Kayama Shigeru 賀山茂

Kayama Shigeru was a rope tier, photographer and salon owner active in Japan during the Shōwa era. Nawapedia, which dates the death to 2014, describes Kayama as a kinbakushi and entrepreneur who influenced Shōwa SM culture through friendships with Dan Oniroku and Tsujimura Takashi.

Rope albums of the 1950s

Nawapedia records that Kayama learned rope in 1954 from Ueda Seishirō, met Tsujimura in 1958 and grew closer to Dan from 1959. Two collectors connect Kayama with an early Japanese rope album. The Kinbaku Books blog lists Kayama as editor of Beautifully Bound (美しき縛しめ, 1953), with rope by Minomura Kō and photographs by Tsukamoto Tetsuzō, in a run of 500 copies. Master K, on The Beauty of Kinbaku, writes that Kayama assembled that album, published by Akebono Shobō on July 1, 1953, and that a second album by Kayama and Tsujimura, known to collectors as the “red album”, followed a few months later.

Photo books with Dan Oniroku

Nawapedia notes that Kayama took part in producing Dan Oniroku’s kinbaku photo collection in 1969. The Kinbaku Books blog lists the five volumes of Kinbaku Shashin (緊縛写真) as published by Haga Shoten in 1969 and 1970 and names Kayama as photographer of the second volume of Dan’s Jigoku Hana series. The bookseller Made in Wonder credits Dan with supervising Kinbaku Shashin 4 and Kayama with its photography, and says Dan first called Kayama a kinbaku photographer in the fourth volume. The same page says Kayama appears to have been a known name in the SM and adult trade, with regular series in S&M Sniper and other magazines.

Film and salon

According to Nawapedia, Kayama worked as a bondage assistant on Nikkatsu films from about 1968 and supervised the rope for the 1983 Nikkatsu film Snake Hole. In the introduction to Kinbaku Today’s 2019 interview with Saikatsu, Kayama is named with Tsujimura and Urado Hiroshi among the tiers who often bound the actress Tani Naomi.

Nawapedia dates the opening of Kayama’s SM salon SAMM, in Roppongi, to around 1980. Kinbaku Today’s history of Osada Eikichi places SAMM in Azabudai, describes it as an exclusive members’ salon visited by well-known SM figures including Dan, and records that Osada performed there in 1981. A 2020 Kinbaku Today interview with the S&M Sniper editor Hayakawa Yoshikazu lists Kayama, owner of SAMM and of the SAMM Video Company, among the names the magazine featured. Nawapedia says Kayama fostered many people, among them Osada and the actress Saotome Hiromi.