There has been much speculation about the origin of the word ‘kinbaku’ as a word to refer to shibari and, indeed, whether shibari and kinbaku have the same meaning. I won’t go into the latter in any detail as I have written about this before but it does seem to depend upon who you ask.
Identifying the first appearance of a word in a specific context is perhaps less nebulous than settling on a definition, which can be personal. However, as you will see establishing first occurrence is not a simple task.
What does ‘kinbaku’ mean?
In simple terms, ‘kinbaku’ literally means ‘tight binding’ and, in our circles, shibari or Japanese rope bondage. It is apparently a generic term, like shibari, that probably wouldn’t be associated with anything kinky by most people outside the scene. It could be that the word first became used in relation to people, as opposed to inanimate objects, to refer to foot-binding. This certainly gives the meaning of constriction, which along with exposure, is a key concept in kinbaku since one is always exposing or constricting with the ties.
What we thought we knew
Until recently, the generally accepted theory was that the word kinbaku first appeared, in print at least, in an edition of Kitan Club magazine in the 1950’s. Kitan Club was an iconic Japanese SM magazine which became infamous for publishing the first naked photos of bound women.
The good news is that I discovered a massive archive of a full 25 years of digitised issues of Kitan Club, spanning 1950-1975. It’s a goldmine! You will be surprised how different, and frankly amateur, the ropework looked compared to what we see today. Of course, you must remember that these mags were porn and not designed to showcase the best technical work. Setting aside the more specialist publishers, much the same can be said of most rope porn today. It is certainly true of today’s equivalents like SM Sniper, where technical skill is not always the primary consideration. They even featured my work, more than a decade ago, which shows the bar is not set that high 🙂 In my case, I think it was more about the curiosity of a westerner doing shibari than porn or anything else.
Did ‘kinbaku’ get coined in the 30’s or much earlier?
After recently posting a link to the Kitan Club archives in my Fetlife group, Laquartacorda responded as follows:
“Actually the first appearance of the word “kinbaku” now is brought forward to Thirties in Itoh Seiu’s ”Die Bilder über die Strafe und abnormer Geschlechtstrieb” (Pictures of punishment and abnormal sexual drive). “
I believe the Japanese title is 世界の刑罰・性犯・変態の研究 . As I don’t have the book or read Japanese, I can’t confirm this information. There’s an article with photos from the book here. If any of my readers can help, I’d be delighted. Meanwhile, I will check with the original source of this information. It sounds extremely plausible but, after many years, I have finally learned it is wise to fact check anything concerning our art. I have taken too much on trust in the past and merely fuelled myths. Now, I try to test and bust myths instead.
The rabbit hole goes deeper
We are very fortunate that NuitDeTokyo frequently pitches in on my forum. I have enormous respect for his opinions as he has rubbed shoulders with the big names in Japan while he lived there and is an avid enthusiast of Japanese SM and kinbaku. His house is a treasure trove of woodblock prints of kinbaku and he has an extensive library. It’s heaven for any rope otaku! I have, with his blessing and my gratitude, reproduced his comments below:
“Just a note on Kinbaku as a word. “緊縛” was already used in the 19th century. The Meiroku Zasshi (an emanation of the Meirokusha a learning society founded in 1874) notes in its 8th issue (also in 1874):
漢婦の足幼いより痛く緊縛し強て大ならしめず。i.e. The feet of the Chinese ladies, from when they are very young, are painfully strongly Kinbaku so that they do not grow. (Referring to what is known as “foot binding”)
Source Nihonkokugo daijiten 日本国語大辞典 2nd édition in 14 volumes 2002 Shogakukan.”
“If you allow a short digression…Bondage is an interesting word, the meaning “to bind” (to attach) is cognate to “band” a strip of cloth ( from the French “bande” with the same meaning, and the verb “bander” meaning to attach together) which will also give ” bandage ” in the medical sense (also from the French) and typically the “pieds bandés” (bound feet) of the Chinese nobility is very much a thing of bondage (done with a bandage…).
Back to hard core SM.
So know that the word Kinbaku existed by 1874. The examples we have are related to this custom of “bound feet” so it is very much a possibility that the word in Japanese has been created for that usage specifically, when a large numbers of 2 characters words were created to express things the Japanese were coming into contact with for the first time after the opening of the country after 1868. (Liberty 自由 Jiyû was created at that time)
It is very likely – but not certain – that Itoh Seiu came into contact with the word kinbaku through that meaning as erotic Chinese novels (which all mention bound feet, 金瓶梅 Jīn Píng Méi being the most well known) were mandatory readings for the Japanese intellectuals by the end of the 19th century.
The word, even if new, was immediately understandable by Japanese who were already familiar with Hobaku (捕縛）to arrest and to tie (attested since the early 1700s) (the “Ho” is the Ho in hojôjutsu 捕縄術）as well as the famous saying 緊褌一番 Kinkon Ichiban (tight fundoshi is most important – with the meaning that if you go to war make sure your pants don’t fall)
We also know that, barring any very unlikely surprise in a an old bookstore somewhere in a forgotten land, Itoh Seiu was the first writer to preoccupy himself, from a writing, photography, drawing point of view, with bound girls so the reasonable bet is that he was the first one to use the word kinbaku in relationship to what we call kinbaku today.
This being said, Itoh Seiu was profoundly influenced by the work of ukiyoe artist Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (including his famous pregnant women in inverted suspension 奥州安達が原ひとつ家の図) and Yoshitoshi, as well as other related artists, were drawing based on horror stories well circulated in their times (end of the 19th century) and there remains very much the possibility that the term Kinbaku was used in any of these books and stories before Itoh Seiu.
Investigating would sadly involve a very long time in libraries as the popular literature of the end of the 19th century is very much an underexplored domain. Adding the fact that public libraires are probably very incomplete in that domain as I have quite a number of books, not specifically rare, from that period on various subjects, including folktales, which do not register in any public libraries.
So we will have to say it is an open question…”
“To be honest, I have a hard time being convinced that the rather large semantic move from “bound feet in China” (1874) to “young girls nude and tied up in the snow” took place exactly at the time of publication of a large book published in 1930 which is many ways is a compendium of several sources.
It would be more natural, imho, to have seen the term used in one of the many eroguro (erotic and grotesque) magazines of the Taisho era 1912-1926 such as (Decameron, Grotesque, Hanzai Kagaku etc). Even Injû 陰獣 the novella by Edogawa Ranpo with some whipping is from 1928 and anterior to 世界の刑罰・性犯・変態の研究 , so I will unfortunately pass on answering any clearer that my previous post.
Posts are on a public forum so quotable in the usual way(s).”
It’s complicated…
As I said at the outset, getting to a definitive answer is never as easy as it might first appear. Who knows what might be unearthed from some dusty corner in the future that might change everything? This is one of other fascinations of our art; every time you peel back a layer, there’s another. Every time you think “I’ve got it!”, it slips through your fingers like smoke. This is especially true of learning. You never know it all.