Louis Kordexe
Tokyo-based rope artist, photographer and apprentice of Hajime Kinoko who holds a semi-first-class Ichinawa instructor license and has taught private lessons in English, French and Japanese at his Studio Y7 since 2023.
Louis Kordexe is a rope artist, photographer and rope teacher in Tokyo. His website says he has lived in Japan for more than twenty years and has spent about fifteen of them practicing rope. He teaches at Studio Y7, his studio in Sasazuka near Shinjuku.
Training
According to the biography on his website, he first encountered shibari in 2011 and began by studying books and DVDs by Arisue Go and Naka Akira; from 2012 he practiced rope with partners, concentrating on connection, trust and the unspoken language between partners. In 2019 he met Hajime Kinoko and began formal training in Kinoko’s Ichinawa curriculum, and he describes himself as Kinoko’s apprentice and a licensed instructor and member of ROPES, which his site links to Kinoko’s website shibari.jp.
Kinoko’s own lessons page on shibari.jp lists him among the holders of the semi-first-class instructor license. The same page explains the grades: a second-class license allows teaching up to the 3rd grade of the curriculum, the semi-first-class license up to the 1st grade, and the first-class license everything learned from Kinoko, each step requiring further special-grade lessons and an examination. His lessons page notes that his own courses do not follow the Ichinawa curriculum.
Teaching
His website dates the opening of Studio Y7 to 2021 and the start of his teaching to 2023, when requests from others led him to put together a beginner course. The lessons page describes private, structured classes in English, French and Japanese: a three-hour introduction for beginners, an intermediate workshop of three or five hours on suspension harnesses, load distribution and safety, and sessions for small groups of up to three pairs. Each class combines a short lecture with practice; he demonstrates each tie on an assistant before students try it with a partner. The page says every session starts with a required safety module on nerve anatomy and injury prevention, and describes the classes as open to all body types, genders and orientations.
Photography and performance
The biography says he began photographing rope in 2018 and gave his first stage performance at a club in Shibuya in 2022, followed by shows at clubs and bars in Tokyo. His home page, as of November 2026, lists live rope performances at two Halloween events in Shibuya in October 2026 and a show in Saint-Étienne, France, on December 31, 2026. He describes part of his work as building links between rope culture in Japan and in the West.