply because there were no charismatic boys around me… (After all, I thought the male members of certain bands were really cool!)
Am I a lesbian? I was in high school when I first asked myself that question. But I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t completely accept it at the time.
But now that I back… I just can’t believe it…
I was surrounded by so many girls when I was a student. (It was a coed school, but during the six years I spent there, I didn’t talk to any of the other boys except when absolutely necessary.)
If I could go back and experience adolescence with the knowledge I have now, I’d like to do some erotic things to the girl I really liked.
But it’s all just a pale memory now.
That was the last time I spent in my hometown, and I never went back. Honestly, I don’t think I could ever go back there.
Regarding my sexuality, I don’t see myself as a lesbian. Right now I’m satisfied with being sexually attracted to anyone who’s a masochist regardless of their gender.
When it comes to things that are beautiful, the effort in order to be beautiful, things I think are pretty, things I think are cute — yes, women make up the majority in that area. Hearing people say “because you’re a girl” every now and then gets tiring. Sometimes I just go along with it and reply how they expect me to, but the real me doesn’t care about gender.
I don’t even see myself as a “woman.”
But I’ll talk about that later.
[From sexual fantasies to reality ~University Student Days~]
1. Gothic
This is when I got really into goth/gothic fashion. In the photo above, I went with an 80s goth/punk image. I was a cute 19-year old at the time. Weird bangs, huh? I like 80s UK goth genres as well as new wave and positive punk. EBM was just taking off at the time, and I had been wanting to go to this club event called “BLACK VEIL” that had just started – the biggest scale event in Kansai for that genre. So I had a lady I knew from a gothic brand shop go with me.
(These days, I work as a staff member for that club event. It was destiny.)
That world was filled with lots of ladies in bondage wear, vampires(?) and addams family members(?). They were doing S&M shows, but they weren’t just using rope, they were putting needles into people, sewing things, and bleeding! And everyone had so much white makeup on! I never knew such a wonderful world existed, and I went there every month for about four years straight. I only go about three times per year now, but back then, I was there every month. I’d buy costumes for it, put on makeup for it…it was so stimulating for me.
I also made a lot of friends.
2. The S&M World
That was around the time when the cogs of fate started to creak into motion. Everything came together as synergy that pushed me forward.
One day, at a photo exhibition that featured nothing but fetish photos (I forget how exactly I learned about it), I found out about a club event that featured an S&M show, and went there by myself. That was the beginning of everything. I Just naturally became friends with people in S&M groups and began visiting their get-togethers. I went to goth bars with my goth club friends, and became friends with a woman who did S&M shows.
Actually, I thought she was a woman, but she was actually a new half. That surprised me. I learned from the people in the S&M groups that S&M bars existed, and started going to them as well. During that time, I did my own searching and started actually working at an S&M bar. I made friends with piercers and tattoo artists as well. And when I was 19, I got my first tattoo.
I started out by hanging out with my goth club and DJ friends and going to shows, but I made friends with photo lovers, and ended up taking fetish photos and putting on my own photo exhibitions as well. And once I got used to S&M, I was shocked yet again by body modification events! I also worked at an S&M club for a bit. I learned a lot from masochist men. They’re extremely humorous and filled with the spirit of fantasy.
That all happened when I was around 20 years ago. I connected more and more with people and experienced a lot. My world truly expanded. Oh, and the internet. That’s it. The internet really expanded my world as well.
There’s no point in regretting anything, but since I went to all that trouble to borrow a bunch of money for a scholarship to go to school, I should have actually studied something while I was a student – a very crucial point in my life. But thanks to the path I chose, I got to make my debut into the underground at a much younger age than anyone else, and got to experience a four-year long moratorium of nothing but aimless wandering.
I thought I’d quit when it became time to get a job.
[Hobbies, work, and ~the present]
But eventually my hobby became my job, due to nothing but the natural flow of things.
Too much happened to me, so I’ll skip all that. There are a lot of aspects that are simply too dark to write. If you’re interested, you’ll just have to ask me directly.
I’ll just say that there was something I had wanted to uit for a long time, so when the end finally came, I became extremely relieved.
A lot of fun things happened to me, but there was more exhaustion than fun during that period. I learned a lot over those five years. Good things and bad things.
Then, I went independent and opened Witasexutopia in May of 2010. But what happened after that is far too dark, so I’ll skip that.
And that brings us to today.
[S&M-centric tastes]
What kind of play do you like?
That’s the other question I get asked the most.
I like rope.
But I wonder if people assume I’m someone who just likes to cut, stab, and sew things up…
I do like that stuff, but there are hardly any people out there who can take that kind of play! And almost every time I find someone I’d like to do that sort of thing to, they say “Blood scares me…” or “I don’t like pain.”
Even if things fall into some sort of “I do it for love” pattern, once the pain or suffering reaches a threshold, love ceases to matter, and the masochist runs away. I’ve experienced this a lot in the past, so I’ve gradually become unable to trust the masochist’s “I love you.”
In the world of rope, “I love you so, so I’ll let you tie me” doesn’t exist. It’s closer to a fetish, so love is out of the picture. It’s a very convenient type of S&M play that can be enjoyed for a long period of time in different fashions, where people can engage in roleplay during that moment alone, which is why I like it.
I like seeing people restrained, whether it’s with or without rope. If I were to put this in other words, it may sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but people who aren’t restrained make me uneasy. Rope especially allows me to restrain people however I want. Like a warm embrace…or strictly, harshly, as if to strangle them to death in a very painful way. The act of someone relinquishing their entire body to me makes me happy. When someone gives me not only their body, but their mind as well, even if it’s in that moment alone, I feel like it makes me feel more comfortable than even they may feel. And I’m always thankful to be able to spend such a tender moment with people.
That’s why I like rope the most.
Do you like any other kind of play?
S&M is a fantasy, and relies on the imagination, so I think it’s important to embody whatever it is you want to be in a mental sense. I think that masochists who can become anything, whether it’s a dog, a horse, a baby, a chair, or even a castanet or a metoronome are very humorous, and I like them.
In the end, I don’t think it’s about what sort of play I like. If it’s with someone I like, I’m pretty sure anything would be a lot of fun.
Some people think that face-sitting is a reward, but I think it’s pretty much a method of torture. I love sitting on men’s faces. So much that if possible, I’d like to always be sitting on a man’s face, just like a character in Harukawa Namio’s drawings.
What kind of play don’t you like?
Scat play is the one thing that I just can’t sympathize with. I can understand it, though, and I’d never reject it. Everyone just has their own cup of tea.
But one when I once heard the words “I love you, so I want to eat it,” I said, “If you love me, then don’t.” Love is heavy.
With that in mind, masochists who simply love excrection, or shit, and are happy to rub anyone’s on themselves make a lot more sense to me.
I also don’t really like things where I have to do a lot of exercise, such as fighting, kicking, punching, or kicking balls. It’s a little fun to do once in a whie, but my body’s small, and I don’t have much weight, so I don’t think it hurts very much. And besides, I always imagine S&M as something elegant, and the sadist moving around a lot doesn’t really fit into that. But I’ll say it again – doing it once in a while is kinda fun.
Also, I don’t really like play where all I do is make people feel good. Especially when it comes t men. If the girl’s cute, as a sadist, I don’t mind giving them a little extra service, but I’ll never give a man nothing but pleasure, unless it’s in a carrot and stick situation.
[Body modification]
Since the 90s, there has existed a core magazine called BURST. IT was my bible when I was a youth. After that, the piercing bible that came out in 1994 became my ultimate bible (LOL). When I look at it now, the people who are cutting look so bad at it, and the piercings look old, so it’s just funny. But at the time, it really captivated me. Biological, technological, mechanical cyborgs and androids… Piercings, tattoos, and body mods all made it seem like we were getting closer and closer to bodies of the future, which I thought was super cool. I’ve always been drawn toward inorganic beauty, like the androids from Cobra.
So I never had any interest in Japanese tattoos, but I wasn’t exactly interested in HR Giger-esque bio-mecha tattoos, either. I wanted to become an android-esque thing that could exist in the gothic, medieval world that I loved so much.
Thanks to the internet, I eventually found my ideal tattoo artist and got a tattoo when I was 19 years old. After that, I decided to get more and more once school calmed down, which brings us to today.
But it’s already been a decade since I got my last tattoo. I got a small one on my chest, a slightly bigger one on my bag, one that’s on half of my left arm, and one on my left thigh. Then, when I ended up never getting a job, and decided to work in this world, I got a tattoo that took up 70% of my right arm, and one that went from my head along my neck.
When I went independent, I gave myself my own tattoo on my right thigh.
I also did my last tattoo by myself. “memento mori” (remember death, or don’t forget that everyone dies) It’s a phrase I really love.
As for other body modifications I’ve done, I sharpened my ears, cut off my earlobes, got implants, cut mself, branded myself, and split my tongue. I also did something else I can’t write about here… I departed from the idea of what it means to be a ‘woman.’ As I wrote earlier, I don’t see myself as a woman, so I thought it best to embody that physically. If you’re curious, please ask me directly.
For an easy to understand example, if a man says “I just want the woman to feel good, I don’t care if I get to penetrate her or cum or anything,” then I say, “Well then, why don’t you just cut your dick off?”
A little bit ago, I got to do a lot of that. But we can’t do that sort of thing in the Japan that exists now… We’re not allowed to.
Anyway, back to BURST. It was a wonderful magazine – a violet outlaw that covered things such as drugs, various crimes, yakuza, evil people overseas, S&M, religion, demons, corpses, and weird people.
….
If I didn’t have any tattoos on my body now, I’d get a Japanese-style tattoo. I don’t really dream of becoming an android anymore. I’m fine being a human.
[witasexutopia]
What does ‘witasexutopia’ mean?
Around 2002, I did S&M shows with different members each time, so I went by the name of “Shiho-jo and ____.” But when other events started inviting me, I wanted a group name, so I went with Witasexalice. It was a simplification of the title of a Mori Ougai novel. It was an autobiographical novel about his own sexual experiences, and the title meant ‘sex life’ in Latin, so it was a banned book at the time. To 21st century people such as us, it wasn’t erotic at all, and actually a bit hard to understand.
But people called us ‘wita,’ so we ended up setting with the name of WITA SEX UTOPIA.
Incidentally, I don’t really like Mori Ougai that much. Sadist women mostly love Tanizaki Junichiro and Shibusawa Tatsuhiko.
………………….
One day in October, 2018
I gathered up and answered some questions I often get asked by customers. From this point on, if I get asked these questions, I’ll just tell them to read this.
I can’t write any more detailed things here, but if you ask me directly, I’ll answer.
English【ＳＭについてabout for sm】
