Bakushi

What is a bakushi?

Bakushi (縛師) is the Japanese title for a master of kinbaku, shortened from kinbakushi (緊縛師). The suffix -shi marks a craftsman or teacher, the way it does in other Japanese job titles. Alongside bakushi there is nawashi (縄師), the same title but built on the word for rope.

Where does the word bakushi come from?

The title grows out of Japanese practice itself. The description of Japanese bondage puts them side by side: the performers who appeared live from the 1960s on are called nawashi, “rope master,” or bakushi, from kinbakushi, “bondage master.” Practitioners get referred to by both words. Why “rope maker” goes around as a translation of nawashi, and why it doesn’t hold up, sits on nawashi.

The difference between the two is vague in practice. Where Japanese practitioners do draw a line, that line is regional and personal rather than fixed.

What kinbaku means in plain Japanese

Something completely ordinary: binding tightly. The Digital Daijisen describes 緊縛 (kinbaku) as きつくしばること, binding firmly, and gives as an example sentence someone who is “bound” by existing views. The Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten keeps it to binding hard and cites a passage from Meiroku Zasshi number 8 from 1874, in which Tsuda Mamichi describes how the feet of Chinese women were bound painfully tight from a young age.

So there is nothing erotic in the word itself; that layer only gets added in the twentieth century. Jisho lists the three meanings accordingly: binding tightly, sexual bondage, and Japanese bondage. So anyone who calls themselves bakushi carries, in Japanese, the literal title of someone who ties firmly.

What a bakushi title is not

There is no exam and no register. No organization hands out bakushi either. Put the title on a profile in Europe and you do that on your own authority.

That doesn’t make the title worthless, but it does make it something other than a diploma. What you get from someone shows in how that person talks about safety. Khodulev and colleagues show in Cureus that in 90 percent of the injured in their group the radial nerve was affected, and their advice is about spreading pressure, sparing nerve paths, and keeping a suspension short. Someone who brings that up unprompted is more useful to you than someone with a title. That’s how I look at it myself when I work with rope on a BDSM date: the title isn’t what counts, what someone does with your limits is.

Sources

• Japanese bondage. Wikipedia. Provides the origin of bakushi as an abbreviation of kinbakushi (“bondage master”), the rendering of nawashi as “rope master,” and the use of both words for the performers who appeared live from the 1960s on.
• 緊縛（きんばく）. Kotobank, with the entries from the Digital Daijisen (Shogakukan), the Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten and the Fukyūban Jitsū. Provides the description きつくしばること (“binding firmly”) with the example sentence about being bound to existing values, the description かたくしばること (“binding hard”) with the source from Meiroku Zasshi number 8 (1874), Tsuda Mamichi’s Fukushōron, on the tight binding of the feet of Chinese women, and the gloss 緊束.
• 緊縛 (きんばく). Jisho.org, with the data from JMdict. Provides the three meanings of 緊縛 side by side: binding tightly, tight binding, (sexual) bondage and Japanese bondage, and the entry 緊縛師 (kinbakushi) with the translation nawashi.
• Acute Radial Compressive Neuropathy: The Most Common Injury Induced by Japanese Rope Bondage. Khodulev, Klimko, Charnenka et al., Cureus 15(5), e39588, 2023. Provides the share of the radial nerve in rope injuries and the recommendations on spreading pressure and limiting duration.

Related terms

• Asanawa. The natural-fiber rope a bakushi works with, and why the thickness matters.
• Nawashi. The same title built on the word for rope, with what the suffix 師 exactly marks.
• Shibari and kinbaku are the other close neighbors of bakushi with a page of their own.