Many people have tried to define these concepts. On one hand “shibari” 縛り comes from the Japanese verb, to tie.  This verb is used on a regular basis, not necessarily related to SM or erotic matters. Everything related to nawa 縄 (rope) and shibari (bondage) has a meaningful influence within Japanese culture, including their history, traditional theater, religion, martial arts, going up to their very special way of defining honor and sacredness. This same word used within an SM or erotic context, could be used as a synonym of the word “kinbaku” 緊縛 ,  although tying your shoes (shibari) shouldn’t be mistaken with the sense of binding someone with clear intentions of provoking special reactions such as pleasure or shame.

I won’t be telling you what shibari/kinbaki is by my own… I’ll just tell you what the Great Masters say about it.

Akechi Denki 明智伝鬼 said: “In SM, Shibari is communication between two people using the medium of rope. It’s a connection made with rope between the hearts of two people. So the rope should embrace with love, like the arms of a mother embracing her child. The submissive has placed her entire trust in you.”

Yukimura Haruki Sensei 雪村春樹 says in MasterK’s book, The Beauty of Kinbaku: “Tying is serving the woman. To me, shibari is an emotional exchange between a man and a woman. That’s unique to Japan – to express love and emotion entirely though the medium of rope. So shibari is not how you do this or that tie, it’s how you use the rope to exchange emotions with another.”

Osada Steve Sensei 長田スティーブ says in this interview: “… In my line of work I make a clear distinction between Shibari and Kinbaku. You could say it took me eight years to get a grasp of Shibari, and I’m in my third year of trying to crack the mysteries of Kinbaku. In any case, were it not for the unique window of opportunity, the fortuitous event that Osada Eikichi Sensei chose to make me his prodigy, I would still be tying women without knowing what I was doing. My most enjoyable experiences are when doing my Kinbaku Live gigs at my own place, Studio SIX Tokyo. Because here I can take my time and develop a connection with the model, achieving some kind of emotional exchange that goes far beyond the mere technical aspects of tying. All other activities, like stage shows and most video work, I’d describe as Shibari. To me, Shibari is merely doing bondage in the Japanese style, producing ties according to Japanese aesthetics.

For a rope session to qualify as Kinbaku you need to go inside the woman, touch her soul. Again, to the naked eye or to people not working professionally in this genre, it is hard to pinpoint the differences. But that’s how I see it. To avoid misunderstanding: I am not referring to the obvious effect that rope will have on any person that enjoys being tied — call it rope sub space if you will.

He explains in here: “shibari merely describes the technical and aesthetic aspects of a traditional Japanese tie. These are the “hollow” techniques that could theoretically be applied to a life-sized doll. Since the idea of Japanese-style bondage is to achieve an emotional exchange between two people through tying, there are techniques to support such an exchange, and it then is called kinbaku.”

When someone asks Osada Steve Sensei 長田スティーブ why is Japanese Kinbaku different from western Bondage? he said: “I think this is mainly due to cultural differences. As MasterK in his latest book The Beauty Of Kinbaku so beautifully explains, the Japanese have been using rope for thousands of years. This has led, in some sections of society, to almost an obsession. If you grow up in Japan, you grow up with images of people being bound by rope. These images are part of the nation’s collective (sub)consciousness…”

[…] “On the other hand, a Japanese person looking at the same picture will automatically (mainly sub-consciously, I suppose) put the situation into some cultural context — with the subsequent fantasies drawing on a long history of using rope to punish and to shame.

Rope bondage in Japan has played such a significant role, that it even entered the language. In the Edo period, if someone got taken into custody, people would say the person received rope (o-nawa o chodai suru). You can still hear this expression in period dramas or find it in novels set in the older times. In other words, a bondage in the Japanese style, will, for a Japanese watching and for the one in rope, invoke very special emotions that are different from those in Western people. A good example are the facial expressions you get from a bound Japanese woman. Some of it comes natural, some of it is evoked through cunning manipulation or intelligent guidance by the Bakushi.

It is no surprise then, that a reverse-engineered Japanese tie applied by a Westerner to a Western woman will cause entirely different reactions — mentally, facially, as well as bodily. The gut feeling, when looking at such a pictures is, that something’s not right. To the Western eye the front part of the tie may look quite Japanese, but the subtle esthetics that come natural to the Japanese are missing.

Now, if your question was about the difference between Shibari/Kinbaku (which is Japanese) and Western-style bondage (as opposed to reverse-engineered make-to-look-like Japanese bondage), then I’d say Western bondage strikes me as more utilitarian. Something where the end result seems more important than the way (or process) of tying. But again, tying, most of all, should be fun. So as long as both protagonists are having a good time, you are welcome to tie any which way you like.”

On another interview he said: “… What I don’t appreciate are people who classify their ties as Shibari, when in fact their ties are reverse-engineered Japanese-inspired bondages. In my book, someone who has never been to Japan, someone who has never directly studied under any genuine Japanese Shibari practitioner (read: someone with a traceable lineage to one of the Shibari dynasties in Japan), someone who takes his knowledge from a picture on the Internet, or from watching a Japanese SM porn video, or from having attended a workshop that was mislabeled as a Shibari lecture, would be better off not making a fool of himself. Such a person should better describe his bondage in English words, perhaps as Japanese-inspired bondage, with emphasis on inspired….”

And here once again he says: “…It just makes me sad when I see Western people who have never been to Japan and/or who have never had a chance to seriously study within one of the Japanese rope dynasties, are labeling themselves and their work with Japanese terminology, which to my mind is a sacrilege — not to mention that such a person would be making a fool of himself.”

As a nice touch I’m leaving you the trailer video made by Master”K” to advertise his amazing book “The Beauty of Kinbaku” in which he beautifully explains his point of view about the subject:

Tsubaki