Articles tagged: Bakushi (縛師)

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.

The effects of the lockdown and the halt to public activities caused by COVID hit the Japanese professional shibari industry extremely hard.

By now, Hajime Kinoko’s name is well known, even beyond the shibari scene.

Saikatsu’s testimony, translated from Japanese, on the Bakuyukai and the people around it: Harutokyo, Kanna, Jubei, Matsui and Kitagawa.

Hourai Kasumi (蓬莱かすみ) was born in 1980 (year 55 of the Showa era) in Aichi Prefecture. A rigger based in Nagoya, she began her professional career in the late nineties and is a leading artist of her generation, recognized internationally.

Kamijo Saki (上条早樹)—dominatrix, shibari artist, musician and event producer, whose name is also written 神條咲—moves easily between the worlds of SM, kinbaku and punk rock, with the confidence of someone who has built her own universe from scratch.

Kamui Jubei was born on September 13, 1959 (year 34 of the Showa era) and is a respected figure of classic kinbaku. He describes himself as kugutsu no kinbakushi (傀儡の緊縛師), “the rope puppeteer.”

An Osaka native and a regular event organizer in Tokyo, Kazami Ranki is a well-known name on the Japanese shibari circuit.

Miura Takumi was a leading rigger of the Heisei era and yet little known outside Japan.

Naka Akira (奈加あきら) was born on January 4, 1959 (year 34 of the Showa era) in Niigata. He discovered the world of shibari relatively late: around 1990, in the early years of the Heisei era, when he was about thirty.

In 2014, Shigonawa Bingo published a text inspired by the civic rules of the Edo period, adapted to the world of shibari.

A Japanese bakushi (縛師), he was born in 1930 (year 5 of the Showa era) in Asakusa, Tokyo, and died on September 9, 2013 (year 25 of the Heisei era), at the age of 83. His professional career spanned almost 60 years, during which he took part in the origin, development and spread of what we now understand as shibari kinbaku.

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).

Randa Mai (乱田舞) may not be a very familiar name to those of you who are newer to shibari. But for me he was a key figure in my early days, with a marked influence on how I lived, understood and practiced shibari back then (at the start of this century).

Shigonawa Bingo was one of the singular figures of the contemporary Japanese kinbaku scene.

Tenma Haru (天馬ハル), a cheerful Japanese rigger, was born on May 20, 1975 (year 50 of the Showa era) in Kanagawa Prefecture. He has blended classic and modern concepts into a style of his own, Tenma-ryu (天馬流), which explicitly separates kinbaku from sadomasochism and steers it toward emotional connection between two people.

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.

A historic and popular Tokyo rigger (kinbakushi), she is known for running the bars -UBU- (初心) and -mitsu- (密蜜) with Shigonawa Bingo (紫護縄びんご), but above all for being the soul of Onawa Asobi, a festival devoted to “non-professional” shibari that has crossed borders and strengthened ties between continents.

Yukimura Haruki (1948–2016) was one of the leading Japanese riggers, for his influence, his output and his singularity.

Beyond his recognition as a kinbaku master, Yukimura Haruki (雪村春樹) should also be remembered as a creator with a personal vision that was, in its day, radical.