Baku Yu Kai
Baku Yu Kai, 1996–, is a Japanese dojo in the bakushi / kinbaku ecosystem.
1996–
Era: 1990s
One of the first official rope dojos in Japan, founded in 1996.
People associated with Baku Yu Kai: Nobuyoshi Araki, Denki Akechi, Takumi Miura.
Baku Yu Kai, 1996–, is a Japanese dojo in the bakushi / kinbaku ecosystem.
1996–
Era: 1990s
One of the first official rope dojos in Japan, founded in 1996.
People associated with Baku Yu Kai: Nobuyoshi Araki, Denki Akechi, Takumi Miura.
An interactive genealogy of bakushi and kinbaku — the Japanese rope traditions that grew from Edo-period hojōjutsu through twentieth-century SM magazines into today's global shibari scene.
The map currently holds 320 people, 238 studios, events, works and context nodes and 1394 documented connections across 9 eras. Each record is sourced from public material — Nawapedia, ShibariStudy, festival rosters, interviews, archived studio pages — and curated by a single researcher.
This is a beta version: the structure, sources and interface are public enough to explore, but the map is still being expanded and corrected.
Vertical position is time: the 1800s at the top, the 2020s at the bottom. Cards are coloured by school or lineage; lines between them carry the relationship type — solid amber for direct apprenticeship (deshi), dashed for influence or peer study, thinner coloured lines for venues, magazines, or productions. Click a card to open its bio, antecedents and descendants. Filters in the top bar narrow by era, entity type, or relationship.
Inclusion is selective: a person or studio appears only when there's enough public evidence to anchor them meaningfully. Missing birth years are deliberate — many practitioners don't publicise them. Errors and gaps will exist; corrections welcome at pussynawa@proton.me.
The map has grown with corrections, additions and source pointers from RopeMarks, Asiana, RomKnots, Nick Freerider and Aleksei Kalatsky.