sakamoto 
Amid the endless depths of erotic and pornographic literature, the amateur photo magazine Nyan2 Club is surely the most extreme and pure. The intensity and lyricism of the images express a homegrown aesthetic very distinct from overseas hardcore publications.
Nyan2 Club also features a section for readers’ illustrations. Beginning with the magazine’s launch in 1990, it has continued with the addition of Nyan2 Club Z in 1993. It comprises only two pages, and the works are reproduced in miniature, about the size of business cards. Many readers would never notice them. Nevertheless, over the magazine’s 32-year history, and as the photographic content has grown increasingly intense, the illustration section continues to attract regular and well known contributors
What does it mean to contribute one’s art to a publication like Nyan2? First, the act of submitting hand-drawn illustrations to such a magazine has an anachronistic feel that testifies to the creator’s dedication. After all, a photograph can be reprinted endlessly, and digital data can be dispatched with a click. But one has to spend time making an illustration. The magazine’s editorial policy demands a further sacrifice, as submissions are not returned. This means the original work you have taken the trouble to draw effectively vanishes as soon as you post it.
Moreover, some contributors write long explanations or stories on the backs of their pictures, but even if their work is accepted, there is no way this text will appear, as only the illustrations are published. I find it fascinating that there are so many contributors who while fully aware of these conditions, have continued to submit their work for more than 30 years.
Of course, getting published is satisfying, even if the payment is small (then again…with whom will you share your joy of publication?). What’s also impressive is that these contributors keep on drawing and sending in their work, only to say goodbye to it forever. This suggests there are many artists to be found at the very bottom of the media barrel; a creative realm 180 degrees opposite that of professional artists. These people continue to live and paint while going completely ignored by the contemporary art world, and even those who support outsider art. They may even be despised as “more perverted than us” by the shutterbugs who contribute the magazine’s photography.
If I had to name the most legendary participant in this thankless, long-distance race, no one could object to my choice of Pinkara Taiso (Gymnastics).
He was born in 1967 on the Pacific coast of central Japan. He still lives in the town where he was born and raised. One of his favourite painters is Hieronymus Bosch. He started contributing to Nyan2 when he was around 19 years old, after graduating from junior high school and working on construction sites, and continues to submit up to 30 works each month. He says he never tires of it.
Pinkara Taisou debuted in January 1992, with a cartoonish picture of girls with cat ears and big eyes, quite different from his current style, which uses delicate coloured pencil strokes. His submissions temporarily ceased in 1994 and 1995, but resumed in 1996. By this time, his work had changed drastically. Gone was his cartoon touch of the early 1990s; his drawings were unusually dark, expressing a grotesque realism by means of pointillist dots and lines in black pen.
Then, in 2001, he resurrected colour. The character Nurupyon, was a vivid mass of indescribable, blurred shapes. From 2003, he began a phase that could be called his ‘poop girl period,’ a soft-edged two-dimensional world, almost feminine in delicacy, in which he places images of petite yet curvy schoolgirls, office ladies, broadcast anchors and other dainty forms endowed with huge breasts, spreading their ochre-coloured faeces about in heaps, or smeared on their bodies like underwear. I wanted as many people as possible to know about Pinkara Gymnastics, so in 2012 I released a self-published e-book as well as a thick paperback collection. It is still available (https://bccks.jp/viewer/105448/tachiyomi#! /).