Matsui Kenji 松井健二
Amateur rope tier who tied for magazines and books without public credit, taught at the Ginza bar Black Heart from 1998, and influenced Kamui Jubei.
Matsui Kenji was a rope tier who worked largely out of public view. Kinbaku Today’s 2016 article on Matsui, written by Sin after a visit to the Yokohama rope space Mumonbaku, presents Matsui as an influence on many kinbakushi and notes the death in 2013; Nawapedia gives the date as June 8, 2013. Nawapedia describes Matsui as an amateur kinbakushi who tied anonymously for many publications, and lists the alternate name “Mr. MA”.
An anonymous tier
According to Sin’s article, Matsui tied for a number of kinbaku magazines and books while carefully avoiding any picture of the tier’s own face, at a time when the model, not the tier, was the name on the page. Sin writes that nobody knows when this work for publication began, though it was probably at some point between the late seventies and the early eighties. Nawapedia dates Matsui’s first credit for bondage work in print to the 1990s and cites “Oarutsurinohon” as a publication for which Matsui tied without credit. Saikatsu, interviewed by Kinbaku Today in 2019, also mentions that book and recalls that Matsui first worked in semenawa with thick jute of about 8 mm.
Black Heart
Sin’s article records that when the Ginza bar Black Heart opened in 1998, Matsui became its first rope teacher, with Saikatsu as assistant, and taught there until 2004, when Akechi Denki took over the class. Nawapedia gives slightly different details: it lists lectures by Matsui at Black Heart in 2002 and a bondage seminar there together with Akechi in 2004.
Influence
Nawapedia says Matsui is reputed to have shaped the tying of Akechi Denki and of Yoshikatsu Hayakawa. Sin’s article names Hayakawa Yoshikazu, known as Hige, as editor-in-chief of S&M Sniper and says Matsui, Akechi and Hayakawa often spent time together around the turn of the millennium. In Saikatsu’s account, Matsui and Akechi first met in the 1990s.
The clearest case is the rope tier Kamui Jubei, who ran Mumonbaku. Saikatsu told Kinbaku Today about introducing the two; Matsui then taught at Kamui’s place several days a week for six months and told Kamui to drop what had been learned at Miura Takumi’s Bakuyūkai dōjō in Sugamo, after which Kamui’s tying changed completely. Nawapedia names Matsui as an adviser of Mumonbaku. During Sin’s 2016 visit, Kamui demonstrated a full-body tie credited to Matsui, the mitsu-hiki shibari (三つ引き), whose name comes from a family crest design, and Sin notes that neither Matsui nor Kamui used the nodome knot.