Jonathan Ryan
Pacific Northwest rope artist working as Seattle Shibari who holds a high-level teaching license from Hajime Kinoko, co-directs the Portland Shibari Salon with Sappho and has performed in Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, Rome, London and Bangkok.
Jonathan Ryan is a rope artist, teacher and performer in the Pacific Northwest who works under the name Seattle Shibari. He runs small-group workshops in Seattle and, with Sappho, co-directs the Portland Shibari Salon, a rope studio in Portland where he also gives private lessons and rope sessions.
Training and lineage
The Portland Shibari Salon’s about page says his interest in traditional Japanese arts goes back more than forty years and has included kinbaku, ikebana flower arranging and koryū bujutsu, the classical martial traditions. The Seattle Shibari site adds that he has a background in Japanese history, culture and language and has made many extended trips to Japan over the past thirty years. The salon says he travels to Japan every year to continue his studies, and Seattle Shibari says he was classically trained in Tokyo and still travels there annually. Both sites say he holds a high-level teaching license from his mentor Hajime Kinoko; Seattle Shibari describes him as a senior-level instructor of Kinoko’s Tokyo school, Ichinawa-kai. The same page gives his rope practice as sixteen years.
Teaching
Seattle Shibari presents its classes as safe, sensual and beautiful Japanese-style rope bondage, open to all genders, body types and orientations. Workshops are taught to tying pairs, capped at eight pairs in Seattle, and follow a progression from Shibari 101 through floorwork to partial suspension and full suspension. The site says the teaching blends traditional Japanese pedagogy with modern Western instructional research, drawing on his twenty-year career in curriculum design and differentiated instruction, and that it has taught thousands of students over the past decade. Its stated mission is to help rope be recognized as a legitimate art form.
Performance
He performs on stage, ties for photo shoots and art collaborations and teaches abroad; the about page says he has taught and performed in fifteen countries and twenty-four cities. The salon’s performance page lists past shows including Jyo-Mon in Tokyo, Show Pub Jail in Osaka, Galerie CL in Shanghai, A Night of Kinbaku in Athens, Atelier Simonet in Paris, Fausto in Barcelona, Erotopia in Zurich, Bound in London, Club AKA in Rome and Maison Close in Bangkok, along with many Pacific Northwest venues such as AXIS Art Gallery, the Opulent Temple events, the Vancouver Fetish Weekend and Portland Pride’s Gaylabration. Featured recordings show him at Opulent Temple’s White Party in 2018 and at Beats & Binds in 2025 with Kioko and with Sappho. He describes his kinbaku as a blend of Western and Eastern aesthetics that keeps evolving.