United Kingdom

One early landmark of Japanese-style rope in Britain is a London show in 2005. Dazed reported in 2016 that the Japanese bakushi Arisue Gō was the first shibari master to give a show in the city, in 2005, in the living room of the rigger Esinem, who went on to found the show night BOUND; Esinem told the magazine that the British scene was centered on performance. By 2011 the London Festival of the Art of Japanese Bondage had reached its third yearly edition, a four-day event at the Resistance Gallery in Bethnal Green whose listing names Kazami Ranki, Hajime Kinoko and Osada Steve among its guests, along with the group Peer Rope London. That early period is told in Kinbaku in Europe.

Studios in the capital

Dedicated teaching spaces followed the performers. Anna Bones and Fred Hatt founded Anatomie Studio in June 2015, starting in their home; its first jams drew 15 to 25 people a night in a small Peckham room, and after a move to a railway arch in 2018 it counts 30 to 60. When Covid-19 arrived in 2020, the studio says it got through largely on teaching online and selling rope through its web shop. London’s other studios, curricula and show nights are described in the London guide.

Peer groups beyond London

Outside the capital, many of the groups found for this page are peer-run. The teaching list of the Nottingham-area rigger Christian Red, who works full-time as a rope educator, names peer rope groups in York, Oxford, Birmingham, Leicester and Bedford, rope groups in Nottingham, Glasgow and Northampton, Rope On! in Edinburgh and Pleasure Rebels in Manchester, as well as gatherings such as the Tangled Rope Festival, the UK Rope Exchange (UKREx) and Kinbaku North. In the north-west, Liverpool and Merseyside Peer Rope meets every other month on a Saturday afternoon, with an induction class and a beginners’ class at each event and peer-led demos and workshops through the day. In Bristol, the Loose Ends jam at Club395 in September 2025 offered a beginners’ workshop before its rope jam.

How it fits together

The dedicated studios and performance nights cited here are in London, while the groups cited for other regions are mainly peer-run jams and meetings, several of which host visiting teachers. For advice on picking a teacher or a group, see Choosing a teacher and Rope jams, munches and salons.