Kinbaku means “tight binding,” while Kinbaku-bi literally means “the beauty of tight binding.”

Kinbaku is a Japanese style of bondage or BDSM in which an individual is tied up using simple yet visually intricate patterns, usually with multiple pieces of thin rope (often jute, hemp, or linen). In Japanese, this natural fiber rope is known as asanawa. The use of hemp rope to restrain captives is alluded to as a symbol of power, in the same way that stocks or handcuffs are used in a Western BDSM context. The word shibari came into common use in the West sometime in the 1990s to describe the bondage art of Kinbaku. Shibari is a Japanese word meaning “binding” or “binding” in most contexts, but is used in BDSM to refer to this style of decorative bondage.