Bondage — Araki

This photobook by Nobuyoshi Araki, Bondage, published by Taschen stages the erotic and psychological rituals of kinbaku — Japanese rope bondage — as a formal and obsessive art. First captured in Araki’s lens in the 1980s and returning here in bold colour, the suspended and constrained female body becomes a tableau: not of violence, but of choreography, costume, and control. In Araki’s world, bondage is not simply restraint — it is expression, aestheticised suffering, a language of touch that binds photography to performance.

Shot in traditional tatami rooms, the photographs feature women posed in shibari configurations, suspended in mid-air or splayed against sliding paper screens. Their faces remain composed, their bodies taut, set within lushly constructed interiors that echo Edo-era erotic woodblocks. The juxtaposition of kimono, rope, and gaze builds a highly coded image-world — theatrical, intimate, surreal. In the corner, Araki's familiar plastic dinosaur appears, a strange toy to rupture the otherwise sacred erotic scene.

This large-format edition reproduces the images at full scale, allowing their graphic intensity and compositional precision to unfold across every page. For those interested in the visual logic of power and the performance of sexuality in Japanese visual culture, Bondage remains one of Araki’s most provocative and enduring series.

Technical Sheet

Title: Bondage
Artist / Author: Nobuyoshi Araki
Date: 2024
Technique / Printing Method: Colour offset printing
Medium / Materials: Hardcover with cloth spine
Dimensions: 26.5 x 33 cm
Pages: 288
Publisher / Editor: Taschen
ISBN: 978-3-8365-7741-0
Condition: New