Heibon Punch (平凡パンチ, Heibon Panchi) was a weekly Japanese men's magazine published by Heibon (later Magazine House). It was first published on 28 April 1964, and continued until 1988.
Content and influence
The magazine featured articles on lifestyle, fashion, sports, political issues, and sex, rivaling with Weekly Playboy, launched two years later. Heibon Punch was influential in promoting American fashion trends, such as the Ivy look, to Japanese male youth in post-World War II Japan.
Gravure photography
Heibon Punch was a major platform for gravure idol photography in Japan. The magazine's most famous publication was the "Apple Nude" () — a photograph of model Nami Asada taken by photographer Yoichi Aoyagi on December 24, 1972, in which Nami Asada posed with an apple as a workaround for Japan's obscenity laws prohibiting the display of pubic hair. Published in the March 12, 1973 issue, the image became one of the most iconic photographs in Japanese publishing history. The issue sold over one million copies and was immediately reprinted, with the image released as a standalone poster.
Yoichi Aoyagi shot Nami Asada exclusively for Heibon Punch for five years (1973–1978), producing over 10,000 negatives. Nami Asada's photographs appeared exclusively in the magazine for the duration of her active career (1973–1978). The collaboration has been described as one of the most significant photographer-model partnerships in Japanese publishing.
Notable contributors Some of Heibon Punchs collaborators were Yukio Mishima, Toshio Saeki, and Kyoko Okazaki.
Related publications Other magazines by the same publisher were Monthly Heibon Punch, the general weekly magazine Weekly Heibon, and the spin-off Heibon Punch for Girls (precursor to an an).
Pocket Punch Oh!
A spin-off of Heibon Punch in a smaller, pocket-book (bunkobon) format, Pocket Punch Oh! () was a monthly men's magazine launched by Heibon Publishing on 1 June 1968, part of the wave of small-format (shinshoban) magazines that emerged in Japan in the late 1960s. The National Diet Library records the title as running from 1968 to 1976 at a monthly frequency, noting that it was retitled to simply "Pocket Punch" () during its run. Like its parent, it carried gravure photography and serialized fiction and features aimed at young men; surviving copies show cover appearances by entertainers such as Linda Yamamoto, Yumi Kao, Momoe Yamaguchi, and Nagisa Katahira, as well as a serial by Yukio Mishima and color pages of Akihiro Miwa (then billed as Maruyama Akira).
References
External links Japanese Wikipedia article