Nawashi

What is a nawashi?

Nawashi (縄師) is the Japanese title for someone who practices tying with rope as a craft: literally a rope craftsman, usually called a rope master. The title came into use in Japan for the performers who appeared live with rope from the sixties on. Alongside nawashi there is bakushi, with almost the same meaning.

Why “rope maker” is wrong

Because 師 marks not a maker but a practitioner.

The Digital Daijisen treats 師 as a suffix in its own right: attached to a word for a technique or art, it signals that someone is a specialist in it, with 医師 (doctor) and 理髪師 (barber) as examples. The kanji entry adds a whole row: 絵師 painter, 技師 engineer, 仏師 Buddhist sculptor, 猟師 hunter, 漁師 fisherman. In none of those words does someone make the thing that stands in front; they work with it.

The translation “a maker of rope” circulates broadly nonetheless, on this site too until today. The current text of the English-language encyclopedia entry on Japanese bondage says it differently and says it right: the performers who appeared live from the sixties on, among them Eikichi Osada, are called nawashi, “rope master,” or bakushi, from kinbakushi.

What the title does not say

That there is someone behind it.

Jisho gives 縄師 exactly one meaning: rope artist (in sexual bondage). Kotobank, which opens up the Daijisen and the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, does not even know the word. Unlike doctor or fisherman, nawashi is thus no profession that exists in the general dictionaries. It is a scene title that carries itself, and no one issues it. Weighing what someone is worth to you therefore goes not through the title but through one question: does that person mention on their own how long a tie stays on, where the nerves run and how fast the rope can come off?

Where this fits on this site

I do not call myself a nawashi. I do work with rope, though, and what is and is not possible with me is on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• 師（シ）. Kotobank, with the entry from the Digital Daijisen (Shogakukan). Yields the treatment of 師 as a noun “someone who teaches knowledge or art, master, teacher” and as a suffix that, attached to a word for a technique or art, signals that someone is a specialist in it, with 医師 (doctor) and 理髪師 (barber) as examples; the kanji entry yields the series 医師, 絵師, 技師, 仏師, 山師, 猟師 and 漁師 under the description “someone with a specialized skill.”
• 縄師 (なわし). Jisho.org, with the data from JMdict. Yields the only meaning recorded there for 縄師: rope artist (in sexual bondage). It also yields, because Kotobank has no entry 縄師, the finding that the word is not recorded outside the scene dictionaries.
• Japanese bondage. English-language Wikipedia. Yields that the performers who began giving live SM shows with heavy rope bondage from the sixties on, among them Eikichi Osada, are today called nawashi (“rope master”) or bakushi (from kinbakushi, “bondage master”).

Related terms

A nawashi works within shibari, the page where the tradition and the risks are.

• Bakushi. The other title for almost the same thing, with its origin in kinbakushi.
• Kinbaku. The practice the title belongs to.
• Asanawa. The rope worked with, and why the thickness matters.
• Rigger and rope top. The Western scene words for the same role, the first with the emphasis on the technique and the second on the role in the scene.