I. Development of Post-Shingeki theater

A. Review of traditional theater training:

1. begins at 3-4 years old

2. process:

a. learning “kata” (forms)

b. role of teacher/leader

B. Shingeki

IV. Development of Shingeki (Modern Theater) (dominant form from late Meiji through 1960s):

Main figures: Tsubouchi Shôyô, Osanai Kaoru and Hijikata Yoshi (1898-1959)

Sept 1, 1923: Great Kanto Earthquake

A. Changes in form and content

1. Movement toward Realism and subsequently Naturalism

a. Imitating Western psychological realism (see Stanislavsky and Stanislavsky's System as well as Method Acting)

b. began with Ibsen, Chekov, Shakespeare

2. Classical unities of time, character, and place.

a. Time:

b. Character:

1) “Get away from Kabuki. Ignore tradition. Don’t dance, move. Don’t sing, speak.”

"Be Amateurs!" Osanai Kaoru (1926)

c. Place:

3. Acting:

B. Politics:

1. . Marxist politics lead to naturalism and socialist realism

a. suppressed during war years by government

b. came back strong in 1950s and became dominant theater

C. Development of Post-Shingeki (Post-Modern) Theater: Angura [Underground Theater]/"Little Theater" movement (Shôgekijô)/Butoh dance 

1. Political situation

a. post-war Japan

b. anti-AMPO (US-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty) demonstrations in 1960 and 1968, when the treaty was up for renewal

slide show and movies of 1960s demonstrations

c. split between younger radical students and older Shingeki directors/actors who followed the Chinese or Russian Communist party line

2. Start out as anti-traditional Japanese theater training

a. interest in marginal forms of theater: vaudeville, acrobatics, magic shows

b. return to the "origins" of traditional Japanese theater: actors as kawaramono (riverside beggars)

c. often performed in tents or in impromptu street theater (a few still do this: Daisan Erotica, Byakkosha, Kara Juro's Red Tent Theater).

3. Anti-Western realism/modern dance

4. Explosion of experimental theater and dance in the 1960s

a. comparison to 1960s Western theater: performance art, happenings, improvisational theater, agitprop against the Vietnam war, postmodern dance

D. Codification/Depoliticization of Post-Shingeki theater/Butoh dance

1. Use of various “traditional” techniques of composition: honkadori (allusive variation), sekai (dramatic worlds) [discussed in "Theatrical Fusion" reading]

2. Continued lack of interest in realism or realistic acting style

3. Return to traditional training methods that focus on disciplining the body rather than psychological realism

a. Butoh: ganimata, beshimi

b. Post-Shingeki: Suzuki training method

4. Development of groups centered on charismatic male leaders: Hijikata Tatsumi (Butoh); Terayama Shuji (avant garde theater and film); Kara Juro (Red Tent Theater); Akaji Maro (Dai Rakuda Kan); Suzuki Tadashi (SCOT theater)

ANKOKU BUTOH (or BUTÔ): Dance of Utter Darkness

I. Origins

A. Post-War Situation (similar to Post-Shingeki Theater)

1. post-war Japan (effects of WW II)

a. Both Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo (co-founders of Butoh) grew up in poor farming villages in Northern Japan (Tohoku).

2. Anti-American demonstrations against the renewal of the mutual defense treaty

3. Explosion of theater and dance in the 1960s -- also true in the United States and Europe -- performance art, happenings, improvisational theater

II. Antagonisms

A. Anti-Traditional Japanese Theater (Noh, Kyogen, Kabuki)

B. Anti-Western Modern Dance and Ballet

1. Ohno trained in 1930s German Expressionism

C. Anti-high culture and “good taste”

1. “By denying all that is dead: Kabuki, Noh, Classical Ballet…my journey begins, the full unfolding of the body in new freedom” (Bishop Yamada in Klein, p. 13)

III. Influences

A. French existentialism and surrealism

1. Georges Bataille (1887-1962), Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), Atonin Artaud (1896-1948) and the "Theater of Cruelty"

a. “Festive rituals of erotic sacrifice”

b. Homo-eroticism, cross-dressing

1) Influenced by French author Jean Genet, Japanese author Mishima Yukio

c. idea that release of repressed sexuality is liberating (but is it?)

B. Origins of theater in shamanic rituals of possession

1. took Theater of Cruelty and combined it with idea of Japanese shamanic trance rituals

2. goal: overcome modern individualism

a. “Only by throwing off the body and transcending suffering can true dance be created…Butoh begins with the abandonment of self” (Goda Nario in Klein, p. 34)

C. Marginalized forms of popular Japanese theater

1. Early 20th c.: misemono (similar to circus sideshows); yose theater (comic dance skits and monologues); shitamachi Kabuki (“downtown” Kabuki)

images of Asakusa yose theater and Edo period Kabuki audience

2. Visual influence of cabaret work (in late 1960s Hijikata started a company, Asbesto-kan, that put on cabaret shows)

a. audiences were American soldiers on R&R from Vietnam war (Akaji Maro and Kara Juro performed in Hijikata’s cabaret shows in 1960s)

D. First major performance in 1959: Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors)

1. Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Yoshito

a. Title from book by Mishima Yukio

b. Story mainly from novel by French writer Jean Genet

IV. 1968-1970s: “Return to Japan”

A. Influence of Yanagita Kunio (founder of folklore studies in Japan; friend of Izumi Kyoka)

1. Artist as marginal outcaste figure (kawaramono -- riverside beggars)

2. the spiritual energy of place

B. Return to Tohoku (Northern Japan)

1. Trip in 1965 with Hosoe Eikoh

a. Photography exhibition and Performance (1968)

a. exhibition: “Kamaitachi” (The Sickle Weasel)

b. performance: “Hijikata Tatsumi and the Japanese: Revolt of the Flesh”

C. Tohoku Kabuki

a. Sent groups out to work in areas like Nara, Hokaido, Northern Japan

V. The return of technique  (1972)

A. Hijikata begins working with women

1. Ashikawa Yoko

B. Ganimata (bowlegged crouch)

1. “the weight is hung on the outer sides of the two legs. When one ‘floats’ the inside of the legs upwards, the knees will turn out of their own accord, and the entire frame of the body sinks down.” (Goda, in Klein, p. 52)

a. “natural” posture of peasant farmers in Japan

b. counters western dance style which moves upward

2. cf. to traditional theater: “The actor must imagine that above him is suspended a ring of iron which is pulling him upwards and against which it is necessary to keep one’s feet on the ground.” (Kyogen actor Nomura Mannojô, in Klein, p. 52)

image of Noh actor's stance in Atsumori

3. cf. to Suzuki Tadashi’s training method

image of Suzuki's "bow-legged walk"

C. Beshimi kata (a “mie-in-motion”)

D. White makeup, shaved heads, nudity

1. comparison to kumadori makeup and mie in Kabuki

a. image from Shibaraku

b. colors indicate moral character: face “inscribed by the moral and religious codes of Japanese society”

2. goal in Butoh: erase “personal taste” of the dancers, reduce individuality to the body’s movement alone

E. Metamorphosis exercise

1. “When I was learning to dance with Bishop Yamada, I began by studying a rooster for many days. The idea was to push out all of the human insides and let the bird take its place. You may start imitating, but imitation is not your final goal; when you believe you are thinking completely like a chicken you have succeeded.” (Ojima Ichiro, in Klein, p. 39)

2. Reveals affinity of dancer to particular animals or plants

VI. Late 1970s: Explosion of Butoh groups

A. Genealogy of Butoh

B. Appearances in Video (Body on the Edge of Crisis)

1. OHNO KAZUO in his studio in Yokohama

a. First performance in United States at La Mama in NYC 1980

2. BYAKKO-SHA (founded by Hiruta Sanai and Ohsuga Isamu)

a. Hiruta performing as a shamanic miko

images

video clip

b. communal living and performances, with live music

3. DAIRAKUDAKAN (founded by Akaji Maro, an actor in Kara Juro’s Red Tent Theater)

company website

(lots of videos on Youtube)

a. First performance in United States at American Dance Festival in Durham, NC 1982

b. still make their living based on nightclub work; very strong emphasis on “subversive” sexuality

c. Tempu tenshiki: temptation (desire to live/passion) plus heavenly initiation ceremony

d. Sea Dappled Horse: ancient legend about an innocent young girl who becomes obsessed with a horse (implied that the horse embodies a deity). Her father shoots the horse with arrows. The girl skins the horse and drapes its bloody skin over herself, and the girl and skin are drawn up to the high plain of heaven, dwelling of the gods.

4. SANKAI JUKU (founded by Amagatsu Ushio, who had worked with Akaji Maro)

(lots of videos on Youtube)

a. First performance in United States at Olympics Dance Festival in LA 1984

b. based in Paris

5. ASHIKAWA YOKO (Hijikata's "muse" during the 1970s)

6. MUTEKI-SHA (founded by Nakajima Natsu)

a. Waguri performing the metamorphosis exercise of a chicken

7. TANAKA MIN

a. worked with Hijikata briefly before his death in 1984

b. like Suzuki Tadashi, has a farm outside of Tokyo where dancers live collectively

8. Other people who appear in the film:

a. Motofuji Akiko (Hijikata’s wife)

b. Goda Nario (dance critic)

VII. POST-SHINGEKI THEATER: Ôta Shôgo

A. Ôta Shôgo (1939-)

1. Komachi Fuden (Tale of Komachi Told by the Wind, 1977)

a. Reminds you of?

2. Mizu no Eki (The Water Station, 1981)

a. Setting:

b. Ôta's background: born in China, forced to flee as a young child

c. aesthetics/ stage/ use of silence/ symbolic movement

video: excerpt from Theater in Japan: Yesterday and Today

3. Discussion: elements of Traditional theater?

a. pace: “The pace should be two meters in five minutes”

b. timing: jô-ha-kyû (slow beginning, break, fast finish).

c. use of empty space