"Kinbaku (tying with knots) is not the same as bondage. I only tie women's bodies because I cannot bind their hearts. Only their limbs can be tied together. Binding a woman becomes a kiss."
A major figure in contemporary Japanese photography, Araki intimately ties his artistic production to his life. His central themes are Tokyo, love, sex, and death. In his Kinbaku series, Araki explores the very delicate art of Shibari (binding). This practice, which derives from an ancestral martial art, aims to inflict on the prisoner a suffering specific to the type of criminal they are. It has gradually become an erotic practice that seeks to shape the female body, with the knot possessing a strong sexual connotation linked to Japanese cosmogonic mythology.