As there begins to be a faint glimmer of light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, people in the world of Kinbaku continue to struggle with how to keep practicing, experiencing and enjoying this most intimate and sensual of BDSM arts. 

For us at the Spring Tiger Ryu we have been fortunate to have many dedicated students who continue to take their classes online, new students who are interested in learning how to do self-ties or work with their partners, as well as Zoom classes devoted to Kinbaku art and history.

In addition, we continue to do our second life events. Recently we celebrated Valentine’s Day with an event that we have done every year for the past few years at our dojo called ValenTied.

This is our most romantic event when we concentrate on the sensuous side of Kinbaku, the precious connection between rope tops and ropes bottoms and the techniques of seductive, caressing Kinbaku, especially those perfected by the great Yukimura Haruki sensei.

The pictures and brief embedded video depicted here, which were so beautifully executed under very difficult conditions by one of my best students Remy K Thane and his lovely and expressive partner blue and then edited with great skill by Remy and my talented colleague zElement, were shown at the second life event.

We had an unusually large audience from both Europe and the United States in attendance, which only goes to prove how hungry people who love rope are for any chance to experience it during these difficult times.

The video was especially challenging to show on second life but, thanks to zElement’s connections with a brilliant engineer we were able to screen in its entirety this very romantic and expressive documentation of a simple Kinbaku pattern (Tasuke shibari) to an appreciative audience.