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A flamboyant physician, Doctor B, takes writer Shimura Yōhei on a late-night excursion to the Fortune Club, where wealth, spectacle, and an international crowd conceal a darker reality. A Portuguese dancer’s appearance and a cryptic hint lead Shimura into a basement prison holding exploited women. The work challenges exoticized bourgeois images of Shanghai by exposing capitalist exploitation, underclass suffering, and social inequality.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-basement-of-the-pleasure-club-by-ito-ken-a-descent-into-deviance/608079/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-basement-of-the-pleasure-club-by-ito-ken-a-descent-into-deviance/608079.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"\tJames","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-22","2026-10-17",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":8},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What night excursion sets the plot in motion?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Doctor B invites writer Shimura Yōhei to the mysterious Fortune Club, promising an experience unlike any other and guiding him through Shanghai’s shadowy streets to a lavish dance hall.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the story reveal the hidden reality beneath Shanghai’s glamour?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"A chance meeting with a Portuguese dancer named Kate, reinforced by a cryptic hint, draws Shimura into a dark basement where he discovers a prison-like world of exploitation and despair.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What literary purpose does the document attribute to Itō Ken?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Itō Ken is presented as critiquing capitalist exploitation and underclass struggles, aiming to counter contemporary superficial or exoticized bourgeois portrayals of Shanghai and to expose harsh social realities.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},608079,1792665923,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":8,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":46},2336474466412,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","The Asia Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 22 | Issue 7 | Number 2 | Article ID 5853 | Jul. 21, 2024  \n“The Basement Of The Pleasure Club” By Itō Ken –A Descent Into “Deviance”  \nIntroduction by Richard William Leckie  \nTranslation by Edwin Michielsen  \nAbstract: Shanghai in the early 1930s was a city teeming with intrigue and decadence. Amidst this backdrop, Doctor B, a flamboyant physician, invites writer Shimura Yōhei on a late-night excursion to the mysterious Fortune Club. Promising an experience unlike any other, Doctor B leads Shimura through the shadowy streets to a lavish dance hall, a sanctuary for Shanghai’s international elite. As the night unfolds, Shimura is mesmerized by the club’s opulence and the eclectic mix ofpatrons. However, a chance encounter with a Portuguese dancer named Kate unveils a sinister secret lurking beneath the surface. Guided by a cryptic hint, Shimura ventures into the dark and eerie basement, where he discovers a hidden world of unimaginable horror—a prison for women ensnaredin a web of exploitation and despair. Itō’s work critiques capitalist exploitation and the underclass’s struggles, challenging the superficial and exoticized depictions of Shanghai by his contemporaries. Through gripping narratives that reveal the exploitation beneath Shanghai’s glamorous surface, Itō aimed to counter the prevailing bourgeois narratives and expose the harsh realities of life in Shanghai, presenting a nuanced critique of social inequalities and the revolutionary potential of the city’s conflicts.  \nKeywords: Itō Ken, Proletarian Literature, Detective Fiction, Shanghai, Social Critique  \nIntroduction  \nby Richard William Leckie  \nItō Ken’s “Dōraku Kurabu no Chikashitsu”(The Basement of the Pleasure Club) was first published in Shūkan Asahi magazine in February 1928 and later included in the short story collection Shanhai Yawa (Shanghai Night Stories) published by Heibonsha in December 1929. While Itō’s work remains largely ignored by researchers, Shanhai Yawa has  \nbeen examined in previous studies by Takeuchi Mizuho (2009) and the translator himself (2019) . These studies focus mainly on two aspects of the work: its depiction of Shanghai and its merging of elements of proletarian and mystery literature.  \nIn regard to the former, Shanghai held a special place among Asian cities in the collective consciousness of 1920s Japan. Japanese citizens could visit Shanghai without a passport, and by the late 1920s there were more than 25,000 Japanese residing in the city, comprising roughly half of its foreign population. Shanghai was also the subject of a number of literary works in this decade, including Muramatsu Shōfū’s Mato (Sin City, 1924) and Yokomitsu Riichi’s Shanhai (Shanghai, 1928–1931) . While these works varied widely in focus and quality, two images of Shanghai emerge: Shanghai the cosmopolitan city, with its foreign concessions and mix of Chinese, Japanese, European and American residents; and Shanghai the city of wanton vice and debauchery, with establishments catering to every sexual proclivity. These images were not mutually exclusive. Rather, they coexist to some extent in all of these works.  \nBoth images of the city are also evident in Shanhai Yawa and other works by Itō Ken, who stayed in Shanghai from July 1927 to January 1928. However, as a proletarian author, Itō was keenly interested in the social underpinnings of the city’s unique blend of globalism and debauchery, particularly capitalist exploitation and the struggles of the underclass. Despite the huge popularity of proletarian literature in late 1920s Japan, Itō chose to depict these inequali-  \n1  \nDownloaded from [https://www.cambridge.org/core](https://www.cambridge.org/core. 17 Oct 2026)[. 17 Oct 2026](https://www.cambridge.org/core. 17 Oct 2026) at 05:39:47, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.  \n APJ | JF 22 | 7 | 2  \nties not in standard proletarian novels, but rather in works which combined elements of proletarian an","cbCaiar79d9CHv5r","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiar79d9CHv5r","pdf",359769,13,"English","# Introduction\n## Publication history and prior studies\n## Shanghai as cosmopolitan vs. vice and debauchery\n## Itō Ken’s proletarian aims and mystery blend\n## Critiques of contemporaries and revolutionary potential\n## Challenging bourgeois and imperial narratives","[{\"question\":\"What night excursion sets the plot in motion?\",\"answer\":\"Doctor B invites writer Shimura Yōhei to the mysterious Fortune Club, promising an experience unlike any other and guiding him through Shanghai’s shadowy streets to a lavish dance hall.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the story reveal the hidden reality beneath Shanghai’s glamour?\",\"answer\":\"A chance meeting with a Portuguese dancer named Kate, reinforced by a cryptic hint, draws Shimura into a dark basement where he discovers a prison-like world of exploitation and despair.\"},{\"question\":\"What literary purpose does the document attribute to Itō Ken?\",\"answer\":\"Itō Ken is presented as critiquing capitalist exploitation and underclass struggles, aiming to counter contemporary superficial or exoticized bourgeois portrayals of Shanghai and to expose harsh social realities.\"}]","The Basement Of The Pleasure Club - By Itō Ken - A Descent Into \"Deviance\" | PDF",1792215599]