Seme 責め
Japanese noun meaning torment or torture, and also responsibility; in kinbaku it names the side of rope practice concerned with enduring intensity.
Seme is the noun form of the verb semeru. Dictionaries give two groups of meaning: responsibility or blame, and torture or torment (Jisho). Rope glossaries use the second sense but keep an echo of the first: Shibari Study describes a sense of duty to suffer that a bottom accepts by agreeing to be tied. The word is older than modern rope culture. In a Kinbaku Today discussion, Ugo of SMpedia notes that Itō Seiu published studies of seme in 1928 and says he is uneasy with “torture” as a translation. Kinbakuwiki stresses that seme can be physical, emotional or verbal, not only painful. As a suffix it becomes -zeme, as in ebizeme (Andrea Ropes) or kotobazeme (Shibari Study).