If you look at the cannon of BDSM books, three books stand out. First there is The 120 Days of Sodom written by Marquis the Sade, the words sadism and sadists are derived from his name. Then there is Venus in Furs a novella written by the Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the namesake for the word masochism.
The third one is the celebrated Japanese cult classic The Beast Yapoo [Kachikujin yapū]. It was written by Numa Shōzō. Loosely translated Yapoo means human livestock. The novel can be read on three different levels. On the surface it is a somewhat odd science fiction novel, where men are turned into human cattle. If you scratch below the surface the story is about the humiliation Japan endured after having lost the war. It is no coincidence that the main female character Clara von Cotwick is Caucasian. Her fiancée is Japanese. At the end of the story, she has turned him into her personal yapoo.
However, most kinksters will associate the word Yapoo with the epinomous Japanese femdom label, created by the famous mistress Naomi Asano, whose kink philosophy is loosely based on the book.
The Beast Yapoo was published as a serial between 1956 and 1958 in Japanese. Some twenty years later a four-volume manga version created by writer Ishinomori Shōtarō and artist Sugar Satō was released. Over time The Beast Yapoo was translated into several languages, including French and German, but never in English. By chance I stumbled upon the website of Nellie Feathers who has begun translating the novel from Japanese into English. It clearly is a labour of love and it will take some time to finish, but if you're interested, why not have a peek?
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