Osada Eikichi (長田英吉) was born on March 15, 1925 (year 14 of the Taisho era) and began his public activity on the kinbaku scene in the mid-sixties; in 1976 he organized events with Tamai Keiyu (玉井敬友).
His birth name was Tsukada Eikichi, and he was born in Ashikaga, in Tochigi Prefecture. “Osada” was the maiden name of his mother, who had been a geisha, and he used it only for his SM activity; for his printing business he used the legal surname Nagata. He studied at Hosei University (法政大学) and made his living from a commercial magazine printing shop in Shinbashi, Tokyo.
After the war he learned as a reader of the magazines Liberal, Kitan Club and Uramado, through the work of Tsujimura Takashi and Tsukamoto Tetsuzo, and through Shibusawa Tatsuhiko’s translations of Sade, published from 1954 onward. In the sixties, striptease theaters staged zankoku show (残酷ショー, cruelty shows). From 1962 he himself attended the zankoku show of the group Aka to Kuro, and he was spurred on by the success of Mukai Kazuya and Aoki Junko, a couple who had performed since 1964 at Ars Nova in Asagaya and to whom Kitan Club devoted a feature in November of that year.
He is reputed to be the first person to stage public shibari kinbaku shows, in the mid-1960s. Around 1965 he gave the first Osada Seminar show at Ars Nova.
Around 1970 he opened the “Lotus Salon” in Kanda, where the Osada Seminars were held once a month on Sunday nights; it closed a little over a year later. It was possibly the seed of Shibari Studio (nothing to do with the website that uses that domain). It is thought to have been a venue where, during the day, girls came to be tied, and where shibari-related events and shows were held in the evening.
In 1975 he launched the “Osada Seminar Experimental Theater” with Mukai Kazuya, and that same year he was interviewed for the Japanese edition of Playboy. In October 1976 the Osada Seminar moved to Tamai Keiyu’s Theater Scandal in Roppongi, where he met Sakurada Denjiro.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he performed steadily at various venues on the Japanese SM scene and, in all likelihood, also devoted a good part of his time to teaching, especially dominatrixes.
In the nineties he consolidated his reputation as a master, sought after by many clubs and events in Japan, whose management he also took part in.
He was known for his enormous capacity for work. It is estimated that for years he showed his kinbaku in public an average of twenty nights a month. His energy soared on stage, even as his health declined.
As a young man he wanted to be a film director, reached 3rd dan in kendo (剣道), and preferred performance to private play. In April 1999, Tokyo Journal called him “the man of the flying rope.”
Osada Steve (長田スティーブ) met him in 1998, at a photo session at the Shinjuku Bondage Bar. From 1999 he began learning kinbaku from him and organized weekly performances for him at the Master’s Bar in Roppongi.
On April 1, 2000, Osada Steve (who, by all indications, went by another name at the time) turned his photo studio into a space for his master’s shows. This was the birth of Studio SIX.
On January 20, 2001, Osada Eikichi suffered a stroke in the morning and gave his last performance that night, held up by two men. He was hospitalized and, after a few months in various care homes, died on September 12, 2001 (year 13 of the Heisei era). On November 23 a memorial was held at Roppongi Jail, attended by Osada Kazumi (長田一美), Osada Steve, Aoi Marie (first generation), Ito Mai and Sakurada Denjiro, among others.
The last days of this great master were sad, and they show how hard it is to devote oneself to this kind of activity in Japan and how tough it is to reach old age without social protection.
Osada Steve, despite his European origins, took on the challenge and the honor of preserving his master’s memory.
As Osada Steve himself recalls, his master told him: “When I die, you must perform my shows until you master them one hundred percent. Then find your own style.”
To honor his memory, every September 12 he holds a Kinbaku Live Satsueikai with a limited number of in-person places and a variable number of online places.
In 2021 (year 3 of the Reiwa era), for the 20th anniversary of his death, the 634th Kinbaku Live Satsueikai was held, with performances by Osada Steve with Nekoze and by Yagami Ren with Kanno Hana. The event combined twenty in-person places at Studio SIX with ninety online via Zoom, a format that had gained acceptance during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and the recording was available to participants for thirty days.
After Osada Eikichi’s death, several people around him began to consider creating some kind of association to carry on his work.
And so, shortly after his death, the Osada-ryu (長田流) was formally presented, led by Osada Steve and Osada Kazumi.
During its first years there was considerable controversy over whether a foreigner (Osada Steve is German) should inherit the name of one of the great masters of shibari. At the time, a woman, Osada Kazumi, a student of the master, was also put forward as official successor. She had been his stage partner for some fifteen years, and in September 2001 she took over the Osada Seminar.
Along with this inherited name came certain rights to use his name, brand and content. The fact that Steve was a man possibly weighed more in the final decision than his nationality.
Over the years, Osada Steve shaped a distinctive style, different from those of his masters but deeply rooted in the past and in nostalgia for the wild Showa-era nights in Roppongi.
This is how he himself describes his way of understanding shibari and kinbaku:
For me, this way of tying is devotion. It brings calm to my mind. It is like a release. It is the compression, the helplessness and the pain. All of that takes up the space in my head where thoughts would otherwise be.
They are anchor points I can focus on so intensely that everything around me disappears. The others in the room no longer exist. Only this situation and the feelings you trigger.
It is liberating because I haven’t had the responsibility for a long time. I can let it happen. That also means I can allow myself desire and passion, no matter who else is present. Boundaries no longer seem to exist. It is like a gust that hits me completely unexpectedly, and I have no idea where it comes from.
It is no less intimate than Yukimura-ryu, but I can find safety in the ropes and in the helplessness. You don’t submit; you are subdued. For me, personally, it is much easier.
— Osada Steve
And although it is true that for many years he centered his style on the concept of muga (無我), in recent years, and especially after the forced closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, he has turned his style into an amalgam of everything he finds along the way.
The Osada-ryu has licensed instructors in Japan, Austria and Germany.
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