The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage is a soft-cover book that’s been printed in nice, high-quality paper and published by Greenery Press. It has 163 pages and is divided into three different sections. While it only features 7 positions to learn, it provides so much amazing information that I’d highly recommend it if you are serious are learning better Japanese-style rope bondage. The book has full-color pages in it, but the majority of the book is done in black and white (with the high-quality paper as well). The book isn’t a small book – it’s much more like the physical size of a textbook – although, as you can imagine, it doesn’t have as many pages. The front of the book showcases Midori and a model in a bondage pose, and yes, you do get to learn how to do it. The back of the book just has text. Because of the material inside of the book, you could possibly take this out in public, but you might get quite a few stares (or some interesting conversation!) The book was written by Midori and photographed by Craig Morey and is sold by Sixty Nine Secrets, an adult sex toy store.
Section One is all about the “Heart” of rope bondage. Midori covers how and why she got into including why she stays in it and practices along with her own concerns about writing up a book because she feels she still has so much left to learn. She then moves into talking about the history of Japanese rope bondage which I thought was pretty insightful stuff. I knew nothing about the history before then. After that, we get to read an erotic story about rope bondage that jumps from the Tops point of view to the Bottoms point of view. It’s a pretty hot story, but apparently, as we find out afterwards, it serves a purpose as Midori goes through to analyze, step by step, by the top or bottom did something that they did such as a stretching, straightening out the rope, and a couple other things.
Section Two is all about the “Body”. It basically talks all about the rope as well as safety concerns. I appreciated her going into detail about the different types of rope that exist – mostly just cotton, nylon, and hemp, and saying that you should pick what’s best for yourself. (I usually use black cotton and crimson hemp rope.) She talks about what size and diameter you should look for in a rope as well as how you should clean and store your rope. There’s also a section about optional bondage equipment that will come in handy as well as some safety concerns that everyone should follow. With that, we end the first forty pages of the book and start moving into the portions that include ties.
Section Three is all about the rope bondage itself. To be honest, this is where I am most impressed. While there aren’t many “special features” about it, Midori starts off each tie with a full-color picture of what the tie will look like. After that, there’s a small snippet of erotica that describes how a bottom feels in that position. After that, she talks about the position a bit and what to be concerned or where it’s best used. And finally, after that, she goes through, step by step with hand-drawn basic illustrations, about how to do the actual tie.
Her instructions for the ties are very thorough. While the picture may not explain everything about the actual step, the words will definitely lead you through it as long as you read them. I’m a little torn as to whether a beginner could do some of the poses in this book. While I’m sure most beginners *could*, I think a working and helpful knowledge of rope bondage would help make these poses a little more easy to master. After the instructions (which are pretty easy to follow), she does explain what you can do with excess/more rope if you want to. Like “This chest harness can be turned into a full-body wrap. Here’s how” then goes into step-by-step on that. She usually gives multiple options when it comes to the “extras” you can do with the tie which is awesome. It makes me feel like I can pick what works best for me, and unlike other “how-to” books where I just memorize how to do something, having this feature makes it feel like she’s actually teaching me how to be creative with the rope, so I’ll be able to freehand rope ties.
Jor says to note that this book will be most useful if your learning style focuses more on the text-aspect of it instead of just seeing multiple pictures in a row. He notices that it’s a lot more text-heavy than our other rope bondage books, but he says it’s a good thing because it gives you tips on how to use the positions, how to do proper knots, and things that will, overall, help you to become better at Shibari instead of just learning how to do the ties just featured in the book.
One thing I’m split about is that Midori tends to use the Japanese names for the poses then put the English ones in parenthesis. One, it can stand to confuse me at times and can make the text look a little more clunky, but at the same time, this isn’t American rope bondage, so why do I expect her to completely forgo her own Japanese heritage to teach the bondage? Plus, it’s neat to see the Japanese words though I’m 100% sure I’d botch the pronunciation if I tried to speak them out loud.
The full-color pictures are really the only places that use models. The rest of the book is done with basic line-drawn illustrations. This is nice because it simplifies the ties. When it comes to the models used for her full-color photos, I am happy to report that she features both male and female models, and not all of them are your “average” models. For example, one of the guys is actually of older age. And in case you are curious, yes, you do learn how to do the tie on the front of the book. It’s actually pretty simple to do, and I’m pretty excited to do it. The book includes photos that include bare breasts, but there is never any bare genitals shown. The nudity included in the book is very tasteful and in no way pornographic.
Out of all of our rope bondage books so far, this is definitely my favorite. I am coming from a point where I know all of the basics and most ties of rope bondage, but I want to improve on making them more aeathetically pleasing and pretty. Because of that, this provides the most information on how to make my ties gorgeous while still being functional. I understand most of the rope bondage in an advanced way which makes the text much more useful. However, I can see how, for beginners, this may be a little harder to follow than a picture-by-picture book like others I’ve reviewed. Regardless, if you actually want to learn how to do pretty artwork with your rope, this is perfect. If you are looking more for a book on how to tie up your lover and are not such a perfectionist about how artsy it looks, other books, like Two Knotty Boys Showing You The Ropes, will work better. However, I really can’t recommend this book enough, so if you want to do some gorgeous rope bondage, this sex toy store sells his erotic book, so pick up The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage today after reading my The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage Book review.
Note: SixtyNineSecrets has gone out of business since this original review. Their website now isn’t up anymore. For that reason, the links were removed from the review. This is another store where you can purchase The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage book.
