Rope Tales

Rope Tales is the name under which Kirigami and Tenshiko present their rope work. The pair have been active since 2011 and later renamed their website Rope Tales (“tales of rope”) because, in their words, they want to tell the story of their passion for kinbaku and for each other. Its pages describe kinbaku as communication, in which the person tying listens to the expressions, breathing and movement of the person being tied. Rope Tales is the umbrella for School of Rope, and its events at Yugen Studio are run through the Kiri Nawa Kai association, whose membership participants apply and pay for online.

Events

The Rope Tales calendar at Yugen Studio includes Peer Rope evenings, open rope jams on weekday nights; Rope Jam Session nights, longer social evenings with tying that can run into the early morning; Yūgen Studio Salon evenings that pair a talk with a live performance; occasional play nights; and themed sessions with outside specialists, such as a November 2026 class with Claudio Morandini on the shoulders and pelvis under rope tension. The site publishes rules for its events and has a form for people who would like to be tied but have no partner.

Services and performance

Rope Tales also offers private lessons, private performances and private photo shoots, links to a partner shop for rope, and keeps a premium video area and a blog with essays on shibari, bondage and kinbaku aesthetics. Kirigami has performed since 2011, first in Italy and Europe and later further afield, at events ranging from cultural festivals to international rope gatherings such as Bound in London and Shibari Day in Rome. The site also lists a collaboration with Hajime Kinoko at Ronin in Milan, and notes that Kirigami studied the Japanese tea ceremony to the level of a teaching licence, a path it says shaped the way Kirigami teaches.