France

The two earliest dedicated rope organizations found for France date from the early 2010s and take different forms. The École des Cordes, a school devoted to kinbaku, was founded in 2010. In Lyon, Rue89 Lyon reported in 2016 that Lyon Shibari, an association devoted entirely to shibari, had been created in 2013 by a rigger known as Dragon, and recorded its growth from thirty members in its first year to about a hundred.

The Naka line

France is one of the places where the line of Naka Akira took hold. DocVale writes that he took up Naka’s semenawa in September 2013, opened Atelier Simonet in September 2018 and was authorized by Naka in 2019 to teach his style officially. Alex DirtyVonP trained with Naka from 2013 to 2016 and took over the École des Cordes in 2016; the school now teaches Naka-ryū, and his biography credits Riccardo Wildties with introducing him to semenawa. How this chain of teachers runs from Tokyo through Italy into France and central Europe is told in Kinbaku in Europe.

In French, and beyond Paris

The scene has a French-language literature of its own: Alex DirtyVonP co-wrote the book L’Art du Bondage with the sex therapist and shibari teacher Stéphanie Doe, published in 2024. Teaching also happens far from the two big cities. Le Dojo, a shibari studio in Toulouse, announced a three-day workshop and festival for 25 to 27 September 2026 with the Berlin-based pair Alexander Ma and Natasha NawaTaNeko, combining workshops, a kinbaku salon and a picnic for workshop participants and active members of the association Nawado.

How the cities relate

The Paris guide covers the Naka-line schools and the city’s other teaching spaces, and the Lyon guide covers Lyon Shibari and the city’s other groups. For help choosing between a lineage school and an open group, see Choosing a teacher.