Why do we need the “Neobari” word?

We didn’t, until quite recently. Then the word “Shambari” started spreading around the rope bondage Yahoo groups and FetLife and a few other places. It had been around harmlessly for a while, but a few people started making it apply to more than just bad or inept “Japanese Bondage”. They wanted to apply it to any kind of ropework that incorporated elements of Shibari / Kinbaku, no matter whether it was good or bad or claimed to be authentic Japanese Bondage or not. And even to completely non-Japanese ropework!

That’s where I and a few other started to get a bit annoyed. We felt that some of the meanings of “sham” (fake, inferior, sub-standard, dishonest, calculated to deceive, etc.) were offensive and insulting to riggers doing good work that doesn’t happen to fall squarely within the very restrictive boundaries of “real” shibari / kinbaku.

I wrote a post about that to one of those Yahoo groups where a lot of serious s/k people hang out, and as I was writing the final paragraph the word “neobari” came to mind. It seemed a perfect fit to what I needed - a “new-tying” word to describe ropework that draws on influences and inspirations and ideas from any and all cultures, and may occasionally produce a step forward in the development of rope art.

There isn’t much difference between neobari and what several people have called “fusion bondage”. I did in fact register the domain “fusionbondage.com” before I ever knew that some other people had used the term and were strongly associated with it. Nevertheless, “fusion bondage” hasn’t caught on with the bondage public. Perhaps “neobari” will do better.