Feature


The rope and the pen


Japanese kinbaku is far from the practice of being tied up for sex – it’s a pure art form. Isobel Williams regularly observes and draws its practitioners. Here, she explains the appeal bondage holds for the bound, the binder and the onlooking artist


each step of degradation and abandon as her body flushes with pain-suppressing hormones. It’s disturbing and I’m not sure I like it, but I’m drawing it – pursuing my own selfish end. As, some would say, is she. Can being tied up by someone you trust make you


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feel safe, free and more powerful than the person tying the knots? Yes, say devotees of Japanese rope bondage. I’m here as a refugee from the routine of drawing the nude in life class, where the model is solitary and static. Tis kind of bondage offers a fluid dynamic between two or sometimes three people and the shock is that it moves quickly. Bodies are rolled and trussed like veal parcels then hoisted like dockside cargo. Tonight we’re in a Victorian pub, the Flying Dutchman,


woman with a doctorate in palaeoanthropology is crying with pain. She is bound in ropes and suspended from a bamboo pole. She will have hot wax dripped on her flesh and submit to other theatrical torments inflicted by her partner.


Her face, ordinarily pretty, takes on more beauty with


in Camberwell, south London. It has been converted into a fetish venue: blacked-out windows make it look as if it was condemned six months ago. It’s aimed at devotees, not designed to reel in passing trade. Inside, all is cosy and welcoming. As I walk in I think: Alpine plant collectors’ club. Te fetish community as a whole may be regarded as the nerds of the sexual universe but they themselves dismiss Japanese rope bondage fans as the ultimate train spotters. We begin with health-and-safety for ‘bottoms’ (the ones


who are tied) from Kinky Clover. Tink about your rigor, she says. As in mortis? Or rigour of the pursuit? Oh, she means rigger – the one who ties. ‘I firmly believe an informed bottom is a more protected bottom,’ says Clover. I’m picking up the lingo. A rigger is also a top. A bottom is also a model or bunny. Te pursuit can be called kinbaku (‘tight binding’ in Japanese) or shibari (‘to tie’) – it’s adapted from Samurai techniques of restraining captives. When it comes to the spectacle I am partly complicit,


partly lost in the callous detachment of drawing. Wedged into the end of a sofa, I’m trying to find room for ink and things to dip into it: reed pens, bedraggled goose feathers, bendy wooden coffee stirrers, the end of a white man’s dreadlock


Portraits of pleasure and pain: Isobel Williams’ studies of Japanese kinbaku bondage


12 The Amorist May 2017


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