not only interesting - but educational too...

Winding up in bondage
By Giovanni Fazio
Special to The JapanTimes
Thursday, May 22, 2008

"Bakushi" contains three lengthy kinbaku scenes amid the chat, and the viewer will definitely feel something here, be it shock, arousal or bemusement. Yukimura, panting in a deliberately embarrassing way (for the model), deftly winds his hemp ropes around the curvy Sumire, and as the ropes get tighter and the positions more stressful, she starts to show clear signs of losing it. And yet, she never does: That is the skill of nawashi, to take a partner to the brink of endurance — and release — but not over.

The great bakushi Akechi Denki — who passed away last year — once defined shibari (in an interview on the Web site of Tokyo Bound) as "communication between two people using the medium of rope." Yukimura echoes this sentiment in the film, saying how "shibari is communication . . . Once I begin tying, I'm in deep concentration on the changes in expression of their faces or bodies." Arisue says the relationship between "bakushi and model" is like that between doctor and patient, a "therapist." Hiroki includes all this in the film without commentary, but when interviewed, he admits to thinking that his subjects are being a bit coy. "OK, so he ties the girl up, he learns a few things about her, he's a therapist. But it's not just that!

What about the ero (sex)? They're just making it seem too clean. Sure there's part of him that's a therapist, but there's also part that's not."

Listening to the bakushi talk, it's clear that the kinbaku sessions, while on one level clearly domination and submission, are also a mutual fulfillment of needs. The bakushi need to tie; all three men describe being turned on from an early age by pictures of women bound in rope, a primal reaction before they were even old enough to understand it. It's also clearly an erotic impulse. Arisue muses, "I think it's not f**king, but it is sex." Nureki's model Sugiyama describes the feeling of having her breasts constricted by rope as "like I don't need to f**k for a week."

Overall, though, the women's feelings are much more obscure than those of the men. What does the model get from submitting to the rope? The women in the film can barely describe it: "Hard to explain," is the mantra. Saotome describes it as "all blank, in my head. It's like being in a dream." Sumire explains how "being unable to move is scary. But I want to become even more unable to move."

A friend who worked in an S&M club, Jyuri (her club name), once described it better by saying "you find yourself wanting it, but then it's frightening when you get it. But it's the fear, the surrendering to your partner, that's a turn-on. You need to be able to trust your partner to
enjoy that fear, though."

It's clear from the film that darker psychological urges are being serviced. Uzuki, while laughing and crying simultaneously after her session of suspension and candle wax torment, mentions how she grew up abused. Sumire, when asked why she cries after the kinbaku session, turns pensive. Asked if she could be remembering something, she says "yeah, maybe" and turns away, with the saddest look in the world on her face.

Hiroki admits that even after making the film, he's not sure what drives these women. But, he adds, "when they're all tied up, unable to move, that feeling they get of release, that I can really understand. Even if it's not kinbaku, everybody gets that feeling sometimes."

As a director, though, I suspect he's an S (sadist). "Yes," he admits, "I am an S-type. People are always saying I'm really nasty on set. But that's because I'm not thinking of anything except the movie. If people say afterward I'm a jerk, well, what can you do?"
Surprisingly — perhaps because it is taken for granted — "Bakushi" never addresses the question of why Japan has such a refined, developed culture of rope. The positions the models are bound in, the precision and intricacy of the ties, the way the rope is wound around their breasts, the fetishization of such elements as tatami rooms, kimono undergarments, hemp rope — this is all Japanese.

A tart-tongued viewer would no doubt say this is because Japan, like so many Asian nations, remains a male-dominant/female-repressive society, though this ignores the equally large number of female mistresses plying their trade on male submissives. A more nuanced view would note the Japanese tendency — from flower arrangement and tea ceremony to cosplay (dressing up) and manga — to ritualize
and refine aesthetic behavior. Hiroki blames it on Japan's himo-bunka (rope culture) of always binding and tying things, right down to the elaborate kimono obi and hakama strings.

Other commentators have noted how the nawashi are like the puppet-masters in bunraku, attempting to recede into the background and focus the attention on their art.

Technique-wise, there are about 30 basic ties, and endless variations, with obscure origins, although the Edo-era police treatment of prisoners and the hojojutsu (the use of rope to take prisoners on a battlefield) are often cited as sources. Of course all nawashi will note that the well-being of a prisoner was not a high concern, whereas their techniques are all quite carefully constructed to avoid causing real injury.

Which brings us to one final concern that many people have, that kinbaku and S&M are too close to abuse or ijime (bullying) to be viewed aesthetically. "S&M has an image of being quite violent," says Hiroki. "But the fact that it's not comes from the relationships formed by S&M." He goes on to describe his documentary as a "fantasy movie" because people in it are living out taboo desires in a controlled way. And how should the viewer perceive it?

"At one film festival in Europe, a writer asked me if 'Bakushi' was an art film or an erotic film," said Hiroki. "I said,
that's for you to judge. Did it turn you on?"
"Bakushi" opens May 31 as the late show at Eurospace playing from 21:10 daily.