A bondage master and his model at work.

Jyowa is a made-up word created by Yukimura Sensei which merges the characters for “rope” and for “speaking or communicating”, hence it can be translated as “communicating through ropes” or “rope stories”. This project was started in Tokyo in 2011 as a documentary film, yet it ended up becoming more of an aesthetic experience that takes the viewer into the unique universe of five of Japan’s top rope artists (by order of appearance): Naka Akira, Yukimura Haruki, Nawashi Kanna, Urado Hiroshi and Hajime Kinoko. In each of the the five chapters we can see two people taking a journey into a deep and profound level of communication in which rope takes a very special place.

In Shinto religion, in order to make something sacred, man will tie a rope around it. This sacred quality of the tying can be applied also to Kinbaku, which is an erotic, spiritual, artistic connection between the people who are doing it

Documentary about the art of Japanese bondage.