Yada Kinbaku
Bangkok-based shibari artist and educator who has explored Japanese rope since 2015, studied with the Japanese kinbakushi Yoshida Yoi, began teaching in 2018 and has run workshops under the Kotori name since 2019.
Yada Kinbaku, whose full name is given as Yada Kaewburee, is a shibari artist, educator and facilitator based in Thailand. Her profile on the website of Kotori People Studio, the Bangkok studio she founded, says she comes from a background in political art and somatic study and treats rope as a relational practice. As a performance and visual artist, it adds, she uses rope to explore power, sexuality, censorship and women’s autonomy in Southeast Asia.
Training
The Berlin venue Karada House, in its listing for a masterclass she taught there, says she has explored Japanese rope bondage since 2015 and studied with Yoi Yoshida, a female Japanese kinbakushi whom the listing calls “the mother of Kinbaku” in Japan. The same listing says Yada adapts Yoshida’s rope work to the needs of each person she ties. Her studio profile does not name a teacher.
Teaching
According to the Kotori profile, Yada began teaching shibari in 2018 and has hosted workshops under the name Kotori since 2019. It describes her teaching as discussion-led and body-based: technical guidance is combined with attention to sensation, pacing and emotional clarity, and she adapts the rope to the people involved rather than teaching one fixed style. The profile says she aims for learning spaces that are grounded, accessible and attentive to different bodies, identities and lived experiences, and that intention, communication and consent are the foundation of her practice. In Bangkok, a ticket page of the clinic PULSE lists her for a Shibari of the Month session presented with the kink community KinkyBKK.
Her teaching has also taken her abroad. In September 2024 she gave a one-day masterclass at Karada House titled Stillness, on her approach to semenawa. The listing describes it as built on stillness and introversion as a basis for letting go, moving from floor work into suspension and drawing on ideas about body, mind, love and suffering from East and Southeast Asia. It was open to LGBTQIA+ people and friends, for pairs who already knew common suspension patterns and safety.
Approach
The Karada House listing describes her view of kinbaku as a communicative art in which the rope is used to explore emotions and vulnerabilities, with each session a collaboration between the person tying and the person tied. Her studio profile says she is interested in rope as a way to support self-awareness, vulnerability and agency rather than performance or fixed roles.