Mae takate kote

The mae takate kote is a takate kote with the arms in front of the body instead of behind it. Steve Osada of Osada-ryū explains the naming: an arms-in-front tie is called maete (前手, front hand), so a takatekote built in front becomes a mae takatekote. The Osada-ryū course pages of Kinbaku Academy describe maete as the opposite of gote (hands behind), shorten the tie to “front TK”, and teach the hands-in-back and hands-in-front versions side by side in the same course.

Related hands-in-front ties

The front TK is one of several named ties that hold the hands forward. Shibari Study lists mae te shibari, which binds the hands on the chest; jiai shibari, with the hands in front of the chest and patterns that can resemble a gote; and zenpou takate shibari, which binds the hands high in front, much like modern choker ties or some hands-front harnesses. English Wikipedia’s list of Japanese ties includes maete hiji shibari (arms bound in front) and zenpou takate shibari, though without citations.

How it differs from the gote

LA Rope, the Los Angeles Shibari Dojo, describes hands-in-front ties as keeping the arms partly mobile and in view, so the person tied can see what is happening and the person tying can adjust as the scene goes on. The behind-the-back gote, by contrast, is a more closed, fixed structure. The dojo argues against the common view that hands-in-front work is only a beginner stage on the way to the gote, calling it “deceptively demanding” in a relational rather than a technical sense.

Variations by teacher and school

• The Osada-ryū course at Kinbaku Academy calls the tie maete takatekote or front TK, and says it can be counted by ropes in the same way as the hands-behind version, for example a front 2TK. Its course page lists the front-hand takatekote and its untying as separate lessons from the 3TK done in the back.
• The same course page says that someone who calls the hands-behind tie a gote cannot put maete in front of gote, because that would read as hands-in-front-hands-behind, and so would simply call the tie maete.
• Shibari Study glosses gyaku gote as the hands-front version of a takate kote, and lists mae te shibari, which binds the hands on the chest, as a separate entry.
• Shibari Dojo Barrie teaches maete hiji shibari, a hands-forward elbow tie, in its Shoden curriculum.
• LA Rope, the Los Angeles Shibari Dojo, teaches Yukimura-ryū and treats hands-in-front rope as a different way of relating to the person tied, not a lower rung. See LA Rope Dojo.

How it developed

LA Rope says that in Western shibari it has become common to start with hands-in-front ties and move on to the gote, and the dojo questions that progression. The public summary of the Osada-ryū course at Kinbaku Academy says it covers both hands-behind and hands-in-front versions; the tutorial itself was not read. Neither source gives a date or an origin for the front form.

Difficulty and risk

None of the sources in this entry assigns the front TK its own level. Because LA Rope disputes the idea that hands-in-front ties are easy, and because the tie shares its structure and name with the takate kote, Kinbaku World lists it at the same intermediate level and high risk. This page describes the tie; it does not teach it.