Thank you Wingsofanangel for your thoughtful messsage.

You are kind to say that the photographs do not seem pornographic to you and to admire her body - which was and still is, in my eyes at least, beautiful.

Mariko's training obviously involved elements of bondage and submission for her to experience forms of sexuality that she was culturally nervous or negative about. At the same time I was not trying to use violence to force for example anal or interracial sex on her. After working on different new sexual ideas we often used bondage as the final step in breaching the barriers that she had from her upbringing and to overcome any final nervousness at yielding. In a funny way it really did combine East and West - with the various forms of ropework being very Japanese and widening sexual expriences and experimentation very much a Western approach.

When she had learned to accept and enjoy new forms of sexual activity BDSM then became, and still is, part of our mutual ways of yielding and pleasuring each other. I think it is a way that Mariko can stay true to her roots whilst allowing things to happen that she would never do in her Japanese mind.