Master K
Pen name of the author and kinbaku teacher behind The Beauty of Kinbaku (2008), an English-language history of Japanese erotic rope bondage later translated into Japanese, and the earlier book Shibari: The Art of Japanese Bondage.
Master K, styled Master “K” on his books, is the pen name of an author and teacher of kinbaku who writes in English. This entry keeps to what his publishers and interviewers have published about his work.
Books
English Wikipedia’s reading list on Japanese bondage includes his Shibari: The Art of Japanese Bondage, published by Secret Publications in 2004, a book the publisher of his later work also lists among his titles. His main work, The Beauty of Kinbaku, appeared from King Cat Ink in 2008 under a long humorous subtitle about wanting to know everything about Japanese erotic bondage on suddenly realizing you don’t speak Japanese. A fully revised second edition of 194 pages followed; the bookseller listing dates it 2014. The publisher’s description calls it the most comprehensive book on its subject and lists chapters on the origins of kinbaku and its development from a medieval martial art into modern erotic practice, about thirty short biographies of notable figures, nearly a hundred historical images, a gallery of photographs of the author’s ties, a glossary and a bibliography.
A Japanese translation by Yamamoto Norio, Kinbaku no Bunkashi (“A Cultural History of Kinbaku”), was published by Suirensha in Tokyo in October 2013, according to the National Diet Library catalogue. English Wikipedia’s article on Japanese bondage cites The Beauty of Kinbaku for its account of when the term “kinbaku” came into use and for its definition of a nawashi, and a 2017 Vice series called it the definitive text on the subject.
Teaching and views
The publisher’s author note says he has taught kinbaku for more than forty years, and its description says the book rests on four decades of his engagement with the subject, a large part of it spent in Japan. Interviewed by Vice in 2017, he described himself as giving one-on-one instruction to a few select clients and as having stepped back from the scene as it grew more popular. In that interview he stressed that kinbaku needs serious study rather than imitation of online material, that the person tying carries a great deal of responsibility for their partner, and that communication and empathy come before technique, and he acknowledged that models do get hurt. The second part of the Vice series described him as a Los Angeles rope practitioner who tied models for the fashion photographer Michel Comte and supplied the rope for a 2012 GQ Italia fashion story.