Milla Reika
Rope practitioner in Japan who founded the Senkaku studio space in 2013, teaches private lessons and a salon, published the photo-book The Descent of Inanna and produced the Kinbaku Diaries video series.
Milla Reika is a kinbaku practitioner, performer and teacher active in Japan. Her official site says she founded Senkaku in 2013 as a private-leaning venue for kinbaku and BDSM enthusiasts, and that it hosted events, workshops and parties until it closed in July 2023. She continues to offer private lessons and small, semi-private kinbaku afternoons.
Approach
On her site she describes her rope style as a blend of what she calls feminine and masculine elements. She says her kinbaku centers on seme, with rope serving to bring out beauty and sensation in the person she binds, rather than on aesthetic forms or patterns. She also writes that in recent years she has moved her practice back into the private sphere.
Performance
Her site describes stage performances using theatrical narratives and dynamic suspension. In a 2019 Kinbaku Today interview she discussed her first publishing project, the photo-book The Descent of Inanna, which draws on the Sumerian myth; she wrote the piece and portrays Ereshkigal in it. She told the magazine that she separates her stage performances from the kinbaku she practices in private.
Teaching and Kinbaku Diaries
In a 2020 Kinbaku Today interview she said people traveling to Japan often asked her for private lessons, and that she led a weekly salon in Osaka, which paused for a time and restarted with small numbers. A planned trip to Berlin that year was canceled because of Covid-19. She said she had been cautious about teaching online, because so much cannot be conveyed that way.
Her answer was Kinbaku Diaries, a subscription video library on her website. She described it as a learning resource built on observation, with unrehearsed sessions she films with her rope partners and a short debrief after each one. A third installment is offered as a course on the ESINEM Shibari teaching site, which describes the series as full-length, uncut videos of her tying in private and quotes her saying that she films, edits and produces them herself with support from her partners.