Author:
Title: Medical Card for Sexual Design [Igaku Kado : Sei no Dezain hen].
Description: Tokyo, Sansheisha Shobo 1965. 19x13cm, glossy card wallet case with 64 glossy cards. Fifty two cards printed both sides with photo illustrations of a young woman in black bodysuit on the front, one with sketches of hairstyles and the rest with diagrams and tables of reproductive organs and menstruation cycles; text and/or illustrations on the back of all. The last card is a diy rhythm calculator. All in excellent shape. ¶ Even after deciphering the rules I'm still be baffled by this triumph of sixties sexual revolution kitsch. The first sixteen cards are blue, the rest pink; the 52 playing cards have a king's or queen's crown and one or two suit symbols - clubs, hearts &c - most have two but one has an A. The rules tell us there is only one ace but not what it's good for. Is the odd card out, the hairstyles, the joker? So the loser at Old Maid would, instead of having sex, get a new hairstyle? The gender symbols are graphic hints and must have been fun for the designer; the text on both sides is poetry; and hygiene is important. The point of the game and the rhythm calculator seems to be to give women some control in the new era of liberation; not something often evident, east or west.

Keywords: graphic art design c20th Japan sixties paper games sport sex women feminism gender progress literature poetry