Hojojutsu (also spelled Hojōjutsu) is a classical Japanese martial art focused on restraining, capturing, and immobilizing a person with rope. Developed by samurai, police, and guards in feudal Japan, it served as a non-lethal, highly technical method of controlling prisoners and suspects.
Hojojutsu is often considered an indirect precursor to modern Japanese erotic rope bondage. Kinbaku also draws from stage performance, art, and post-war underground culture. But some concepts of rope placement, tension, and body control were influenced by older martial-rope arts like hojojutsu. They share historical roots but diverged into very different purposes: one martial and pragmatic, the other erotic and aesthetic.
