Ask John: What Are Anime’s Best Examples of Shibari?

Question:
What would you consider to be the best example of bondage anime to feature shibari?

Answer:
Readers be aware that while I don’t believe any of the following discourse is especially provocative, this discussion does focus on a topic of a sexual nature.

Physical bondage is especially commonplace in contemporary erotic anime, especially because so much contemporary anime caters to an insecure male audience gratified by fantasies of asserting domination over women. However, strictly speaking, there’s a subtle difference between bondage used to enslave or dominate women and kinbaku, better known to English speakers as “shibari.” Shibari is the traditional Japanese art of erotic rope bondage. While the straightforward purpose of bondage is to restrict a woman’s freedom of movement, shibari is more meaningful and evocative of traditional Japanese customs. Shibari may be used in association with sex, but it’s also a sexual gratification unto itself. Shibari is an intimate, deliberate evocation of the culturally Japanese sense of shame. Conventional bondage is used to restrain unwilling women. Shibari forces willing women to confront their culturally indoctrinated sense of modesty. Polite Japanese women shouldn’t lewdly expose their bodies. Shibari provides exhilarating catharsis and sensual gratification by forcing women to discard their socially expected modesty. Since they have no choice but to be immodest, ladies willingly placed in bondage can enjoy a temporary respite from the demands of everyday etiquette. Oxymoronically, the physical restraint of shibari enables emotional freedom. Shibari is thrilling because it creates an equilibrium between embarrassment and an escape from the rigorous demand for shame.

Furthermore, as celebrated Japanese bondage fantasy novelist Oniroku Dan has explained, the ideal subject of shibari is a woman that appears graceful under torture. Shibari is one method of ultimately exhibiting the prized ideal Japanese woman. The Japanese lady that retains her composure even when bound, exposed, and exploited is dignified and admirable. Like a yamato nadesico who’s eminently feminine while also fiercely loyal to the Japanese spirit, or a geisha that has mastered social refinement, the woman able to bare herself completely and helplessly while still remaining dignified epitomizes a Japanese sense of respect and beauty. The woman bound in shibari is subservient, yet still strong-willed; erotic and graceful.

Possibly because of slight differences in the Japanese audience for different types of erotic entertainment, the shibari theme seem to appear more frequently in adult PC games including Dutch Wife ~Omae no Tsuma wa Ore no Mono~, Miko Shibari, Kowaku no Toki, Nie Yami, and Jyotai Saishuu ~Onna no Momo ni Hisomu Chou~ than it appears in anime. Forced bondage is very common in adult anime. Consensual bondage appears less frequently. I’m not familiar with every adult anime, and since so many H anime productions seem so similar, I honestly often have trouble remembering distinctions between them. However, two titles that prominently feature masochistic shibari (as opposed to sadistic bondage) do come to mind. The 2001 hentai series Hana Dorei, released in America as “Slaves to Passion,” revolves around a widow whose past experience with bondage and sexual humiliation has left her craving more. The following year’s Gekka Bijin, released in America as “Maison Plaisir” stars a women even more passionately addicted to being bound in elaborately tied lengths of rope, humiliated, and sexual exploited.

While not strictly shibari, because it’s not used for a sexual purpose, viewers interested in anime depictions of elaborate rope bondage can see some examples of “hojojutsu,” the practical progenitor of shibari, in episodes 1 and 8 of the recent Queen’s Blade television series. Hojojutsu is Japanese rope bondage applied to immobalize criminals or prisoners. The very risque Queen’s Blade anime deftly sexualizes this form of bondage which isn’t necessarily intrinsically sexual.