In its most literal sense, it can be translated as “torture rope”. Yukimura sensei defined it in these terms:
“… seme is never just pain, or pain for pain's sake. It is suffering and endurance with a purpose, and it is as much a mental state as a physical one…”
The term semenawa usually designates a style or way of doing shibari in which the elements of suffering/torment and resistance/_endurance_ are present.
It is a shibari centered on feelings and sensations, unlike, for example, sekibaku, whose focus is on emotions and people.
Two thousand years ago in China, the kanji 責 was used to mean “paying taxes” —a real torture, no doubt—. Once it reached Japan, it first took on the sense of “criticizing or reproaching” and, later, that of “oppressing or pressuring” someone to obtain something.
It was not until the Muromachi period (室町時代) —the fourteenth century—, with the structural changes in the feudal system, that seme began to be associated with torture; not with the act itself (gomon), but with its process and duration.
Interestingly, toward the end of the Edo period, in the mid-nineteenth century, there are records of plays and musical pieces on the theme of yuki-seme (torture in the snow), which would become a source of inspiration for Itoh Seiu.
In Japan, the term seme remained linked to SM through expressions such as kotoba-seme (verbal pressure) or mokuba-seme (humiliating exposure on the wooden horse).
It was not until the Heisei era, in 1994, that semenawa first appeared as the title of a film by Akechi Denki; shortly afterward, Randa Mai released a DVD series under the name Semenawa Kinbaku.
The definitive milestone came in 2004, with the publication of Seme nawa higajo (a detailed illustrated manual of seme nawa), by Naka Akira: the work that established the term and tied it forever to his way of conceiving and practicing shibari.
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