A field guide to
rope lineage

Bakushi (縛師, lit. “tying master”) is the Japanese term for a rope artist — a practitioner of kinbaku. The word denotes a person; the practice itself is kinbaku or shibari. Traditionally the title was reserved for established rope masters working professionally in twentieth-century Japan; outside Japan it is used more loosely.

Kinbaku (緊縛, lit. “tight binding”) is the Japanese art of erotic rope bondage. It descends from hojōjutsu, the Edo-period martial art of restraining prisoners with rope, and was reshaped through twentieth-century SM magazines, photography and performance into the form practised today.

The two are often used interchangeably and the line between them is contested. In broad practice: shibari (縛り) literally means “tying” and is commonly used outside Japan as an umbrella term; kinbaku (緊縛) carries a stronger sense of the erotic, ritual and emotional tradition rooted in twentieth-century Japan.

Bondage is the general Western BDSM term for consensual restraint by any means — rope, cuffs, tape, chains — with no tie to Japan or to rope specifically. Shibari and kinbaku (see above) are Japanese rope-specific terms, and usage genuinely splits: some treat them as a subset of bondage, some use all three interchangeably, and some reserve kinbaku for a fuller ritual/erotic practice against shibari as bare technique. A smaller strand of practitioners also questions non-Japanese use of the Japanese terms at all. None of these usages is settled — the atlas does not take a side.

Hojōjutsu (捕縄術) is the Edo-period martial art of arresting and restraining prisoners with rope, developed for samurai and feudal-era police. Its formal patterns and rules about cord placement fed directly into the visual vocabulary of twentieth-century kinbaku — even though the latter is an erotic / artistic practice with no enforcement function.

Nawashi (縄師, lit. “rope master”), kinbakushi (緊縛師, lit. “tight-binding master”) and bakushi (縛師, lit. “tying master” — see above) are Japanese terms for a skilled rope practitioner, generally treated as overlapping — bakushi as a contraction of kinbakushi, nawashi as the form most familiar outside Japan — though some glossaries push finer, thinly sourced distinctions (nawashi toward craft, kinbakushi toward kinbaku’s erotic tradition) and describe the titles as earned through recognition rather than self-claimed. Rigger is a separate, generic Western BDSM term for whoever is tying — materials-agnostic and functional rather than honorific. Which label fits a given practitioner is a live, unresolved disagreement, not a settled convention.

The project began as Bakushi Map. The public umbrella is now Shibari Atlas — broader than the genealogy alone — while the lineage section keeps the name Bakushi Lineage. Same dataset, same curator; only the framing widened to hold the map and events alongside the lineage.

Every person, studio, bar or venue appears only when there is enough public evidence to anchor them meaningfully — typically Nawapedia entries, ShibariStudy listings, festival rosters, interview transcripts, archived venue pages and practitioners’ own published material. Direct apprenticeship requires explicit confirmation from at least one source. The public source list is at sources.

Many bakushi do not publish their birth year, and the atlas respects that. A missing date is a deliberate gap, not an oversight. The same principle applies to legal names versus stage names — the atlas uses whatever the practitioner has publicly chosen to share.

Eleven named lineages plus an “independent” bucket: foundational (Seiu Ito and the early pioneers), Nureki, Akechi, Yukimura-ryū, Naka-ryū, Osada / Western, Kanna-ryū, Yagami-ryū, Kazami-ryū, Ichinawa-ryū and independent. Lineage is assigned by primary teacher / stated affiliation; cross-lineage practitioners are visible in their connections.

These five categories are this atlas's own classification, not an industry standard, and the lines get fuzzy in practice. Dojo marks a lineage-anchoring school — a named teacher with formal ryū structure, or at least a primary teaching anchor; studio covers physical rope/teaching spaces without that kind of lineage anchor. Bar is used for fetish/SM/salon bars even when they host kinbaku classes, while venue covers broader kink/adult spaces — dungeons, private-members clubs — where rope is just one programming strand. Community applies to an ongoing social group or scene rather than a single event, studio, publication or platform.

Yes — that is how the atlas grows. Send a correction, a missing source, or a privacy / removal request; see how to contribute for what to include. If you are the person an entry describes, just say clearly what may be published.

Structured facts — names, aliases, years, locations, categories and source URLs — are released under CC0 where legally possible. Original project prose is CC BY-SA 4.0. Third-party sources keep their own rights. See data & licensing.