They call it hard play but from what I saw last Friday evening in a quiet town north of central Tokyo, it was obvious nobody was playing around. This was a video shoot for a relatively new company on the scene called Pain Gate. They specialize in the hardest of the hard and they don’t fool around when it comes to commissioning some of the top specialists currently active in this niche within a niche.
Shikou Shima, Ranki Kazami and Mira Kurumi were all featured in distinct 45 minute segments. Each brought his own play partner and gear. The videographer was there with two cams, one mounted on a tripod, the other hand held. The photographer was there, of course. He had a camera inside a large contraption my friend said must have been a “sound box”. It did effectively muffle the click of the shutter.
And then there was the audience of which we were a part. About 25 mostly male gawkers who had traveled to this remote corner of greater Tokyo by special invitation to get a look at what hard play really is all about. The venue was a large complex that, from the outside, looked like an ordinary apartment building, or perhaps a hotel.
A pedestrian just happening by wouldn’t have a clue that the place contained a full-fledged movie studio complete with a large variety of sets: a classroom, a medical clinic, a cafeteria just to name a few. And then, of course, there was our set which was made up to look exactly like a bondage bar.
My aforementioned friend and I had been in Akihabara a few days prior scouting out the various shops that stock bondage magazines, videos, photobooks and the like. In fact, he scored an excellent out-of-print full-color, glossy photobook featuring Akechi Denki and model Kate Asabuki. Some of the photos from this book used to be available quite liberally on the internet. Still, getting the book itself was quite a find. I had never seen it before.
Then he suggested we go to Sun Shop. Sun Shop is just around the corner from the main drag where many of the big electronics stores can be found. It is one of the best places in Tokyo to go trawling for new SM DVDs. If you’re in Shinjuku or Ikebukuro, there’s Taiyo Tosho. But in Akihabara, it’s Sun Shop, baby.
Some people complain that Akihabara has changed. Now, in addition to being the greatest place in the world for consumer electronics geeks to hang out, you will also find the so-called maid cafes and a variety of shops catering to manga and anime freaks. This doesn’t bother me as long as it stays true to its Electric Town roots. And it doesn’t hurt that it has plenty of places to find bondage porn, both new and used. It goes without saying that Sun Shop stocks quite a few of Osada Steve’s DVDs and I’m proud 
to say they have stocked mine as well. Anyway, while at Sun Shop we were invited to attend the shoot. It was free and all we had to do was play the role of, well, members of the audience. Mira Kurumi was the first to take the stage. He is well known for attracting a large number of young female groupies, most of them harboring the desire to be bound by him, to have him fill their mouths with large, painful gags and to find out what he’ll do with those nasty, ubiquitous needles. His model for the evening was a slender, pretty girl who had large, perfectly formed titties. In fact, they were quite large considering her slight build. Eventually Kurumi’s needles found their way to her soft, white breasts but not before he had pierced her nose several times. Once everything was in place, he did a bit of sewing.
Of course, a lot more happened during the 45 minutes the girl was tied to a chair but I must move on.
Next up was Ranki Kazami whose partner was more the girl-next-door-type. I think it would be fair to say that Ranki, of the three, can make the strongest claim to being a serious nawashi. But this really wasn’t a rope show. Ropes, in this case, were a means to an end. And so, once his girl was completely stripped, her bound wrists were pulled up towards the ceiling and she was left to stand there for awhile, stretched and taut, nude and vulnerable.
Ranki had fetched a bullwhip and when he returned to his victim, proceeded to administer the most brutal flogging I have ever witnessed in person. Red welts covered the creamy white skin of the naked maiden.
He used to go by the title “King of SM”, and his resume boasts over 2,000 women he has dominated and trained over a quarter of a century. As befits the holder of the crown, Shikou Shima was the last to appear. His girl had been bound and gagged off stage. She was topless and barefoot, wearing only the bottom portion of her yukata. He whipped her from behind as he drove her, like so much cattle, down the hallway and to the stage.
Once on stage, he wasted no time trussing her up fully with thick, white rope. He had an ingenious way to get her hanging upside down, legs apart. He didn’t have to use a pulley or much strength at all to get her in that position. Her covering had slipped away now, revealing her shaved pussy as well as her breasts.
One of her nipples was a convenient location to attach a strong metal clip which was attached to a wire which was attached to a handheld box capable of generating enough electricity to drive a girl batshit bonkers. Of course, to make a connection you need another wire. This one was attached to a metal wand and whenever the wand was brought into contact with the girl’s body, the juice flowed.
I’m going to leave it at that except to say that this event was not about shibari , really, but it does illustrate what sometimes goes on behind the scenes with folks who use ropes in a different way. The context and the outlook are different from the way a traditional nawashi would view his craft. Of course, there is a connection but I’ll leave it to the experts to debate how strong or weak that connection is.
It was interesting, to say the least. You can go here to find a very few pictures and text (all in Japanese) describing the event.
KabukiJoe
