Kinoko Hajime redefines Kinbaku in complete new ways.
Kinoko Hajime, one of the most acclaimed Kinbakushi (rope master) in Japan, is in the field since fifteen years. He is renowned for his innovative rope techniques and his contemporary interpretation of Shibari.
Hajime Kinoko‘s activities are revolving around three main topics: art, cyber and tradition. He is rope artist, performer, and photographer at once, covering the whole range from classic bondage to cyber rope performances.
Rope and Photo Kinoko Hajime
His cyber rope performances, Neo-Kinbaku with the use of black light and fluorescent colored ropes to are spectacles of light and silhouette.
Japantoday wrote about his events: “Kinoko’s world is somewhat like a dense fog; it transfigures the world, while embracing you in its aura.”
Photo: goku
Each piece of Kinbaku has its unique color.
“Kinbaku is a sect within the shibari (rope) philosophy,” Hajime told Japantoday. “It’s a method of communication exclusively between people, whereas shibari can be practiced with objects. In the grand theater of kinbaku the bondagees are the protagonists and the kinbakushi are just the supporting actors. What the kinbakushi do is to perceive, then depict, the subject’s aspirations, and the character of the moment. They do this by using their hands, which in our case is the rope. Factors such as superficial tension, sweat, respiration, corporal oscillation and the pulse of the bondagee are important information, which the rope transmits to us. Therefore each piece of kinbaku has its unique color.”
Photo : Yuki Kawamoto
Land art meets Bondage
Hajime is also a skilled master in the field of inanimate object bondage, which involves not only the tying of small objects like figurines, but also rocks, branches and even Mount Fuji’s Sea of Trees.
Photo : Yuki Kawamoto
“In order to understand and express the instantaneous innermost nature of a bondagee, you must be sensitive and perceptive.”
Be it the spectacular cyber rope performances, with the bondagee enlaced by the UV-sensitive colored ropes that are exploding into view under the black light, his shiny, sculpturesque art installations, or his secret work in the hidden forest, there is always a gentleness and sensitivity that creates something very special and unique.
model：gestalta
Photo：Shima
Hajime created his personal concept(s) of kinbaku in hope to spread this philosophy and transform the opinion of society by emphasising on the entertainment side of kinbaku. Yet he remains foremost a true artist.
