Ukiyo-e preserves a remarkably varied visual history of rope, captivity, punishment, performance, religion, labor, sexuality, rescue, and bodily control in Japan. This gallery brings together prints that are directly or indirectly useful for studying the cultural background of kinbaku, including kabuki torture scenes, bound prisoners, illustrated news reports, sacred lassos, ritual binding, erotic imagery, and representations of everyday restraint. These works should not be treated as evidence of one simple or uninterrupted progression toward modern kinbaku. Instead, they reveal the many settings in which rope acquired meanings of authority, danger, devotion, vulnerability, spectacle, discipline, intimacy, and release.
Ukiyo-e Gallery
Japanese woodblock prints related to the visual and cultural histories of restraint, captivity, punishment, eroticism, theatre, and kinbaku.
35 published prints
Ichikawa Ebizō II as Fudō Myōō of Meguro, with Ichikawa Danjūrō IV and Nakamura Denkurō II
Ichikawa Ebizō II appears as Fudō Myōō, enthroned on a rock amid a great aureole of flames. He holds an upright sword in his right hand and a coiled rope lasso in his left.…
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Kabuki Actors in a Snow Scene: A Bound Woman and Her Companion
Two kabuki actors are shown in close-up against a snowy setting. The foreground figure, an onnagata portraying a woman, bends forward with a thick yellow rope wrapped horizontally around the upper torso and arms.…
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The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife
A nude woman identified conventionally as an ama, or female shell diver, reclines among rocks and aquatic vegetation while engaged sexually with two octopuses. The larger octopus occupies most of the right-hand page and…
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Minamoto no Yorimitsu and His Retainers Enter Mount Ōe
This surviving sheet from a triptych depicts the dangerous banquet at Shuten-dōji's mountain stronghold. A striped-robed figure at upper left, probably one of Yorimitsu's disguised party, gestures or performs before a group of women…
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Actors in the Torture Scene from Banshū Sarayashiki
The triptych represents the notorious torture scene from the kabuki adaptation of the Okiku well legend. Okiku is suspended by ropes across the mouth of a well at the right while Asayama Tetsuzan, holding…
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Bandō Shūka I as Yamanaya Urasato, with the Child Chidori
The kabuki actor Bandō Shūka I appears as the courtesan Yamanaya Urasato, bound with rope to the trunk of a flowering plum tree in a snowy garden. A child identified as Chidori kneels close…
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Ichikawa Kodanji IV as Asakura Tōgo before the Lord Orikoshi
The kabuki actor Ichikawa Kodanji IV appears as Asakura Tōgo, kneeling under guard before a seated feudal authority. Tōgo wears a pale blue robe, his hair is disordered, and a rope passes around his…
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Chūnagon Asatada: Urazato
The kabuki actor Bandō Shūka I appears as the courtesan Urazato during the snow-torment episode from the Urazato and Tokijirō narrative. She sits in a snowy landscape with a thick rope passing around her…
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Urazato and Tokijirō in the Snow-Torment Scene
The triptych depicts the climactic winter punishment of the courtesan Urazato. At the right she kneels in the snow with rope passing around her upper body and extending toward an attendant or tormentor standing…
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Rescuing a Courtesan
A dramatic kabuki rescue unfolds at night in falling snow. On the right, a courtesan kneels or collapses on a snow-covered roof or raised platform with a thick rope passing around her upper torso…
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The Wife and Children of Katō Ichiemon Captured
A woman identified by the adjacent text as the wife of Katō Ichiemon kneels beneath an open wooden structure while holding a small child across her lap. A second child crouches beside a large…
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Beating a Courtesan with a Cherry Branch
A male kabuki character played by Ichikawa Kuzō stands over a seated female-role character played by Ichikawa Kodanji. The woman is tightly restrained across the chest and upper arms with rope, which appears to…
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The Crucifixion of Asakura Tōgo
The print represents a theatrical execution-ground scene centered on Asakura Tōgo, who is bound upright to a wooden post with his arms extended. Below him, the villain Gen Chōkichi attacks or restrains the monk…
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Struggle in the Snow
Two kabuki actors portraying armed men confront one another in deep snow outside a castle. The standing figure at left grips a drawn or partly drawn sword while raising one leg, around whose ankle…
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Kumagaya Tōjūrō
The print depicts Kumagaya Tōjūrō kneeling on stony ground beside a wooden well or water structure. His wrists are tied behind his back, a rope encircles his torso, and a long coil falls across…
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Inada Kyūzō Shinsuke Murders a Kitchen Maid Suspended from a Rope
A woman identified in modern catalogs as a kitchen maid hangs upside down from a ceiling rope while Inada Kyūzō Shinsuke cuts or stabs her with a sword. Her ankles are tied together above…
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Kabuki Villain with a Bound Woman
A large male character with vivid red kabuki makeup looms behind a young woman whose torso and arms are crossed by rope. He wears an elaborately patterned robe and grips a weapon or sword…
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The Case of the Bound Jizō
The print illustrates the comic legal legend of the Bound Jizō. In the upper scene, Magistrate Ōoka Echizen sits formally in judgment while two men kneel before him. In the lower scene, a large…
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Ōtani Tomoemon as the Bound Okiku
The kabuki actor Ōtani Tomoemon portrays Okiku kneeling beside a well or garden structure during her punishment in Banshū Sarayashiki. Thick rope circles her upper torso and arms, while additional rope lines rise vertically…
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The Villain Mokichi and His Wicked Wife Escape Their Bonds
A sensational early-Meiji illustrated news scene depicts three alleged criminals struggling with rope during an attempted escape. A man in a vivid blue garment stands at the upper right, pulling forcefully on a rope…
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Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun, No. 900
A kneeling woman is confronted by a standing man who bends over her, seizes or controls her long hair, and places a sword or sword-like weapon across the front of her neck. Her upper…
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A Husband Tortures His Wife with a Heated Iron
A bound woman kneels inside a domestic room while a seated man applies or threatens her with a heated metal implement taken from a brazier. Rope encircles the victim's torso and arms, immobilizing her…
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The Child of Horisaka Sahei Tied to a Rice Bale
Inside a storehouse filled with tightly wrapped rice bales, a small child is shown tethered to one of the bales and forced into a low, awkward posture near the floor. Three adults and another…
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Two Women of Nojiri Who Were Robbed, Tied to Trees, and Eaten by Wolves
Two women who were reportedly robbed and bound to trees while travelling near Nojiri are shown after being attacked by wolves. Their partially unclothed bodies hang against dark tree trunks while a pack of…
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Four Kabuki Scenes
The composition gathers four kabuki scenes into a grid framed by broad crimson borders. The upper-left scene presents a seated or fallen striped-robed figure confronted by a standing woman and a kneeling man. The…
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A Wife Who Serves Her Husband Well and a Wife Who Defies Her Husband
The sheet contrasts two models of marital behavior. In the upper scene, a wife kneels politely before her seated husband and offers him a cup while he pauses over an open book. White-robed personifications…
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Yamashiro: Flowers at Kinkaku-ji, Princess Yuki
Princess Yuki stands beneath a flowering cherry tree in the garden of Kinkaku-ji after using fallen petals to draw a magical mouse with her toes. Yellow rope lies loosened on the dark ground around…
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The Lonely House on Adachi Moor in Northern Japan
Inside a dilapidated rural house, a heavily pregnant woman hangs upside down from the rafters while an emaciated old woman crouches below sharpening a knife. The suspended victim's ankles are tied together above her…
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Bound Prisoner Surrounded by Officials
A male prisoner sits or kneels at the center of a formal interior, restrained by numerous turns of thick yellow rope around his chest, upper arms, and back. His disordered hair, striped garments, tense…
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Muraoka of the Konoe Clan Bound with Rope
The print portrays Muraoka, the senior lady-in-waiting of the Konoe household, after her arrest during the Ansei Purge. Her arms are drawn behind her body and her torso is encircled by rope. Yoshitoshi presents…
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Two Men Embracing While a Woman Watches
Two men recline closely together on bedding in a Japanese interior. The man in the brown robe supports and embraces the man in the patterned white robe, bringing their faces into intimate proximity. In…
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Onoe Kikugorō V as Okiku
Onoe Kikugorō V appears in the female role of Okiku, the persecuted servant of the Sarayashiki legend. A thick rope passes around her upper arms and torso, holding her arms behind her body. Her…
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Lovers Making Love under the Full Moon
A heterosexual couple engages in explicit intercourse on a purple patterned mattress beside an open veranda under a full moon. The woman sits astride or leans over the reclining man while he supports her…
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Beauty in Distress
A woman in a pale kimono is bound to the trunk of a flowering cherry tree at night. Her arms appear secured behind the tree, while rope crosses her upper torso and neck or…
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One Man with Two Women
A man engages sexually with two adult women on layered bedding. One woman reclines at the left while the man bends over her and kisses or mouths her chest. A second woman occupies the…
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