Aotsuki Nagare 蒼月流

Aotsuki Nagare (蒼月流), also written Nagare Aotsuki, is a kinbakushi and bar owner in Osaka who heads the ARCADIA group of SM bars. The group’s staff page gives Aotsuki the title of 総帥 (head of the group) and lists two affiliated bars in Shinjuku, Tokyo: ARCADIA TOKYO, run as a franchise, and Titty Twister.

Bars and circles

ARCADIA’s home page traces the group’s history to the SM circle ALCATRAZ, which Aotsuki started in 2000. Its success led three years later to the opening of ARCADIA, an SM bar in Osaka, followed by ARCADIA TOKYO in Shinjuku in 2009 and Titty Twister, the group’s third bar, in 2016. In a 2015 interview with Kinbaku Today, Aotsuki said the circle began as a place where small groups interested in BDSM could meet at a time when they had few places to talk about their interests or to find partners, with Aotsuki acting as host.

In a 2018 article for Kodansha’s Gendai Business about ARCADIA TOKYO, the nonfiction writer Kanno Kumiko described the Osaka bar as the forerunner of the Tokyo one and named Aotsuki as owner of the Osaka branch. Kanno recounts that Doyama Tessin, later the owner of the Tokyo bar, met Aotsuki as a customer in Osaka and was told that differing kinds of sadism were only natural and that Doyama was welcome at the bar; Doyama told Kanno that until then the feeling had been one of being alone in the world.

Aotsuki told Kinbaku Today that Shibunawa-kai originally had four organizers and named Nawanojyoh, Kazami Ranki and Aoitama as people Aotsuki was close to in the Osaka and Kansai BDSM and kinbaku communities. Aotsuki told Kinbaku Today that it was meant to bring kinbaku and BDSM enthusiasts in Osaka and the Kansai region together regardless of anyone’s business interests, and that it had four organizers because the area had fewer specialists than Tokyo.

Approach

Asked in 2015 about influences, Aotsuki said that Aotsuki’s style is a personal one but named, in part, the rope of the late Akechi Denki, seen in person. The interviewer raised Aotsuki’s use of kotobazeme, low-voiced talk during a scene, which Aotsuki called a kind of psychological kinbaku that carries the rope on into words and also lets the tier read the partner’s responses. Aotsuki contrasted Osaka, where kinbaku is mostly part of BDSM, with Tokyo, where many people take it up as an art without BDSM, and advised beginners to keep going through the slow early stage and to put communication first.

Writing

Honto lists Aotsuki as the author of 新・SM的幸福論, published by Sanwa Shuppan in the SANWA MOOK series.