Kinbaku: Shibari-e, Seme-e no Ōgon Jidai 緊縛 縛り絵・責め絵の黄金時代
2023 art anthology (enlarged in 2024) of Japanese bondage and seme-e illustration, from Minomura Kō and Muku Yōji to contemporary artists.
Kinbaku: Shibari-e, Seme-e no Ōgon Jidai (“Kinbaku: The Golden Age of Bondage and Torment Pictures”) is an art book in the PAN-EXOTICA series, produced by Éditions Treville and distributed by Kawade Shobō Shinsha. The first edition, with the English title “KINBAKU Golden Age of Japanese Restrained & Torture”, appeared in April 2023 at 330 pages; an enlarged new edition of 340 pages followed in December 2024.
The publisher presents the book as a survey of bondage and seme-e (torment) pictures, which it calls an important theme of Japanese erotic art, through the work of leading illustrators. The National Diet Library lists the contributors as Minomura Kō, Ozuma Yōko, Muku Yōji, Akiyoshi Ran, Sorayama Hajime, Samura Hiroaki, Oki Shōji, Tagame Gengoroh and Kyōdō Miyabi, with birth years in its records running from 1920 to 1970.
Several of them belong to the SM magazine world covered elsewhere in this library. The publisher’s note on Ozuma Yōko (1939–2011) records early training in Japanese-style painting, a prize in a Kitan Club contest in 1965 and covers and illustrations for SM King and SM Hi-shōsetsu. Japanese Wikipedia identifies Minomura Kō as a pen name of Suma Toshiyuki, the Kitan Club editor who went on to launch Uramado, and describes Muku Yōji as a painter of bondage pictures who worked mainly for Uramado. The library reads Suma’s pen name as Minomura Kō, while the publisher’s 2024 page gives Minomura Akira.