Futomomo

What is a futomomo?

Futomomo (Japanese: 太もも, ‘thigh’) is a Japanese leg tie in which the lower leg is bound against the upper leg, so the knee stays bent and the leg can no longer be straightened. The tie runs in several wraps around thigh and calf at once. There is no English word for it; the scene uses the Japanese one.

How a futomomo works

By folding one leg double and tying that fold in place.

The calf comes against the thigh, and the rope goes around both in several parallel wraps, in the common version split over two bands, one above the knee and one below it. Those two bands hold the fold closed. Several wraps side by side also spread the pressure over a wider surface, and that is exactly what Khodulev and colleagues recommend to prevent nerve compression.

That bearing point is also its second function. In ropework on the ground, such as floorwork, the futomomo is a positioning tie: it sets how someone sits or lies. As soon as a line is hung from it, it becomes a lifting point, and then the tied leg goes up while the rest of the body still has support.

Why people like the futomomo

For what it takes away, not for what it adds.

A tied leg takes away, all at once, the option to walk off, stand up, or close your legs, and for most people that realization lands harder than a cuff around the wrists. For the person tying it is a rewarding shape as well. The futomomo looks good, goes on fast, and can be checked with two hands.

A leg carries more weight than an arm, and the nerve underneath feels that too.

What to watch for

Watch the front of the thigh. In Cureus, Khodulev and colleagues report that tying around the thigh can repeatedly bring on sensory disturbance at the front of the upper leg, together with an unstable feeling around the knee. That fits compression of the femoral nerve, which the same authors say causes loss of strength when extending the knee and flexing the hip, and which classically gets pinched when the hip is bent and turned outward. Exactly the position a futomomo creates.

So while tying, ask for movement in the toes and the foot, and release at any tingling, numbness, or loss of strength. Don’t wait to see whether it passes.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to know how rope on a leg feels without needing any skill of your own, that belongs on a BDSM date. That page shows what gets discussed beforehand and how far the rope goes that evening.

Sources

• Acute Radial Compressive Neuropathy: The Most Common Injury Induced by Japanese Rope Bondage. Khodulev, Klimko, Charnenka, Zharko & Khoduleva, Cureus 15(5), e39588, 2023. Provides the finding that tying around the thigh repeatedly brought on sensory disturbance at the front of the upper leg and an unstable feeling around the knee, and the description of femoral neuropathy with loss of strength in knee extension and hip flexion, classically from compression when the hip is bent and turned outward.
• Japanese bondage. Wikipedia. Provides the listing of the futomomo among the Japanese ties, described as “leg, calf to thigh 太もも”. Several neighboring paragraphs of that article themselves carry a citation-needed request; it is used here only for that listing.
• 太もも. Wiktionary. Provides the ordinary Japanese meaning of 太もも as ‘thigh’, that is upper leg, with 太股 and 太腿 as alternative spellings. Wiktionary is written by volunteers and is used here only for the word meaning.

Related terms

• Bondage. The overarching term; the futomomo is one of its classic ties.
• Floorwork. The context in which a futomomo is most often tied, and where the difference between ground and suspension is explained.
• Asanawa. The natural-fiber rope this tie is usually made with.
• Double column tie. The same idea on a smaller scale: binding two parts side by side.
• Friction. What keeps the wraps of a futomomo in place.
• Partial suspension. The form in which this leg tie goes from a positioning tie to a lifting point.
• Shibari. The tradition the futomomo comes from.
• Semenawa. The heavy, tormenting style in which this tie appears most often.