Kinbaku vs shibari: the terminology
Where the words kinbaku, shibari, nawashi and bakushi come from, what they mean in Japanese, and how Western usage has shifted since the 1990s.
Two words dominate how the world talks about Japanese rope bondage: kinbaku and shibari. They are often used interchangeably, but they come from different places and carry different weight.
Kinbaku
Translated word for word, kinbaku (緊縛) is “tight binding”. Outside BDSM circles it does not suggest sexual bondage at all; within them, Wikipedia notes, it is the traditional Japanese term for artistic or erotic tying.
Shibari
Shibari (縛り) is an ordinary Japanese word for “binding” or “tying”, used for tying anything. Its use as a name for rope bondage spread in the West during the 1990s.
Dominant Guide’s overview of shibari traces the practice’s history from hojōjutsu, compares it with Western bondage, and includes a section on what the term does and does not describe.
A modern Western distinction
Some Western practitioners now split the two words, keeping shibari for rope tied mainly for its look and kinbaku for the whole practice, including its emotional and erotic side. Wikipedia notes that there is no evidence of Japanese practitioners drawing this line: it is a Western convention, not a Japanese one.
The people who tie
Nawashi (縄師) literally means “a maker of rope”, but in BDSM usage it names a professional rope artist. Bakushi (縛師) is short for kinbakushi, a master of kinbaku. Wikipedia notes that today’s kinbaku performers are often called by either name.
In some lineages these names are conferred. Shibari Dojo records that Yukimura Haruki, whose approach became the Yukimura-ryū lineage, gave a bakushi name, and with it permission to teach, to just a handful of his students.
Roots in hojōjutsu
Behind all of these words stands hojōjutsu (捕縄術), the historical technique of restraining a person with rope; constables once carried a capture rope for securing prisoners. Itō Seiu, often called the father of modern kinbaku, studied hojōjutsu and is credited with turning its forms into the beginnings of kinbaku as an art.