Osada Eikichi 長田英吉

Osada Eikichi was a Japanese kinbakushi best known for bringing rope bondage to the stage. KinbakuMania and Shibari Dojo give his birth as March 15, 1925, in Tochigi Prefecture. English Wikipedia places him among those who began performing live SM shows with extensive rope bondage in the 1960s, and the school of his student Osada Steve describes him as the man who popularized performance shibari.

The Osada Seminar

His regular show was called the Osada Seminar. KinbakuMania and Shibari Dojo date its first performances to 1965, at the Ars Nova ballet school near Asagaya Station in Tokyo, and link its early events to the playwright Tamai Keiyū. The performer and writer Saotome Hiromi, who worked with him for years, dates the start of the “experimental theater Osada Seminar” to 1975 instead, after a spell with an underground theater group that, in his view, knew little about real SM. She describes a man who loved film and kabuki, preferred staged shows to private play, and put entertainment and visual effect first.

Strip theaters and SM clubs

Around 1978–1980 the show moved onto the strip-theater circuit; KinbakuMania gives 1978 and Saotome 1980. Saotome writes that few acts of this kind existed, so it quickly became one of the most popular and best-paid on the circuit. KinbakuMania records monthly shows at an SM club from 1980 to 1988 and regular performances with Saotome in the late 1980s. She describes a retirement performance at the Tsurumi Shinsekai theater in December 1989, after which he became the theater’s president and coached newcomers.

A stroke in the early 1990s interrupted his work; the sources give the year as 1991, 1992 or 1993. He returned to performing and, in the late 1990s, gave weekly shows at bars in Shinjuku and Roppongi. There Osada Steve met him and became his student; in April 2000 Steve turned his photo studio into a venue for Eikichi’s shows.

Final years

KinbakuMania and Shibari Dojo date his last performance to November 2000. KinbakuMania writes that he had a further stroke that morning, performed in the evening and was taken to hospital the next day; he spent the rest of his life in care. German Wikipedia’s article on Osada Steve dates the stroke differently, to a live show in January 2001. KinbakuMania and Shibari Dojo give his death as September 12, 2001; Saotome’s account dates it to December 2000. Shibari Dojo records a memorial in Roppongi in November 2001 attended by Osada Kazumi, Osada Steve and others. English Wikipedia lists him, with Akechi Denki, as one of two famous nawashi.