SHIBARI FUMO RYU

Drawing by Giovanni di Napoli (Courtesy: Solo Verlag)

Study and review of Shibari Do, lifestyle and philosophy.


Picture a room, lit by candles. Shadows will dance on the walls, light will change constantly and this combination, this dance, is what largely determines the atmosphere in the room. That is exactly what you want to achieve in Shibari - the battle between contrasts: beauty and fear, love and endurance, desire and despair, mental growth and embarrassment, pain and lust.

Shibari is a complex art that involves many different levels, many different ingredients, physical, mental and metaphysical.

Serenity, beauty, perfection, harmony and meditation are all elements that you will recognize in shibari.
(excerpts from Shibari Fumo Ryu)

Shibari encompasses many aspects that are often over looked from spirituality to philosophy.
Sexuality is just one of many parts to Shibari that is often misunderstood.
Shibari Do is a far eastern philosophy with its roots in Japan, a lost art that has been brought back to life and is being researched and reinvented. Even the name "Shibari" is in question, not many can agree what the proper name should be. What they all can agree on is that Shibari is an art form dating back several hundred years probably in the 17th and 18th century.
Shibari philosophy might date back even farther to China and the I Ching philosophy (800 B.C) Once again all of this is theory and undocumented.

Ito Seiu is considerd the father of modern Shibari from his study and research of Hojo Jutsu in the early 20th centrury in and around 1908. Hojo Jutsu was the ancient art of tieing up prisoners and was passed down from teacher to student, much what we know about Shibari can be traced to that art form. Other art forms have an influence on modern Shibari as well like Japanese Kabuki theater durning the Japanese's Edo period (1600-1868). Wood block images of romance, sex and torcher scenes can be found from this time frame from advertisements for the Kabuki theater.

Chatting about Shibari history wasn't my intention, although it gives some insight into the lost art of Shibari. There is very little information about Shibari, most isn't documented or taught, however there is one rope practitioner that has studied and perfected his own style of Shibari Do. Shibari Fumo Ryu is one of the few and might be the only sources of Shibari that is documented and set out for study. This is my review of the course "Shibari Fumo Ryu".

To be honest when I first looked over the course I was a little disappointed, I was looking for a whole course on knot ties and wrapping rope but there was more. The course got into eastern philosophy, pressure points, I Ching, Yin Yang, Shiatsu. All of a sudden I was bombared by new ideas and insight, rope became more then something you used for bondage it was a philosophy, a deeper understanding of the human body with pressure points and energy channels. Rope became a tool to manipulate sexual energy in a spirtiual way.

The style of writting in the course is easy to follow and understand with lots of pictures, some of the diagrams I thought could be better but all in all with study you can figure them out. So will study of the course make you a Shibari Master? of course not. What it will do is give you a deeper insite into Shibari as an art form, a better understanding of eastern philosophy, pressure points and a start into rope bondage. For the rope bondage lover this course is highly recommended, if not for anything but the philosophy it brings to you the Nawashi (rope practitioner)

Check out Shibari Fumo Ryu.



Umaku iku yõ ni!
(May good fortune accompany you on your journey)

Dom Manator