Yagami Ren 鵺神蓮

Yagami Ren is a Japanese rope artist based in Tokyo and the founder of Yagami-ryū. Shibari Dojo counts him among a newer generation of riggers who renewed kinbaku in Japan toward the end of the Heisei era, and notes his long professional work in the Japanese adult industry alongside his live performances.

Apprenticeship with Kanna

Yagami first met rope at Succubus, the bar in Ikebukuro run by Nawashi Kanna, where Nawapedia says he worked on the staff around 2002 and was drawn to Kanna’s rope. Nawapedia dates his professional debut to January 2011 at Theater POO, and his acceptance as Kanna’s apprentice to December 19 of the same year. The apprenticeship ended in April 2013; Shibari Dojo describes the parting as difficult and links it, together with health problems, to a rethinking of his priorities. The same site reports that the two were reconciled at the 2020 ceremony confirming Kanna’s place in the Akechi lineage.

Sekibaku

Shibari Dojo dates the beginnings of his own approach to around 2014. Yagami calls it sekibaku and prefers that word to semenawa. In his own presentation, translated on the site of Studio TIEY in Antwerp, he explains that semenawa usually makes the rope itself the source of torment, while in sekibaku the threat of being tied comes from the rigger’s presence, energy and bearing together with the rope. He divides the style into nawasuji, the techniques of binding; taijutsu, the use of both partners’ bodies to control movement; and kyūshogaku, a close study of key points read through the partner’s reactions.

Shibari Dojo connects his efficient handling of the body to long training in aikidō and also mentions calligraphy; Nawapedia instead traces sekibaku to jūjutsu, which it says he began as a teenager.

Yagami-ryū

According to Shibari Dojo, he founded dojos and certified instructors in several countries during a European tour in 2015. The school distinguishes instructors licensed directly by Yagami from certified students, who are recognized but may not teach; its instructor list names Bulgaria, Spain, Germany, Hong Kong, Australia and Belgium besides Tokyo. Studio TIEY, an official dojo, frames a style as one’s own interpretation of what one has learned rather than a copy of the teacher.

His influence reaches beyond his own school. German Wikipedia records that Osada Steve began studying with him in 2017, and Nawapedia lists him among the five kinbakushi of the 2022 book Kinbaku GONIN.