It was during the boom of SM magazines in the seventies and SM show companies in the eighties that Akechi Denki emerged as a stage director, soon moving on to adult film.
From the 1990s into the early 2000s he appeared frequently on television programs and at events, and he was a key figure in the “golden age” of Japanese SM, by which time he was already recognized as one of the great nawashi (rope masters).
He was passionate not only about rope but about all SM paraphernalia, which endeared him to the genre’s enthusiasts.
Within shibari he established techniques that were innovative for their time, marked by the pursuit of beauty and the toughness of his ties, which changed the aesthetic and technical standards of bondage scenes.
Many of today’s kinbakushi have been influenced by his style—from Kanna to Yagami Ren and Hajime Kinoko—and have helped spread the arts of Akechi-ryu Kinbaku-jutsu and the forms of his teaching system around the world.
Kinbaku has no single standard that covers everything and fits everyone. No answer is the right one. Kinbaku is born of feeling.
We could say that Akechi-sensei embodied this maxim, changing the way he tied and worked depending on his partners and his mood.
Kinbaku is modernizing and continues to grow technically and artistically, although it may be losing some of its sensitivity.
Active from the second half of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, we owe him the development of many techniques and the way we understand and approach them today. His influence on other riggers is key to understanding the popularity shibari reached in the 1990s.
He was born in 1940 (year 15 of the Showa era) and in several interviews admitted to having been an avid consumer of pornography since childhood and a regular reader of Kitan Club and Uramado.
He suffered from health problems from an early age that marked his whole life. That certainty about his fate possibly had a great deal to do with his work and the unique atmosphere he gave his shibari.
In his youth he may have written stories and scripts for short plays (pinku engeki, ピンク演劇) staged in porn cinemas between screenings and during reel changes.
It was a time when SM practices were considered “abnormal,” so much of the activity took place in secret. With the American occupation of Japan and the cultural revolutions imported in the sixties and seventies, however, things changed: what had been anomalous became “underground” and progressive.
In the late seventies, Akechi Denki worked on underground theater shows in the wave of happenings and performances, alongside Sakurada Denjiro, and took over his shows when Sakurada retired in the mid-eighties.
According to Saikatsu, his assistant for twenty-four years, he had joined Sakurada’s GSG group in the early seventies, helping to set up the stage, since his business was interior design. As a child he had already tied up his cousin in their games, and he progressed quickly by trying a different tie after each performance.
Given its popularity, his work at Studio Phantom, which he founded between 1980 and 1987, deserves a mention: what probably began as a photo studio in Shibuya became, throughout the 1990s, a successful shibari and enema show—his most popular act was called “double enema”—at the Theater Poo that Sakurada Denjiro ran in Shinjuku.
Around 1997 he decided to devote himself entirely to rope: he handed his interior design business over to his employees and moved the office from Sasazuka to Shimouma; two years later, because of a rent increase, he settled in Shibuya, where he stayed until his death.
In 2005, together with Miura Takumi, he began the series Kinbaku gigata hoten (緊縛技形宝典), possibly the first shibari manual with explicit reference to the old martial arts, to which both devoted time and effort.
Sadly, Akechi Denki died before the series was completed and took part only in the first volume, in which he established some of the most popular shibari forms in the West: gote shibari (後手縛り), hishinawa shibari (菱繩縛り) and kikko shibari (亀甲縛り).
Saikatsu recalled that Akechi insisted on the importance of hands tied behind the back: “Start with the ushirode and finish with the ushirode.”
At the turn of the century his health deteriorated markedly. He died on July 17, 2005 (year 17 of the Heisei era). Since then, events in his memory are held around the world on that date.
After his death, according to Saikatsu, Izumiya, of Akechi Kikaku, burned his videos and photographs, which partly explains why so little of his material survives.
His contribution to shibari is fundamental, and he is considered one of the three pillars of shibari-kinbaku. His style underlies that of great masters such as Nawashi Kanna, Hajime Kinoko and Yagami Ren.
On September 11, 2022—the master’s birthday, year 4 of the Reiwa era—Nawashi Kanna, with the permission of Akechi Kikaku (the entity that had managed the late Akechi Denki’s rights since 2005), officially took on the Akechi name. With the backing of the family and the kinbaku community, he took the name Akechi Kanna (明智神凪) and has since been the heir and head of the Akechi lineage.
There was some controversy over this transfer of the name, since Akechi never designated a deshi or heir to his style during his lifetime. At the time of his death he had two recognized students (kyodai-deshi, 兄弟弟子): Kanna and Raika, a rigger who retired from the scene in 2015.
Akechi Denki had three female disciples (onna-deshi, 女弟子): Akechi Enka (明智炎華), Akechi Raika (明智蕾火) and Akechi Kadera (明智伽刹), as well as his assistant, who took the name Akechi Saiki (明智才鬼) when tying.
Nawashi Kanna met Akechi Denki in 2000 and took classes with the master, making his stage debut at his side and feeling great admiration for him from the very first moment.
After Akechi Denki’s death in July 2005, Kanna and his fellow student Raika probably already adopted the Akechi name. After Raika’s retirement in 2015, it was Kanna who was entrusted with passing on the master’s legacy as anideshi (兄弟子, senior disciple).
The 2022 ceremony, held at Theater GOO in Tokyo while COVID restrictions were still in force, was a formal event attended by friends, students and most of the leading figures of shibari in Japan.
In Japanese tradition it is common for a master’s “family name” to pass to one of his students after his death. In the history of shibari, such a ceremony has rarely been held. The case of Osada Steve remains controversial.
What is the significance of the succession to the “Akechi” name and Kanna taking it on?
For those of us who study shibari within the styles and forms derived from master Akechi Denki, it is good news to see that the “name” and what it stands for live on in one of today’s significant shibari figures.
During and after the ceremony, the normalization of relations between Akechi Kanna and Yagami Ren was also confirmed.
Akechi Denki Memorial
Two events are held every year in the master’s honor: one to mark his birth (September 11), in which Kanna revives the classic Phantom Theatre show, and another on July 17, the date of his death, a more intimate and respectful memorial.
Akechi Denki (明智伝鬼) interviewed by Osada Steve
In July 2005, two weeks before his death, Akechi Denki gave Osada Steve what would be his last interview, published in the magazines SM Sniper and FetishJapan.
In it he defined shibari as a form of communication between two people through the rope: “a connection between the hearts of two people.” The rope, he said, should embrace lovingly, “like a mother’s arms holding her child,” and the most important thing is never to cause an injury: you must constantly watch your partner, not through words, but by reading their expression.
He also recalled his beginnings. He started as a teenager, without a teacher, imitating what he saw in magazines such as Kitan Club and practicing with friends such as Tsujimura Takashi and Yamamoto Issho. The term nawashi, he explained, had only been in use for some thirty years: before that, people spoke of sado and mazo. He first tied someone at 16 or 17, using the sarashi (晒し), the cotton sash he always wore around his belly because of his poor digestion. He remembered that the hardest part was finding a partner: you had to court a girl for months before daring to bring out the rope.
Sunglasses were a hallmark of his image, for a stage reason: to avoid the glare of the spotlights.
In his youth he worked on construction sites, a tough environment where the sarashi also served as protection in knife fights. That experience was fundamental to his technique: he linked it to trade techniques, the craft jutsu that sailors, farmers and construction workers developed to tie loads and structures, from which much of the shibari of his generation draws.
He researched hojojutsu in libraries and museums. In a specialized martial arts treatise, whose title he could not remember, he found the diagrams for three ties. He reworked those techniques in his own work. Although he collected books by Itoh Seiu, he said he appreciated them as art, not as a source of inspiration.
His style took shape in live shows, before video existed, out of the need to offer audiences something they had never seen before. That is why he insisted on never repeating the same tie and on coming on stage with an empty mind: “Sometimes the ropes move by themselves and my hands simply follow them. I disappear. When that happens, the shibari is always very beautiful.” These words point directly to the concept of muga (無我).
I.K.U. This is not love, this is sex
This film—strange, outlandish and surprisingly accessible—includes Akechi Denki’s name in its credits.
Curiously, the phrase in the title, “this is not love, this is sex,” is one of the maxims repeated by riggers and schools derived from the style the master created.
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