Spring. Finally!  Winter came and went with the first outbreak of warm(er) days here in Berlin. What you hold in your hands is issue 10 of our Kinbaku Society of Berlin magazine. We almost cannot believe it. This one makes us especially proud. We are honored to present legendary artists, Sugiura Norio-sensei and Miho. In this issue, Sugiura-sensei presents a selection of his most haunting images from his series, entitled ‘Seigen no Onna’ (青玄の女), featuring captivating Miho who relives the story of the young woman in the tale of Dojo-ji. Only Clover’s patience and persistence made it possible that these […]

Our magazine enters its third year with this issue. That’s right – it is already two years ago that you held our very first magazine in your hands, if you are one of the lucky few. We printed only 100 copies. In this issue, we investigate the shadows of the “shadow”. We look at the trashy side of Kinbaku. We all want to be too shiny, too perfect. We talk about the ephemeral beauty of the shadows but exhibit our Kinbaku with vanity. But – shush – we need to tell you a secret. Come closer, listen carefully: we all […]

I do not agree with everything we publish(ed) in the magazines! Some statements I strongly disagree with, some visuals I just don’t like. Hence – I wanted to get them published. I want our authors and contributors to express them- selves freely. I want to bear the discomfort of publishing something controversial – even something I dislike. But then, at the same time, I do want to make the magazine I want, the magazine we as the “Kinbaku Society of Berlin” feel must come into being. So I take the hard and painful job, together with the designer, to select, […]

There was no Spring in Berlin this year. There was a void, a gap – MA. There was a short illusion of early Spring in February, with a few warm sunny days replacing the icy cold weather. Then, nothing… as if nature, and the cycle of seasons, was waiting with us, the humans. I’m not sure what we were waiting for: the vaccine, the end of the lockdown, more physical contact? „Kinbaku needs an audience“ – this is one line that stayed in my mind after one of our first small gatherings in our home studio. With all those online […]

Winter came, nature stopped her movements. For three, four month, there was no flow of energy. It became still. We became still. The air became thin and grey. There was no life anymore, no growth, no nourishment. There was Death. With icy air it was breathing at us. And although for many people there was depression, we seek our motivation, our inspiration in this void. It seems to us that in our modern society we try to completely exclude Death. We function at the illusion of eternal Youth. We pretend Death doesn’t exist and somehow ageing means getting excluded from […]

Lifelessness, quietness – this is what we feel under this thick heavy blanket of the pandemic and the restrictions imposed on us as once again, after a short summer that made us forget about this epidemy, made us feel and enjoy the life…  Autumn took over. The trees celebrated a last feast of abundance in all shades of yellow, brown and red, before it turned bleak. And with the darkness, longer nights, the rain of the second wave came over us. Producing this magazine together helped us going through this challenging time. The regular meetings on Zoom, every Monday, made […]

The hot days passed, with an almost unbearable heat laying like a dense blanket over most of the Europe. The sky is still blue, cloudy. The temperature went back to normal after the thunderstorms poured the water onto the dried out earth…  We are closing a cycle. One year ago we met in Berlin. We didn’t really knew what box we opened. We just knew that we wanted to explore our own fantasies and our own cultural roots in relation to Kinbaku. We wanted to understand, how we can cherish the Japanese origin of this art – and still find […]

What you hold in your hands is the result of the joint effort of an international group of Kinbaku enthusiasts who came together virtually to share their research with you, dear reader. Thank you, for supporting this project. This is very close to our hearts.  We live in strange times, and like everyone else we had to adapt. We witnessed spring break through a foggy window, far away, outside. We all were locked up in our homes. And at the same time, maybe, this outbreak of pure life force, the explosion of the blazing buds, the stunningly fast transformation of […]

What you hold in your hands is the second edition of the Berlin Kinbaku Society Magazine. It appears almost exclusively in monotone black and white with a bit of blue and red. That is no accident as we are following the seasons with our research and this little piece covers WINTER. A long, dark, and somehow strangely warm winter has ended only to give way to even stranger and surrealistic times. Our topics for this issue were: emptiness, scarcity, the cold dryness of the lifeless plains of winter landscapes, grief, death, stillness, the silent waiting of the seeds deep in […]

What you hold in your hands is the manifestation of our last quarter’s research in the matters of Kinbaku and the aesthetic of suffering. Who are we? And why do we do this? We are a group of people, different ages, genders and nationalities, but all Berlin-based who came togeth- er to research Kinbaku. Or to put it more simply: we came together to tie. We came together to witness tying and to exchange about what happens in us and with us, when we tie or are getting tied. We have no special qualification for that, none of us is […]