Hishi

What is hishi?

Hishi (Japanese 菱, “diamond”) is a rope pattern of connected diamonds across the torso, laid according to the Japanese rope tradition. In full the tie is called hishinawa shibari. A hishi fixes almost nothing in place and is mainly meant to draw the body. It often gets lumped together with kikkou, which strictly speaking makes hexagons rather than diamonds.

Where the word hishi comes from

From a water plant with diamond-shaped leaves.

菱 is the Japanese word for the water caltrop, whose floating leaves are diamond-shaped, and that’s how it also became the word for the diamond itself. That same diamond sits in the name Mitsubishi: 三 mitsu is three, 菱 hishi is water caltrop, and the company’s logo is drawn after the plant. In feudal Japan the sharp fruits were also used as a caltrop, by the way, sharp enough to go through the sole of a straw sandal.

The pattern itself doesn’t come from the bedroom. The Japanese encyclopedia describes how this way of tying originally served for large, heavy bales, rice bales for instance: ropes that only cross over let a bale like that shift and leak, and a net of polygons doesn’t. In the Edo period the same net was used to transport prisoners.

What a hishi does and doesn’t do

Fix little in place, show a lot.

The Japanese entry says it without frills: a kikkou or hishi tie gives little sense of being held, and that’s exactly why it’s used so much, because it’s beautiful. The ropes sink into the flesh and set off breasts, waist, belly and buttocks. What carries the pattern is symmetry, and that’s also the hardest part of it. Every diamond has to be the same size as its neighbor, or the image pulls crooked.

At the bottom the vertical line turns into a rope between the legs. There’s often a knot in it, and that’s the spot where a decorative pattern suddenly becomes something else.

What to watch for with a hishi

• Don’t count on someone lying tied in it. A hishi is a pattern, not a restraint; if you want to take away freedom of movement, a separate tie comes on top.
• Lay the first three diamonds with a ruler in your head, because crooked spacing at the bottom you won’t pull straight again at the top.
• Discuss the knot in the crotch rope before you lay it, not while it’s already in place.
• Check that a finger still fits under every wrap, even with a tie that only needs to be beautiful.

Where this fits on my site

Do you want to see once what rope does to your silhouette without being tied to anything right away? Then that’s one of the calmest ways to start with bondage. The page on the BDSM date explains how we discuss that beforehand.

Sources

• 亀甲縛り (kikkou shibari). Japanese-language Wikipedia. Supplies the distinction that strictly speaking only hexagons on the body are called kikkou shibari and diamonds hishinawa shibari, and that the two are often lumped together because of the turtle-shell look of the whole; further that the tie gives little sense of being held and is used a lot precisely for its looks, that the rope is always laid symmetrically, that the vertical diamond line turns into a crotch rope at the bottom which sometimes gets a knot, and that the technique was originally used for rice bales and later for transporting prisoners in the Edo period. This article rests on two book titles and nothing else; it’s used here only for terminology and description, not for a safety claim.
• Japanese bondage. English-language Wikipedia. Supplies the description of hishi as a tie with diamond shapes, the name hishi-kikkou for the full-body variant, the point that manga made the pattern popular, the description of kikkou as a tie that ends up as a turtle motif on the upper torso, the mention of karada as the Japanese word for body used in the West, and the Japanese spelling 菱縄縛り alongside 亀甲縛り.
• Water caltrop. English-language Wikipedia. Supplies the meaning of 菱 (hishi) as water caltrop, the plant’s diamond-shaped floating leaves, the origin of the name and the Mitsubishi emblem as “three diamonds” or “three water caltrops” from 三 (mitsu, three) and 菱 (hishi), and the use of the sharp fruits in feudal Japan as a substitute for iron caltrops, sharp enough to go through the sole of a straw sandal.

Related terms

• Bondage. The practice hishi is a decorative part of, with the binding variants alongside.
• Breast bondage. The ropework around the chest a hishi often builds on.
• Hemp rope. The material this pattern is traditionally laid in.
• Friction. The clamp that holds every diamond in place as long as the tie isn’t pulled tight.
• Asanawa. The Japanese word for the hemp ropework hishi comes out of.
• Gote shibari. The arm tie that in Japanese rope usually goes on before a hishi.
• Harness. The Western counterpart of a rope harness across the torso.
• Karada. The harness a hishi is usually laid in; the karada is the harness, hishi the drawing in it.
• Shibari. The Japanese rope tradition this pattern comes from.
• Shinju. The chest harness a hishi often ends up in.