Opinion

When Akira Naka tells the story of how he learned rope, he begins with the story of Kinbiken, Nureki Chimuo's monthly rope salon in...

How I learned to stop worrying and love the takate kote

When I think about tying, I think about the one rope gote.  It is one of the easiest ties to do, but one of...

At the beginning of December I visited Japan.  It was a trip that was a personal journey for me for a lot of different...

Surely kinbaku is getting more and more attention recently. It is getting little bit mainstream and popular, with shows, art galleries and even couple...

For the past decade, I have been warning people of the problems and limitations of focusing kinbaku so intensely on technique, without thinking about the heart of it. The focus has been, almost exclusively, on the how to tie, rather than the why we tie. And by why, I don't mean "why we use a munter hutch here, rather than there." I mean motivation. I mean passion. I mean desire. I mean fantasy. I mean heart.

Perhaps the biggest buzzword in rope today is "connection." It is a difficult concept to put into words and even more so to teach.  When...

Wykd_Dave discusses his philosophy of rope and people.

I first wrote the following text in Italian. It was printed on a leaflet handed over to the audience before a kinbaku performance in...

Docvale's journey into kinbaku.

Sometimes the impetus for reflection comes from the most unlikely places.  A few years ago, I bought a woodblock print by Toshikata titled "Yamanouchi Kazutoyo's...

I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between rope and words, particularly in relation to the practice of tying. I was struck by...