You can listen to this musing here, or read it below.
Rope bar in Tokyo’s red-light district a few years ago, just before COVID hit the planet. The room is tiny, a bar with a handful of seats and two tatamis arrange as a tying spot. SM accessories, vintage porn posters and a collection of cosplay dresses and kimonos are cluttering the walls. The entrance fee is expensive, but it includes all you can eat and drink for the night, and most customers stay all night. By now, I know the bartender and owner, and he happily greets me for coming back.
I’m there with a lover. We randomly met in Bali a few years ago, and for some reason, the chance has it that we are in Tokyo simultaneously. She is the rootless wild child, travelling the world alone since her late teens. So she is also far from the traditional submissive norms that Japanese women are supposed to embody. We have rented a room for the night at the cheesy love hotel around the corner, as I am staying in the countryside far outside Tokyo. It reminds me of the years working here when spending whole nights out drinking and singing karaoke with my colleague and only sleeping a few hours at a train station shuttle hotel or in an internet cafe private room.
This night I have made a date with Nuit de Tokyo. A Frenchmen legend in the kinbaku scene from studying with many of the now dying great teachers. I previously wrote about him in the text Being bakushi. He is giving me a private lesson, even if he wouldn’t say that; he comes from the generation when shibari is “stolen” and not taught. So we will spend time together, talk, drink and eat, and maybe do some rope, and perhaps I’ll steal some tiny bits of knowledge from him.
My lover being a punk backpacker, wears her DrMartins and an oversized hoodie. And is obviously very far from the traditional images of a secretary, schoolgirl or geisha. So my friend suggests that maybe she should borrow one of the outfits from the wall. To be more comfortable on the tatami floor. So she picks a flowery silk kimono and starts to undress in the middle of the bar. It’s a kinky rope bar, and we are all sex-positive kinksters, after all. But no, she is quickly directed towards the toilet to have some privacy.
Nuit de Tokyo helps her probably arrange the kimono to cover her neck, wrists, ankles and collar bones as it’s the most obvious thing in the world. And this is where my thievery starts. As the most senior person in the room, he shows that being correctly dressed is the way to be. He could be directly out of a business meeting with his nice suit and casually loosened tie. However, no one suggests that he undress to be comfortable on the floor. In comparison, except for her panties under the smooth silk fabric, she is naked—only a thin barrier protecting her vulnerability.
We have a drink and some snacks while we casually talk. My lover is getting more and more silent, retreating into her experience, and I’m sure that she can feel the coldness from the metal barstool. Another ten minutes pass. “Now you can tie her”, he says to me. And we move over to the tatamis. As we get more intimate, she can feel the heat from my body radiating compared to the room that suddenly feels so much colder. The silky fabric moves on her body as my rope wraps around her. Randomly or by faith revealing a tiny inch of her skin. “Look what beautiful skin she has”, he comments. The bartender and I examine, and she blushes.
The whole situation is created. By asking her to wear the kimono. By telling her to dress in the bathroom. By everyone else being so dressed differently. And she loves it. She feels safe and vulnerable at the same time. And she has everyone’s attention on her. The situation would be completely different if she started naked. Tying rope is like telling a story, and so is undressing your partner. It is the transformation from covered to exposed that is the point. And that makes a tiny inch of bare skin so much more erotic.
A concept commonly discussed in the feminist philosophy that I read is “the male gaze”, like in Roslyn Wallach Bologh book about Max Weber and Klaus Theweleit book about Male Fantasies. The idea of using one’s position of power to turn others into objects of pleasure and denying them the opportunity to compete in the patriarchal society. There is an excellent meme (that I can’t find any more) about “what if kinkster would sexualize their workplace as vanilla people do”. And this is what I muse about over and over again, that consciously and consensually using these social dynamics makes us more resilient against them in everyday life.
Of course, this way of tying rope includes a lot of play with sexuality, power and vulnerability. And I think this is something niche that some people (including me) find fascinating. It’s something that I almost always do in my personal sessions and something I like to offer people who pay me for private sessions consciously. What people wear says a lot about their intention for rope bondage if they show up in their most cosy onesie, body tight yoga clothes, sexy lingerie, or vintage Japanese kimono. And similarly what I decide to wear as the person tying.
Part of establishing the power dynamic is controlling what is in focus. It can be done crudely by using pain or pleasure to direct attention. Or simply by moving the gaze and the most gentle touch of the fingertips. Sometimes even touching is unnecessary, but the presence, moisture and heat radiating from a hand hovering just above skin contact are enough. The smaller the area but more intense is the experience, in my experience. Like the sensitive skin of the neck, wrists and collar bone that Nuit de Tokyo was careful covering that night in Tokyo, only to later expose them again with complete focus.