, also romanised as Seiyu Itoh (3 March 1882 in Tokyo – 28 January 1961 in Tokyo) was a Japanese

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

, recognised today as "the father of modern

kinbaku means "tight binding," while literally means "the beauty of tight binding." is a Japanese style of bondage or BDSM which involves tying a person up using simple yet visually intricate patterns, usually with several pieces of thin rope (often ...

".The Father of Modern Kinbaku
Ito's life was the subject of director Noboru Tanaka's 1977 Nikkatsu Roman porno film '' Beauty's Exotic Dance: Torture!'', the final entry in his " Showa Era trilogy".

Biography

Ito was born in Asakusa district and started his education in painting by 1890. His father was a metalworker and he also received training in

ivory carving Ivory carving is the carving of ivory, that is to say animal tooth or tusk, generally by using sharp cutting tools, either mechanically or manually. Objects carved in ivory are often called "ivories". Humans have ornamentally carved ivory since ...

, later sculpture. He adopted the alias ''Seiu'' (

Sino-Japanese reading are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequen ...

of kanji for words 'clear' and 'rain') at age 13.Ito Seiu
/ref> Around 1907, he began working for newspapers.伊藤晴雨
/ref> Ito hired a young art school model named Kise Sahara in 1919. Kise became Ito's second wife after she got pregnant and posed willingly for her husband. Ito became the target of censors in 1930, which led to draining of his fortunes and he lost his works at the

Great Tokyo Air Raid On the night of 9/10 March 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) conducted a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo, the Japanese capital city. This attack was code-named Operation Meetinghouse by the USAAF and is known as the Great Tok ...

. In 1960, he was awarded by the .

Style

As an artist, Ito was very interested in kabuki and other ways of the Edo period and his book was published after the Kanto earthquake. His technique for depiction of Edo period tortures was to bind his model in various ways, have the photographs taken, and use them as inspiration for his paintings. A notorious exploit of such kind was binding his pregnant wife Kise and having her suspended upside down for a drawing imitating the ukiyo-e ''The Lonely House on Adachi Moor in

Michinoku Province was an old province of Japan in the area of Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate and Aomori Prefectures and the municipalities of Kazuno and Kosaka in Akita Prefecture. Mutsu Province is also known as or . The term is often used to refer to the combi ...

'' by Yoshitoshi.History & Style: East vs. West
/ref>

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ito, Seiu 1882 births 1961 deaths BDSM people Bondage artists Bondage riggers Artists from Tokyo 20th-century Japanese painters