On short notice (2 months, that’s short for us 🙂 ) we received an invitation for the London Festival of the Art of Japanese bondage on June 25-28.

From the announcement and postings on their blog it seems the intention is an international event about a lot of things related to Japanese bondage; art, photography, fashion shows, shiatsu, acupuncture, food, bondage and a lot more.

This is the first time this festival is organised and, as I mentioned, we got the invite on a short notice, in that same period we also have a payed booking for a show on the Ball Bizarre party. We had some communication with the London festival organisation, and as expected for a first time there is no budget to bring people, like us, who do rope professionally, to the event. Not a real problem or issue everything went open and honest, but since for us the choice was a paid show in the Netherlands or a festival where we pay to be present the choice was quickly made.

On a more critical note about the London festival, for their first time they try to setup a festival about a lot of things related to Japanese bondage. Critical as I am “a lot” might be too much for a first time. Obviously they have examples to work from, like the old kinbiken (that has recently been brought back to live by Nureki-san, yeah!), the photo-salons where you can take pictures of women in bondage and galleries like the vanilla gallery that have bondage art on display. Doing too much at once is imvho a failure waiting to happen.

The other thing that I am worried about for this event is that in the Western world there are very limited people doing Japanese rope bondage, make Japanese rope art or generally are exposed to Japanese rope bondage and know what they are talking about. The list of people participating show imo very little Japanese rope. For me, one man truly stands out from this list, that’s Murakawa, sorry, nawashi Murakawa. If you ever get a change to see him at work you can get a true feel of what it is like when a European is doing Japanese rope.

In any case, I am eyeing this festival with great interest because if they pull this off as advertised it is (to the best of my knowledge) the first Japanese rope only event for the Western world. The Japanese rope bondage world would be richer with an annual festival like the London Festival of the Art of Japanese bondage, so if you have the time and money to go there, do it.

If you are not at the london event come see our show at Ball Bizarre 🙂

London festival | Nawashi Murakawa | Ball Bizarre | RopeMarks