Matthias T. J. Grimme (born 24 June 1953 in Hamburg, Germany), stage name Tatsu Otoko (竜男, “Dragon Man”), is a German author and publisher of sadomasochistic literature and magazines, a photographer, and a rope artist working in Japanese-style bondage. Inside German-speaking BDSM he is one of the standard textbook names; internationally he is one of the few German riggers recognized on the global kinbaku circuit—the “Hamburg School of Bondage” as a hybrid of Tokyo technique and his own staging.
From Psychiatry and Men’s Work to Schlagzeilen
After high school Grimme trained in nursing and social work and spent roughly fifteen years in various psychiatric institutions. He organized within the German men’s movement and co-led men’s groups, publishing books and stories about men and their relation to themselves. Since 1989 he has co-published Schlagzeilen, the largest German SM magazine, and written widely on BDSM, fetishism, and bondage. He is best known as author of Das SM-Handbuch (The SM Handbook) and Das Bondage-Handbuch (The Bondage Handbook)—the German-language standard handbooks for practitioners—and as co-owner of the BDSM publishing house Charon-Verlag.
That path matters for scene history: a clinician-adjacent, men’s-movement intellectual who moved into SM publishing rather than only underground zines, then built durable how-to books that German players still treat as desk references. Charon-Verlag’s list and the long-running Schlagzeilen co-editorship made him infrastructure, not only a performer.
Public SM, Parties, and Teaching
Grimme appeared in German documentary television (including a 1994 segment of ARD’s Unter deutschen Dächern series, “Das soll Liebe sein”) and in multiple bondage productions, among them a five-part bondage workshop series from Charon-Verlag. He co-organized early public SM parties in Germany under the banner “Les Fleurs du Mal” (until 1998) and, since 1999, the “Respekt!” parties in Hamburg. He works as a BDSM performer and as an SM and bondage teacher, running workshops in Germany and abroad. The party lineage—from literary-decadent branding to an explicitly “Respect!” frame—tracks how German public play culture professionalized consent language while keeping dungeon spectacle.
Tokyo Connections and the Hamburg School
From 2000 onward Grimme visited Tokyo repeatedly, becoming only the second Westerner to do public bondage shows in Japan (venues and events including East meets West, Department H, Loft plus One, Tokyo Jail, and others). He met Japanese rope artists including Eikichi Osada, Akechi Denki, Chiba Sensei, Randa Mai, Yukimura Haruki, Osada Steve, Kinoko Hajime, Kazami Ranki, Mira Kurumi, and Yusuji Watanabe. His bondage style—the “Hamburg School of Bondage”—mixes what he absorbed in Tokyo with his own aesthetic. That claim is not tourist cosplay; it is a documented itinerary of public shows and named teachers, the kind of East–West rope diplomacy that later European kinbaku instructors take for granted.
Since 2000 he has also produced photographs and films for his Bondage Project. With bondage partner and model Nicole (stage name Ropecat) he creates “rope art,” performing and teaching together. The partnered brand—rigger plus dedicated model-educator—is common in modern rope culture; Grimme and Nicole are an early, durable German instance.
Organizing, Studio, Awards
Since 2012 Grimme has been spokesperson for the BVSM (Bundesvereinigung Sadomasochismus, National Association of Sadomasochism). Until 2013 he co-ran the piercing and branding studio “Stahl Stich / Kiss of Fire” with Andrea Grimme. He has been married to Andrea Grimme since 1999 and lives in Hamburg. At BoundCon 2017 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award for special merits in the bondage scene and for his life’s work—community recognition that his handbooks, parties, Japan bridge, and publishing house form a single long project rather than scattered side gigs.
Selected Works
- Das SM-Handbuch — Charon-Verlag, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-931406-01-1
- Das Bondage-Handbuch. Anleitung zum einvernehmlichen Fesseln — Charon-Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-931406-71-4
- Japan Bondage – Bondage-Handbuch Spezial — Charon-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-931406-70-7
- Das SM-Handbuch Spezial 1 (ed.) — Charon-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 978-3-931406-44-8
- SM-Handbuch Spezial 2 – Das Session Kochbuch (ed. with Andrea Grimme) — Charon-Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-931406-46-2
- Käufliche Träume. Erfahrungen mit Pornografie — Rowohlt, Reinbek 1988, ISBN 3-499-18210-6
- Die ungleichen Brüder. Zum Verhältnis zwischen schwulen und heterosexuellen Männern (with Elmar Kraushaar) — Rororo, 1988, ISBN 3-499-18226-2
He also edits the series Böse Geschichten & schmutzige Fotos (35 volumes, Charon-Verlag)—“Wicked Stories & Dirty Photos”—a long-form archive of German-language SM fiction and imagery. For English-speaking kink readers who only know Tokyo name brands or U.S. rope celebrities, Grimme is the reminder that German BDSM built its own textbook culture, party infrastructure, national association voice, and Japan-informed rope school—and put the how-to on paper early enough that “read the handbook” still means, for many players, his.
