Ep224: How Do You Visit a Rope Bar in Japan? - A conversation with Nuit de Tokyo, a European immersed in the Japanese rope scene

About this episode

Mya and Fox discuss the intricacies of visiting a Japanese rope bar with Nuit de Tokyo, exploring cultural nuances and etiquette.

What does it really mean to step into a Japanese rope bar - and how do you do it without getting it wrong? In this episode, Mya and Fox speak with Nuit de Tokyo, whose engagement with Japanese rope spans more than three decades. His learning has come through formal training, deep cultural immersion, and proximity to source: watching over a thousand SM performances, performing publicly, and absorbing the unspoken knowledge that circulates in bars, backstage spaces, and long-standing communities. This is a conversation about time, continuity, and lineage - and what Western practitioners often miss. We explore: • Nuit de Tokyo’s journey from Paris to Tokyo via martial arts • Discovering SM and rope in the pre-internet era, through rare publications and bondage books • Key differences between European and Japanese rope scenes • What a Japanese rope bar actually is, and why bar culture matters in Tokyo • How rope bars work, event etiquette, and how to attend respectfully • The biggest cultural missteps Westerners make - and how to avoid them • How poetry, Confucian social structures, morality, and Japanese banquet culture inform modern shibari • Dispelling the persistent myth that…

People in this episode

Hosts: Mya, Fox

Guest: Nuit de Tokyo

Topics covered

• Japanese rope bars
• rope culture
• cultural immersion
• European vs Japanese rope scenes
• event etiquette
• shibari history

Keywords

• kinbaku
• SM performances
• bar culture
• cultural missteps
• Confucian social structures

Mentioned in this episode

Products: kinbaku books

Places: Japan, Paris, Tokyo

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