SM show
A live stage performance of sadomasochistic play with rope bondage at its center, which took shape in Japan in the 1960s and flourished in strip theaters and SM venues in the 1980s.
An SM show is a live performance of SM play for an audience, in Japan usually built around rope bondage. Wikipedia credits performers such as Osada Eikichi with starting live SM shows heavy on rope bondage in the 1960s. Writing in Kinbaku Today, the researcher and bakushi Sin follows Osada through the late 1970s and 1980s, performing in strip theaters, hotels and SM salons with rope, suspension, whipping and wax play, until his retirement show in December 1989. The same history records a nationwide crackdown on strip theaters in 1978 and a police call to one of Osada’s photo sessions that ended in his arrest. Ugo of SMpedia recalls that Akechi Denki’s shows of the same era also used wax play.