Yagami Ren (鵺神蓮), born on May 18, 1984—year 59 of the Showa era—in Katsushika (Tokyo), is a Japanese rigger known for creating the sekibaku (責縛) style and founding the Yagami Ryu shibari school.
He belongs to the generation of “young” riggers who renewed the Japanese scene at the end of the Heisei era, brought new approaches to shibari and took it out of the underground.
His style is characterized by its focus on intimate erotic experience—summed up in his personal motto: “sensual rope, beautiful tying”—although he is also recognized for the quality and spectacle of his shows and for a long career as a professional rigger in the Japanese adult industry.
His technical approach starts from the martial arts to handle the body efficiently and safely; rope is a secondary element in his style.
The result is a practice he himself defines as “tying the body to establish a bond,” which seeks to induce states of intense erotic arousal in the person being tied.
Training in traditional arts
Traditional disciplines have deeply influenced his shibari style. He practices shodo (書道, Japanese calligraphy), has extensive training in aikido (合氣道) and knows hojojutsu (捕繩術), the rope immobilization techniques of feudal Japan, which he integrates as a technical foundation in his approach to kinbaku.
Career
From adolescence he was drawn to bondage, which was part of his youthful fantasies.
At seventeen, the work of the nawashiKanna (神凪) made a decisive impression on him and became the reference that would guide his training.
In 2002 and 2003 he was part of the staff of the happening bar Succubus, run by Kanna in Ikebukuro (Tokyo), which would be his first real contact with shibari.
He kept training throughout that decade and, on January 11, 2011—year 23 of the Heisei era—he made his professional debut at Theater POO.
That same year, on December 19, he was accepted as Kanna’s deshi (弟子, apprentice). In 2012 he also began working as a rigger in the adult video industry, on a series by the director Toyoda Kaoru (豊田薫).
Between 2012 and 2013, however, a serious illness brought him to the brink of death. His convalescence and recovery were a turning point in his life which, together with the end of his relationship with Kanna on April 13, 2013—which did not end amicably—led him to rethink his priorities and his approach to shibari in depth.
After throwing himself into live shows, specialist magazines and work in the adult industry—from 2015, also alongside the director Tohjiro—in 2014 and 2015 he founded Yagami Juku (鵺神塾), a dojo devoted to studying and spreading his style, and began to define precisely what would become his personal approach: sekibaku.
Sekibaku fully emerged after his 2015 European tour, with the opening of dojos and the certification of authorized instructors in several countries. Since then he has taught workshops in Paris and Italy (2015), the United Kingdom and Spain (2016), Bulgaria and Shanghai (2018), and Taiwan and Australia (2019–2020).
In the words of Osada Steve:
“Yagami Ren is the future of shibari.”
His style and his approach to Japanese bondage are based on traditional Japanese principles combined with modern techniques and a strong sense of humor.
Yagami Ren continues to perform and teach around the world, and he sees kinbaku both as an erotic practice and as an art of connection between people.
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