Saturday, September 22, 2012

Namio - A Face Is For Sitting

The weather is turning!  The nights are getting colder.  There are piles of pumpkins for sale at the grocery store.  A few posts ago I related a dream that put me in mind of an artist I might review.  So now I think it's time for...

Evil Dolly's Featured Fetish Artist of the Day:  Harukawa Namio.


There's not much I can say about the Japanese artist Namio (1947 - ?) as a person since I've been able to find out little about him.  His art, however, may be instantly recognizable by many in this particular subculture, especially by submissive males.  It's possible you've come across his drawings without even knowing it; so common are they online that most any search for femdom or smothering topics will come up with a few of them. 


The reason it is so common is because the man produced over a thousand detailed drawings during his career.  Now that's dedication!  Or, possibly, obsession.  I can only assume most were published during the 80s.  Scans of varying quality were disseminated across the internet mainly in the 90s.  I've seen a few that bear the markings of having been around during the BBS days when the dialing modems were much... noisier.  And fetish art, especially femdom, was harder to find in those days, so Namio likely helped shape the fantasies of many a submissive male.


The work was almost entirely pencil sketches using soft shading on textured paper.  Done in a pencil gray, the only other colors were very minimal skin tones and a dark red, most often used to put a woman's dress pattern, heels, or lipstick in bright contrast.  Namio's very favorite subject, it would seem, was serious facesitting, with a smaller, wimpish men's faces and heads being absolutely enveloped by the plush posteriors of much larger and full-figured women.  Stanton did the same thing, having weak tiny men being physically overpowered, dominated and smothered by stronger, taller voluptuous women.  I don't know if Namio and Stanton influenced each other way back in the day.  I suppose it's possible.  Or perhaps small men being overpowered and turned into furniture for big women is simply part of a Jungian zeitgeist for many submissives.  A convergent evolution, if you will.


Other common Namio subjects were graphic toilet slavery, watersports, and various forms of cruelty.  He sometimes diverged into fantasy such as doll-sized men in, ah, awkward situations, and some kind of mutant male race evolved to service women.  He was inventive with the use of harnesses and special outfits to hold a man's face firmly in a woman's rear while she strolled about town.  The women, apart from being plush, often smoked and bore serene expressions even when engaged in acts of sadism.

Speaking personally, I'm not generally a fan of F-m subject matter.  I can't empathize too greatly with the male sub situation.  I would have enjoyed seeing more female-on-female domination, but that was extremely rare in Namio's art, so you take what you can get.  However, despite being a domme myself, I do love facesitting/smothering even to the point of being the bottom, and so can easily imagine myself in some of the positions Namio's males find themselves in.



I'm not aware of any current publications featuring Namio's work, though there may be some.  I saw that there is one company, a VW Productions, which claims to have the rights to publish, though I don't know anything about them or if they're on the level.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you're a fascinating person and I wish you the best. You have such a vivid, eloquent imagination and your willingness to share your writing creativity with the world is inspirational.

On behalf of the world, thank you for sharing!

Sofia said...

Hi, I know VW Productions well, along with United Dead Artist (France) and 2 others (german and japanese) (VW Prod is from canada) are the rights owners of the legacy of Namio Harukawa. the story of it seem complicated and loss in the time, for what I know namio died without testament at least about his artworks, they been (his arts) put on public domain for a time... a part of it gone to collectors hands. with some twist in some national country law about art copyright and on the international level they managed to got the right from some country who resell some public domain art who is too much "sentitive" then on the international level they recorded the right but because the way they got it and as they are not only one onwer, each onwers got a continental right (for physic sale)

Sofia said...

the japanesse owner who published the namio first books produce no more last was in the early 2000 and was reedit, the german one produced during the 70 and it was mostly story book with couple original pic only and produce, the french (UDA) done 2 books 2008 and 2012 at lower price than the others but in low quatity only as it not is main category of publication and style.

VW Productions was suposed to do one for 2012 but it was delayed, I asked and they say they got a problem with the printers (it seen not all printer are willing to do theses kind of books) and they was also busy in other project but they don't give up.

For what I know, only VW Productions done real good remastering and modification of namio harukawa artworks, specially thier 2nd half of them, (in the last 4 years they done around 40, so it seem to be also a long work, the designer who done most told me he was as long to work on one as it been for namio to create it.so it seem very professional, he said he have to zoom by 500 to 800% to do manual work sometime even 1200% and pixel bu pixel, like for eyes draw...so the interesting is the coming book "Under Her" will sale for around 40$ (namio originals) aprox the collector poster (VW works) will be not cheap as they are printed one by one, it seem there will be also a book for all thier remaster works in the future when they will got a decent amount of them... I hope that help namio history and the curents rights owners ;)


Best Regards, Sofia

Sofia said...

sry I mean "I hope that help you in your info about namio history and the curents rights owners