Jibaku

What is jibaku?

Jibaku (自縛, English: self-bondage) is the Japanese word for binding yourself with no one else there. The character 自 means “self”, 縛 means “bind”: the same character that’s in shibari and kinbaku. In Dutch that practice is called autobondage. In ordinary Japanese, jibaku sounds mostly figurative, namely being stuck in your own statements.

Where the word jibaku comes from

From ordinary Japanese vocabulary, not from the rope scene. The Digital Daijisen, the standard dictionary from publisher Shogakukan, gives jibaku two meanings: binding yourself, and getting stuck because you’re locked into your own statements. That second one is the meaning a Japanese reader hears first.

So the rope is in there as a metaphor, and that’s old. The four-character word 自縄自縛, binding yourself with your own rope, appears in the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten with a source from 1902: Jigoku no hana by Nagai Kafū. It meant then what it still means now, namely someone who can’t move for their own rules.

The literal meaning has its own encyclopedia entry in Japanese. It describes jibaku as bondage you do on your own, without a partner, and puts the risk higher than bondage with someone present, with breath play as the most dangerous combination. What it doesn’t mention is a knot, a pattern, or a position. Unlike gote shibari, hishi, or futomomo, jibaku describes no technique at all. The word only says something about who’s in the room.

Why people say jibaku instead of autobondage

Because it sounds Japanese and so seems to belong to the rope tradition. Anyone learning shibari picks up a word list along the way: asanawa, bakushi, dorei. Jibaku slides in among them on its own.

Only it gives no extra grip. The risk and the way out are exactly the same for jibaku as for autobondage, and in the word list of Japanese rope terms that the English-language reference on Japanese bondage gives, the word doesn’t even appear. Anyone who meets jibaku just reads “done alone”.

Where this fits on this site

Jibaku is by definition done alone, so it isn’t something I can do with you. What does exist is the reverse route: the same surrender with someone there who ties the knots, watches, and takes the rope off again. How an evening like that runs and what we agree on beforehand is on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• 自縛（じばく）. デジタル大辞泉, Shogakukan, via Weblio. Provides the two dictionary meanings of 自縛: “自分で自分を縛ること” (binding yourself) and “自分の主張した意見にとらわれて、思うままに振る舞えない状態に陥ること” (getting stuck because you’re locked into your own position).
• 自縄自縛（じじょうじばく）. 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and デジタル大辞泉, Shogakukan, via Kotobank. Provides the literal reading “自分の縄で自分を縛る意”, the figurative meaning, and the earliest source: Jigoku no hana by Nagai Kafū, 1902.
• 自縛. Japanese-language Wikipedia. Provides the description “自縛（じばく）はボンデージを相方なしに一人で行う行為” and the finding that the risk is higher than bondage itself, with 窒息プレイ (breath play) as particularly dangerous.
• Japanese bondage. Wikipedia. Provides the word list of Japanese rope terms in which jibaku doesn’t appear, and the meanings of 縛り (binding) and 緊縛 (tight binding) where the character 縛 recurs.

Related terms

• Self-bondage. The same solo practice, with the three Dutch newspaper sources from 1987.
• Autobondage. The same practice again, with the escape mechanisms, the nerve-injury figures, and the safety call.
• Bondage. The broader entry that jibaku is one form of, namely the one without a second person.
• Bakushi. The Japanese word for the one who binds, and so exactly the role missing in jibaku.
• Asanawa. The rope the Japanese tradition works with, with the same 縄 reading as in 自縄自縛.
• Breath control. The combination the Japanese-language entry singles out at jibaku as particularly dangerous.
• Predicament bondage. The same principle with a second person: moving costs, staying still costs too.