PURPOSE: To ensure the keeping of a secret even when recording content requires a secret by bringing the different places of the recording surface of a thermal transfer recording medium subjected to thermal transfer recording to a mutual contact state.

CONSTITUTION: The head 13 fixed to a support rod 11 falls and an ink sheet 10 and recording paper 15A are brought to a mutual contact state between the head 13 and a platen 16A by the pressing force of the head 13 and allowed to run by the rotation of the platen 16A to perform printing. The ink sheet 10 wound round a reel 12B is issued from a window 38a by the rotation of a take-up shaft 16A to be guided to a guide roller 22 and passed between a pair of rolls 21A, 21B (guided during this time by a roll 20A) twice to enter a cylindrical body from a window 28a after the erasure of a recording pattern and taken up by a reel 12A. Further, the pair of rolls 21A, 21B are mutually brought to a contact state by a spring.