Gote 後手

Gote (後手) names the family of upper-body ties in which the hands are tied behind the back. Steve Osada of Osada-ryū glosses the word as “back hand”, and Nawapedia explains it as wrists bound behind the back. Shibari Study and Rope365 both list gote shibari as another name for the box tie, which Shibari Study defines as any upper-body tie with the arms behind the back combined with rope around the chest.

Gote and takate kote

Whether gote and takate kote are one tie or two depends on the source. The Osada-ryū course pages of Kinbaku Academy say the two words mean the same thing, and Osada writes that his school prefers takatekote without being strict about it; he associates that word mainly with people connected to the Akechi Denki lineage. Nawapedia records a narrower reading in which takate means “high hands”: on that view a takatekote must hold the wrists high, and a tie with the wrists lower down is gote shibari or ushirote shibari instead. Osada also notes that “ushiro gote”, common in Western circles, is not Japanese usage, because go already means behind. Rope Bite Pgh quotes Akechi Denki as saying that shibari begins and ends with the gote.

Variants

The word appears in many compound names. Shibari Study lists jōwan gote (arms behind the back with no rope around the body), chokushin gote (arms held straight behind the back) and mune hishi gote (a chest harness with a diamond pattern worked into a gote shape). Shibari Dojo Barrie lists a quick gote, a reverse gote and a hands-behind-the-head gote in its Shoden curriculum. The opposite position, hands in front, is maete; see mae takate kote.

Variations by teacher and school

Most of what separates one teacher’s gote from another’s (rope count, cinches, band placement, third-rope patterns) is set out on the takate kote page. What differs by name:

• ESINEM calls the standard OS TK more accurately a gote because it lacks the typical high-hand position.
• LA Rope, the Los Angeles Shibari Dojo, which teaches Yukimura-ryū, writes the tie as gote shibari and says it is often referred to in the West as takate kote. See LA Rope Dojo.
• For definitions and teacher differences, see the takate kote page.
• Shibari Study glosses gyaku gote as the hands-front version of a takate kote, while Shibari Dojo Barrie lists a gyaku gote shibari in its Shoden curriculum and describes it as a reverse hands-behind-the-back tie. The Osada-ryū course at Kinbaku Academy calls hands-in-front maete and describes maete as the opposite of gote.

How it developed

Nawapedia lists gote shibari and gote munenawa shibari among the alternative names of the tie, and lists Kitan Club articles that carry the word in their titles: one about kinbaku’s beauty in the gote takatekote in April 1953, one on photographing gote takatekote in September 1961 and one on kubinawa and gote shibari in April 1962. Osada writes that the forms ushiro gote and ushiro takatekote are found only in the West, not in Japan. For the older history of the word takate kote, see the takate kote page.

Difficulty and risk

Crash Restraint files its takate kote variants under intermediate floorwork, and Rope Bite Pgh’s box-tie class is meant for people already very comfortable with single-column ties. Shibari Safety calls the upper arm notorious for rope nerve injuries and notes that beginners often avoid tying there. The main documented hazard is the radial nerve in the upper arm, described in the safety notes. This page describes the tie; it does not teach it.