For Nikebound's first interview, I thought I would talk to someone who's of interest to just about everyone. So I wandered through my books & my bookmarked sites and found someone who shows up in just about every field of fetish and sexuality I looked at.

Born in Japan, our guest moved to the US in her teens. While earning a Degree in Psychology from UC Berkeley, she was a member of the US Army Reserves & then served active duty. She’s worked in the corporate world as well as extensive volunteer service time for non-profit and HIV causes. She is now considered one of the world’s premier speakers on Human Sexuality.

For this interview, we are going to take a personal look at Midori.

Nikebound

First I would like to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer some of our questions. You've given dozens of interviews on your books, your performances, and your seminars. I was hoping to take a more personal look before moving into your professional life.

In preparing for this interview, I read your blog on livejournal, and the first question I have to ask is: When exactly do you find time to breathe?

Midori

Yes, I’m often quite busy. There’s always something exciting going on and always a deadline looming over me. In all honestly, there isn’t enough time to do everything that I want to.

It’s part of the joys and drudgery of the life of a freelancer, really.

Nikebound

Since you've given so many other interviews about your professional life and projects, I though I would try and start with a look at Midori the person, instead of the lecturer/artist/author.

You've said you're not the stern person people expect to meet after having seen your book The Seductive Art of Bondage or your performance piece Elements of Suffering. Who are you when you're not being the public Midori and running from place to place?

Midori

The cover of the book “Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage” is very formal. That’s what worked for the book and the photographer, Craig Morey.

Some people expect me to be stern, and taller, because of that cover photo. Mostly people are surprised that I’m short and goofy. I do like that I look older and more distinguished in the photo.

The Elements of Suffering show that I co-created with Kumi are about emotional states – so like Greek tragedies we each play distilled human states. So there’s universality – the madwoman is in many of us, and certainly has her place somewhere in me too.

You asked, “Who are you when you're not being the public Midori and running from place to place?”

This has always felt like an odd question to me. I wonder, is the basic assumption that the public behavior or the work behavior of a person is somehow inauthentic?

When I’m teaching or speaking in public or performing or sitting at my desk, alone at the office, these moments are all authentically me. I do what I do for my career and art because I’m lousy at pretending to be something else. If I could do so successfully, I’d have picked a far more lucrative career!

I’m guessing that the question perhaps about curiosity about someone’s private moments, sweet vulnerabilities and foibles – as well as skeletons in the closets.

So here they are:

• In some ways I’m quite shy. I think it’s true for many performers, entertainers and public speakers as well as those who have high profile public occupations. Many of us shy people seek out occupations that give a reason to interact with people. But I’m not likely to be the life of the party – more the quiet conversation in the corner.
• I'm mildly face blind. If you don’t know what that is, check out this link: Face Blind dot Org.
  It’s frustrating and often embarrassing – it’s bad enough that I travel so much that it’s hard to recognize people. I do warn people and I’m grateful for the folks who don't get offended.
• I’m messy at home and neat in hotel rooms. My office looks like a tornado hit it. Piles of projects all over! I keep my hotel rooms neat as such travel routines help to keep my mind clear and help me from leaving things behind.
• I don’t watch much TV but I do love CSI Las Vegas and Heroes. Most TV shows I’ll wait until the DVDs come out in NetFlix and watch them all together while on a flight or in a bath at a hotel.
• Animals? I’m a sucker for them, whether furry, scaled, feathered or otherwise! Recently in Prague, where I was styling and taking photos for TheFetishSaloon.com I came across some barn cats. They were underfed, dehydrated and ill, so during our 4 days on location two of the models and I took turns fussing over them and helping them recover.
• When traveling in different cities I love to go to museums, especially quality contemporary art or well-curated history museums. I also enjoy visiting gardens.
• I am blessed with great friends, whom I don’t get to spend enough time with.
• My spouse is a saint for putting up with me.

Nikebound

In several of your interviews, you've mention that your home life had a strong feminist influence from your German/American mother. How did that effect your childhood in Japan?

Midori

I was raised by my German-American mother and maternal grandmother. My mother is still in Japan. My grandmother has passed. They are both remarkable women who instilled the values of good manners, social justice, intellectual rigor, self reliance, uniqueness and feminism in me. Which is quite a remarkable thing, considering that they were doing this for me in Japan.

Their love and belief in me, along with these values, made me proud and strong in who I am from an early age. Growing up as a mix blood in Japan, especially back then, really wasn’t such a good thing. If my primary care givers had tried to get me to fit in, I may have ended up in a pretty bad state, or even dead.

Instead, they taught me that being an elegant and polite outsider is a great way to see the bigger picture and freer of cultural baggage, make it more possible to have one’s own opinion.

What they were doing, without being explicitly aware of, was laying the basic philosophy of the multi cultural identity – the new “ethnicity” of the global citizen.

Nikebound

You came to the US at 14. That's a vulnerable age for anyone, how do you feel the move has influenced you?

Midori

It wasn’t fun that I couldn’t read or write in English. I had to get over that in a hurry. The good things was that I was so busy studying and becoming integrated into a new culture that I had no time or interest in the typical pitfalls of teenage boredom and rebellion.

Needless to say I was that deeply nerdy, weird, foreign honor student with glasses and funny clothes.

Nikebound

You have a degree in Psychology from UC Berkeley. According to your interview with Secret Magazine, you were studying with an emphasis on neurobiology. Did you have any interest at that time in being a sex therapist, or more accurately any interest at all in working in the sex education field?

Midori

None what so ever. Funny isn’t it?

I had to declare a major and psych seemed kind of cool. The neural bio focus on psych was really coming into it’s power then and it’s a very strong influence at Cal. I’m not so much for the 19th Century analytical model with disfunction as the central assumption.

If I had to do it over again, I’d probably take another major.

To all those who are utterly clueless and in college… Take all the courses that thrill you. Take lots of different classes with really good teachers and don’t lock yourself into a subject as long as you can. Then keep pursuing what seems authentic.

One day you’ll wake up and realize you have a pretty damned cool life!

Nikebound

How has your chosen career and lifestyle affected your relationship with your parents and other members of your family?

Midori

My mother’s a wee bit uncomfortable talking about my content of my writing but she’s really proud that my books are doing so well. She even got her university to carry my books in their library.

Nikebound

Other than a few references to K, the kids, and your 2 cats from your blog, there's not much information about the private Midori. Would you let us know a little bit about the people & animals that have managed to capture the heart of one of the most sought after women in the world?

Midori

“Most sought after?” LOL. Hardly!

My spouse is a saint. She puts up with so much. Since my life has a lot in common with the traveling musician, she’s got all the hassles of being married to a traveling musician.

Nikebound

With all of your travel and the frenetic pace you set for yourself, how do you manage to keep a home life together?

Midori

I don't have kids. My cell phone bill is high.

But we’re both old enough, with each our own lives, so that time away from each other means we don’t sacrifice our individuality as we may have in our younger, greener relationships.

Nikebound

You list Zen Buddhism as one of your interests, do you find your spirituality and your sexuality to be intertwined or is it more compartmentalized into the sacred and the profane?

Midori

Zen is not my spirituality but rather a philosophy that I dig. And what I’m culturally comfortable with from the environs of my childhood. I definitely don’t buy into the Judeo Christian sacred / profane binary model.

It’s all just part of what makes us who we are in the universe we live in. Shoving parts into boxes just make for cluttered closets that come crashing down on people.

And I know about cluttered closets (literally)! You should see my storage room!

Nikebound

Of your many fetishes and sexual interests, when do you feel most spiritually connected to the divine and partner?

Midori

When it feels like child’s play.

Nikebound

In your interview with FetishFlame, you were talking about one of the scenes in Master Han's Daughter where the food seemed to be almost a sensual character in and of itself. As a self styled hedonist, where does food rate on the sensuality scale? And is it better if you make it yourself?

Midori

The story you refer to is titled “The Nurse” from the short story sci fi collection Master Han’s Daughter, where the crooked nurse is seducing her patient’s daughter-in-law and eating contraband food off of each other’s naked bodies. It’s set in a near future Tokyo. I’m visualizing a world where many foods have become illegal or unavailable due to pollution, politics and extinction. Whale bacon and foie gras anyone? I love food adventures!

I’m not much of a cook. I do better at ordering, any day. Actually I love to blog about fab restaurants and food discoveries in my travels.

Nikebound

Is there a specific comfort food you turn to after a bad day? Sushi, a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream, a peanut butter / fluff sandwich, whale bacon?

Midori

I can’t say I have a food that I “turn to after a bad day.” I don't really turn to food for emotional escapes and comfort.

Nikebound

Can you explain bunnies & tentacles to us?

Midori

I’m Japanese.

Nikebound

On the flip side of that question, what fetishes fall under the "Your Kink is not My Kink" banner for you?

Midori

I am not a fan of play that’s about exploiting a person’s untreated trauma or psychological vulnerability. I am not a fan of using the language of kink to disguise, glamorize or make palatable relationships based on abuse, exploitation or learned helplessness.

Nikebound

As an author, you have several books available - including “Wild Side Sex: The Book of Kink Educational, Sensual, And Entertaining Essays”, Master Han's Daughter, and The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage. They are 3 very different types of books - a collection of fiction, a collection of essays, and a focused book on Shibari - which one did you enjoy writing the most and why?

Midori

I can’t say that I enjoyed any of them more or less then the other. Each were very different experiences of writing.

“Master Han’s Daughter” was a lot of brain churning for stories and putting myself in the lives of people entirely outside of my own personality. Exciting and infuriating challenging at the same time. You can read a really good conversation about that book on the Circlet Press site. They published the book

“Wild Side Sex” as years in the making – literally – as I collected the “best-of” essays I had written over a decade’s time. It was a joy to work with the fantastic editor who helped me put it together. Daedalus Publishing has a great history of insightful quality kink books and I was thrilled to be picked up by them.

The funny thing about “The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage” – was that the publisher, Greenery Press, and I didn’t really think the topic and the book would sell beyond one press run. Remember, at the end of the 1990’s, Japanese Rope Bondage wasn’t big at all. Most people asked me what the heck that was.

Nikebound

I plan on doing a review of Master Han's Daughter as soon as I dig it out from beside the bed - long story involving a waterbed frame and a cascade of books from the headboard - are there any stories in it you are especially proud of?

Midori

Hard to say. Probably “Love”.

I need to start working on Part 2 of the book, I already have a few stories written in the same world.

Nikebound

Master Han's Daughter is set in a dystopic future which draws heavily on the cyberpunk genre. What was it that drew you to that genre for this book?

Midori

I like reading the genre but I often wondered where the sex was.
Also, Tokyo is just that way – today, in the here-and-now, it doesn’t quite feel real.

Nikebound

Several of Master Han's stories are written with a rather dark ending - Master Han's protagonist ends up in a coma from a drug overdose and your cat whore commits suicide on a snow covered step; why the dark endings?

Midori

Did you find the stories interesting?

Nikebound

Yes.

Midori

Then that answers the question, doesn’t it?

Nikebound

Many authors draw on ancient legends to retell them in new settings - David Drake retells the Norse Sagas in his Northworld series, Zorro is a repackaged blending of Robin Hood and William Tell. Even Bugs Bunny draws on The Barber of Seville. Your performance piece Tako Hime no Gyotaku (which I believe translates to 'The Octopus Princess Does Fish Printing') obviously draws on a Japanese theme, did you draw on Japanese legends for some of Master Han's Daughter or was it just a post modern Japanese setting?

Midori

The inspirations are varied – from different times, from different medium, from different cultures – just like Japan today.

I took insights from Hans Christian Anderson, post WW2 Japanese science fiction, bad relationships of my friends, travel observations, sex toy design flaws, discriminatory laws in various countries, fiscal abuse of major religions, etc.

Nikebound

As a lecturer, you've speak on a wide range of topics. From blow jobs, voice seductions traditional shibari and bondage with what-can-I-get-my-hands-on-quickly, the art of seduction, power exchange, and more to groups ranging from vanilla to hard core BDSM to professional therapists. What do you find to be the most rewarding subject and group to teach?

Midori

Any group of people who aren’t afraid to ask questions, engage with me, dive in to the exercises and find joy in what I bring them. When I teach, I bring myself fully to the arena – so it’s really fulfilling for me when they’re engaged too.

So it has nothing to do with what their interests are, experience level, gender or group affiliation.

Nikebound

I've attended 4 events in the MA/RI area where you were speaking. Of those, I've managed to get into the room once. From various members of the BDSM community, I hear that's not unusual - whenever you speak, it seems to be standing room only. Do you find that all of your classes are filled, or is it just a certain type of class/event that packs them in?

Midori

My classes are almost always full. Some classes sell out week in advance if pre-registration is required. The class topics are carefully selected between the event organizer and myself to be of interest to the attendees and in tune to the theme of the event or venue. Carefully assessing and appealing to the needs of the attendees help the classes to be successful.

There’s a lot of humor and practical information in my classes, so that helps – people do enjoy returning to my classes and that’s exciting for me.

Nikebound

The one I managed to get into was your "Bondage Outside The Box" at this winter's NELA Fetish Flea. I found it to be quite amusing as well as informative - one of the base takeaways seemed to be that anything is a sex toy if you look at it right. Do a large number of your seminars revolve around the mental aspects of sex or is it a move even split between mental, physical, and technique?

Midori

It’s a balance. Is there anything in human sexuality that isn’t a combination of the mental and physical?

The balance may shift a bit depending on the type of class I’m teaching. I divide my classes in to three general types; the “Show & Tell”, “Hands-on” and “Head & Heart”. When it’s a full day or weekend intensive these three types are mixed in to provide an even better learning experience. This is particularly true for the Rope Bondage Dojo ® weekend intensive.

Nikebound

How long in advance do you plan your schedule - and do you have some events that you pencil in at the beginning of the year as 'Must Attends'?

Midori

Generally I’m scheduling 6 months to a year in advance. Some months are busy than others, though. For example, May 2009 is nearly fully booked.

“Must Attend” events for me? I’d say the big weekend Torture Garden weekends in London, Desire in Palm Springs, the winter Fetish Fair Fleamarket in New England, Seattle Erotic Art Festival, International Mr. Leather in Chicago. These are some highlight events.

Nikebound

I checked your class list from the Fire Horse Productions website and stopped counting around 30. Do you tend to teach all of the classes each year or are some of them just rare, special occasion, classes?

Midori

I have about 60 classes that I can teach. What I teach depends on what the venues request. I also update the classes form time to time, so some classes are dropped and some are added or changed.

Nikebound

Of all of your topics, what would be the one session that you think everyone should attend?

Midori

Hmmm that’s hard to say, as there’s such a wide range of interests out there. Something that’s universally appealing and useful would be “Aural Sex: Seduction by Voice.” This goes beyond gender, orientation or sex play style. It’s even applicable in every day life!

If we’re talking about a class for the kink set, I’d suggest “Beyond Twisted.” It’s about rethinking our desire labels to better understand our own play needs and get better play and sex. Currently I’m serializing that class in to my blog columns at Social Kink and eventually I hope to turn it into a small booklet. Although I think the live class version of this class will always be more entertaining. You get to watch me play with puppet and make funny noises, all in the name of education and insight.

Nikebound

Is it one of your most popular, or does it get pushed aside for "sexier" subjects?

Midori

“Aural Sex: Seduction by Voice” is always a very popular class.

“Beyond Twisted” is a hit with the more thoughtful venues and attendees.

Nikebound

I checked your calendar for the next few months and many of the places you've scheduled haven't posted your actual class yet. Have they not updated their schedules yet or do you sometimes just schedule an appearance and ad lib the session based on who's there?

Midori

The venues may not have updated their calendars. Some places, such as Come As You Are in Toronto may take down my class from their site as soon as they sell out. Or it may be that we’re in the final stages of topic and detail decisions and it’s about to be published. Some places are members only and won’t announce events to the public.

I don’t just show up and ad lib a class. That would make it very difficult for me to plan luggage packing for the right educational material. Many classes require that equipment and assistants to be arranged in advance.

Nikebound

Your art website, Ranshin, doesn't show any new performance dates or gallery showings since December of 2007. Have you gotten away from doing that type of art for now, or has the opportunity just not presented itself this year?

Midori

I just haven’t had time to update my site.

Nikebound

To wrap it up, are there any upcoming events or projects that you would like to share with the readers?

Midori

There’s a bunch of really exciting events coming up!

• I’m on tour teaching a lot this fall – Chicago, LA, Las Vegas, London, Toronto, New Zealand and Australia. These are always listed in my monthly eNewsletter. Folks can subscribe to that at Fire Horse Productions
• The roving Rope Bondage Dojo ® will be happening in Kansas City on October 18 – 19. The registration for that opens on line on September 5th. These usually sell out within a couple of days. Then the Rope Bondage Dojo ® returns to San Francisco in January, 2009 and off to New York in May.
• I’m continuing to shoot for my portfolio so if you’re interested stay tuned for the model calls on my blog and FaceBook.
• Tristan Taormino helped me create “Midori’s Expert Guide to Sensual Bondage” from Vivid Ed series. That’s expected to come out in 2009.
• A very special weekend for women returns in 2009 called “Sensual Dominance: Women’s Weekend Intensive.” Stay tuned!
• I’m always available to answer questions on matters of human sexuality as well as kink. Just drop by and ask me questions at one of my two public discussion spaces: Kinkwire or Yahoo Groups
• I’m updating my web sites currently so I hope to be introducing other new features as well!

Nikebound
You certainly don't seem to be slowing down any going into this fall. I would like to thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to talk with us.

For people looking for more information on Midori or getting in touch with her, she's provided me with a collection of links:
Midori’s Links Planet Midori - Her personal web page Fire Horse Productions - about all of her classes & availability Rope Dojo - dedicated to her Rope Dojo weekend intensive course Ranshin - her art Live Journal - her live Journal page FaceBook Midori ReallyMidori My Space - her My Space page Kink Wire - JT Stockrooms forum page Yahoo! Groups - The Diva Midori group Bondage.com - her Bondage.com columns
   Also check her profile: Bondage.com ID: DivaMidori