Founded through the collaboration of Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata, Butoh came as a protest against both the postwar Westernization and Japanese traditions like Noh theatre. It sought to find a more earthbound form of dance that would suit the Japanese body and its natural movements. The themes were often taboo, body paint was worn. Influences include Antonin Artaud and Georges Bataille, the cliché, the burlesque, the grotesque, and the violent. [1]
The first butoh piece, Forbidden Colors (禁色, Kinjiki) by Tatsumi Hijikata, premiered at a dance festival in 1959. It was based on the novel of the same name by Yukio Mishima. It explored the taboo of homosexuality and ended with a live chicken being held between the legs of Kazuo Ohno’s son, Yoshito Ohno.
The goal of Butoh was not expression, but reintegration of the body and mind. In contrast with the Modernist narrative, it used interdisciplinary performance, narrative, and theatricality at their utmost kitsch and obscene as a subversion of form, and an intentional movement away from medium toward the experience of a formless reality. By witnessing this body upon which there have been enforced incomplete and inadequate structures of meaning and identity it aims to return to the truth of the matter.[1]
One of Hijikata’s former students describes one of the exercises they would perform in class: imagine an increasing number of insects crawling on their skin until they pierced it and started eating their insides, leaving an empty body.
“Butoh dancers can transform themselves into everything from a wet rug to a sky and can even embody the universe, theoretically speaking.”[2]
Hijikata Tatsumi and Japanese People: Revolt of the Flesh is an hour-and-a-half long performance featuring Hijikata dancing through a series of identities and non-identities which address essentialized gender and sexuality in contemporary Japanese culture. A pianist plays disjointed tones, accompanied by the sound of engines, implanting the soundtrack of modern life. Towards the end of the performance, Hijikata bolts about the stage, throwing himself against the metal panels and creating sound through bodily mutilation, the edges of the panels pressing into his flesh like blades. The performance ends with Hijikata being lifted above the stage on ropes forming a semi-crucifixion above the audience.
Each movement has meaning. It has notation. There is a sort of technique. This language usually gets called butoh-fu, or butoh notation. It was a working language, a record written by a dancer or a choreographer, meant to help the dancer to remember the movements quickly and communicate with the choreographer. [3]
[1] McCormack P. (2019) The Body as the Universe: Hijikata Tatsumi’s Ankoku Butoh and Georges Bataille’s Informe, The Classic Journal https://theclassicjournal.uga.edu/index.php/2019/02/06/the-body-as-the-universe-hijikata-tatsumis-ankoku-butoh-and-georges-batailles-informe/#_ftn12
[2] Nanako K. (2000) Hijikata Tatsumi: The Words of Butoh http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146810
[3] Takashi, M. (2018) Exploring Japanese Avant-garde Art Through Butoh Dance (2018), Keio University, Tokyo