Ito Seiyu (1882-1961) is arguably the most important figure in the history of Japanese bondage (shibari) and SM. Born during the last days of the Meiji Restoration, Ito, a painter, wood block print master, photographer and writer, provides the link between the ancient and the modern in Japan's fascination with sadomasochistic practices. As an artist he was extraordinary. As an inspiration to generations of Japan's greatest shibari masters he was unique.
Ito was apparently born with a sadomasochistic streak and, according to his own writings, could remember being fascinated at the age of 10 by Japanese folk tales of captive princesses told to him by his mother. At 18 he decided to become a semega (or torment scene) painter and never wavered from that path for the rest of his life. Inspired by such Ukiyo-e (wood block print) masters as Yoshitoshi and Kunisada, both of whom dabbled in semega type subjects, Ito became a semega master of tremendous imagination, variety and skill.
It was during the Taisho period (1912-1926) that the artist began taking photographs, a novel hobby in early 20th century Japan. In 1919 he created his most famous work, Maidens Suffering in the Snow. He was almost forty. Apparently, he was inspired by the folk tale Chujo Hime as well as by an early textbook on torture techniques entitled Semekata Kokore-gaki. Using his camera to record his work he copied various examples of ebizeme (binding with rope) and tsurizeme (suspension with rope) and took many photographs of his bound model in a winter landscape. His use of his own shibari photographs as studies for his paintings and sketches became his standard technique. Most notoriously, he once copied Yoshitoshi's famous and disturbing Ukiyo-e masterpiece, The Lonely House on Adachi Moor with it's startling depiction of a bound and suspended pregnant girl, using his own pregnant wife as his model! So famous had Ito become by this time that the June 1924 issue of Sunday Mainichi magazine, a very "normal" publication, featured a visit to his studio!
Ito was not always held in such high regard. After a lifetime of work he confessed to Amatoria magazine in 1950 that, "The only recognition I ever received, as a person who has studied bondage since 1908, was the pervert tag." Today Ito's perversion would be considered a respected "mania" and he is largely to be credited for this change. Because of his artistry, by the mid 20th century, he had begun to influence a whole new generation of shibari masters, editors, and graphic artists, all talented people interested in the erotic and artistic power of shibari and SM. Figures such as the brilliant painter and editor Kita Reiko (aka Minomura Akira), the legendary shibari master Nureki Chimuo and such later day figures as shibari masters Osada Eikichi, Chiba Eizoh and master photographer Akio Fuji all credit his profound influence on their work. In his own right, Ito's paintings, sketches and photographic studies continue to be published and as late as 1982 a beautiful book on the history of crime and punishment in Edo-era Japan was published using only illustrations by Ito Seiyu.
Ito's strength as an artist came from his great visual skill and taste and determination to capture what he called "Beauty in Suffering," that is those emotions of real desire and real drama caught on the razor's edge between pain and pleasure during the experience of sadomasochism. Like his great western contemporary, John Willie (John Alexander Scott Couts, 1902-1962) he brought artistic genius and a love of women to his passion and in our own age when so much Internet "bondage" and especially "torture" imagery is only misogynist pornography masquerading as fetish art, his delicate and sensitive studies of beautiful maidens "suffering" with pleasure and desire still have the power to impress and inspire.
Kikkou is pleased to present a few disparate sketches from a private collector of Ito Seiyu's fascinating work.
Notes by Master "K" |
