That Rope Top Rush

Give Rope Bondage a Try…You Just Might Love It

Photo by Evelyn Chong, courtesy of Pexels

It’s hard for me to believe now, but five years ago I had never heard of shibari.

Don’t get me wrong. I was vaguely familiar with the idea of using rope for bondage. Though to my uninitiated self it was vaguely related to fuzzy handcuffs and limited in my imagination to attaching a willing partner to the bed frame.

But somewhere during my adventures I ran across pictures that depicted something substantially more interesting. The ones that drew me in tended to be artistically arranged and had a certain precision, what bondage photographer and shibari luminary Mark Varley would call “neat rope”. I would also see these women (along with a few men) dangling while enmeshed in these knotted masses of rope and wonder “what on earth is that about?”. I wanted to know more.

If you are not aware, shibari is the Japanese art of rope bondage; the word translates as “to tie decoratively”. It originated in the late 19th century in a related art known as kinbaku (“tightly binding”) and was popularized by the artist Seiu Ito. Ostensibly it has its roots in the ritualistic ties the Japanese developed to securely bind prisoners. With the benefit of hindsight it seems pretty inevitable that someone was going to get righteously turned on.

The person doing the tying is typically called a “rope top” or “rigger” and the receiver of all that looped and lassoed goodness is the “rope bottom” — though there are many other names people choose to use (and debate over): rope bunny, rope model, and others I’m sure.

One of the most important factors in any bondage is the trust a partner places in you, and the centrality of informed consent. Communicate clearly with each other about exactly what your expectations are.

A central idea in all these forms of Japanese bondage is that rope is a medium. It can be straightforward artistic decoration or a practical way of cradling and suspending a person’s weight, but it can also symbolically reflect a connection between the person tying and the person tied. Frankly I find the difference between shibari and kinbaku to be a bit academic. Shibari seems the less confusing to me: I continually find myself trying to say kinbaku and ending up saying kabuki (as…