EAS 120 Japanese Theater Week 9a-b

Videos on Butoh

Body on the Edge of Crisis (UCI library via Kanopy)

Piercing the Mask (UCI library via Artfilms)

World Theater Traditions: Butoh

Komachi

San Kai Juku video 1 (there are many, many videos of San Kai Juku on Youtube)

General Background for the Development of Post-Shingeki (Post-Modern) Theater: Angura [Underground Theater]; "Little Theater" movement (Shôgekijô); Butoh dance 

I. Political situation

A. immediate post-war Japan Piercing the Mask 12:54

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, and had been revered in the 1950s for standing up to government during the war

 

II. Initial Motivations/Antagonisms: Anti-high culture and “good taste”

A. Started out as anti-traditional Japanese theater training

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

 

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

C. Improvisatory: often performed in tents or in impromptu street theater (image from 1970)

1. a few still do this: theater group Daisan Erotica (Piercing the Mask around 40:00), the Butoh group Byakkosha (video clip), Kara Juro's Red Tent Theater)

D. Anti-Western realism (Shingeki), ballet or modern dance

E. Part of a world-wide explosion of experimental theater and dance in the 1960s

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

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

A. Use of various “traditional” techniques of composition:

1. honkadori (allusive variation)

2. sekai (dramatic worlds) [discussed in "Theatrical Fusion" reading]

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

C. Return to traditional training methods that focus on disciplining the body rather than psychological realism or psychologically motivated acting

1. Review of traditional theater training in Noh, Kyogen, Kabuki:

a. begins at 3-4 years old

b. process:

1) learning “kata” (forms) and memorizing words/chanting without texts

2) role of teacher/leader

 

2. Butoh: ganimata, beshimi as kata

3. Post-Shingeki: Suzuki training method

 

D. 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), Ninagawa Yukio

ANKOKU BUTOH (or BUTÔ): Dance of Utter Darkness

Video: Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis

Took the dance world by storm in the 1980s: Sankai Juku performed at the Olympics in Los Angelee in 1984. Although it has not been greatly appreciated in Japan, it had an extraordinary effect on dance globally (few modern dance companies today do not show the influence of Butoh in their choreography and costuming), and influenced avant-garde theater in Japan and beyond.

I. Origins

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

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

II. Early Antagonisms (specific to Butoh in the 1960s)

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

B. Anti-Western Modern Dance and Ballet

1. But note that Ohno and Hijikata trained in 1930s German Expressionism under the founder of modern dance in Japan, Baku Ishii (1886-1962). Baku Ishii studied with Mary Wigman and Harald Kreutzberg

2. “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. Early 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 (images)

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

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

B. Looked back to origins of theater in shamanic rituals of possession

1. took Artaud's 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. Influence of 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 the 1960s)

IV. First major performanceby Hijikata in 1959: Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors)

A. Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Yoshito (Ohno Kazuo's twenty-year old son)

1. Title from book by Mishima Yukio

2. Story mainly from novel by French writer Jean Genet

 

V. 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. focus on 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. Piercing the Mask 20:30-21:43 including famous images by Hosoe Eikoh taken in Tohoku

C. Tohoku Kabuki

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

VI. 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

Piercing the Mask video from beginning: discussion of ballet versus butoh

6:47 comparison of Kabuki stamping and roppo

31:50 Nakamura Fumio on balance and gravity in Butoh

 

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

3. Piercing the Mask 12:00 (traditional riotous "naked" festival compared to Dairakudakan) TRIGGER WARNING!!!

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 (or even a wet rug)

3. Dissolves sense of self, reconstructing body as "material things in the world" -- "do not imagine it, be it"

Body on the Edge of Crisis15:50 Waguri Yukio as chicken

Ashikawa Yoko video 1(Abandonment of self)

Piercing the Mask: 31: 57 Ashikawa Akeno describing cocoon imagery used to generate dance

World Theatre Traditions-Butoh Kurihara Nanako on training with Ashikawa Yoko

VII. Late 1970s: Explosion of Butoh groups and movement out to the West

A. Genealogy of Butoh

B. Appearance by individuals and groups in videos (Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis, Piercing the Mask)

1. OHNO KAZUO in his studio in Yokohama

Discussion of relationship of Ohno and Hijikata in Piercing the Mask 25:40

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 improvisatory performances, with live music, in outdoor settings and/or tents

 

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. Slogan of Dai Rakuda Kan: 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)

a. Founded Hakutobo (all the dancers take the Ashikawa name)

a. Waguri performing the metamorphosis exercise of a chicken

7. TANAKA MIN

a. worked with Hijikata briefly before his death in 1986

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)

WEEK 9b

I. Ôta Shôgo (1939-2007): Tenkei Gekijo (Theater of Transformation) group formed in 1968; disbanded in 1988.

Brian Powell: "Ôta Shôgo prefers to base his drama not on the 20% of the time when humans give utterance, but the 80% when they are not and were having thoughts that were not to be communicated to the outside world."

A. Komachi Fuden (Tale of Komachi Told by the Wind, 1977) based on the noh play Komachi on the Stupa (Sotoba Komachi)

1. Basic story from Noh play

2. Ota's version (example of honka dori, allusive variation -- taking an earlier story or legend and using it in new ways) play synopsis

3. background provided for a performance of Komachi Fuden by Theatre Yugen in San Francisco; images of the performance in 1986

4. images from various versions, including the original 1977 version.

5. Video: Ota Shoga no Sekai [PN1997 0838 2008]

opening entrance of Komachi (through 9:00); interaction with the young man next door as the Fukakusa Captain (around 22)

trailer of a 2015 production

B. Influence of Butoh?

Brian Powell: "Ôta admits no debt to butoh dance but has himself assumed some significance in the simultaneity with which the new dance and his form of theater developed. Watching butoh and an Ôta play can be a similarly draining experience as the outcome that the audience expects from the agonizingly slow movements of the actors is either denied it or subverted in an unforeseen way." (Japan’s Modern Theater, p. 185)

compare Butoh version of Sotoba Komachi

C. Mizu no Eki (The Water Station, 1981); first Ota Shogo piece done entirely in silence (and has been performed hundreds of times in Japan and internationally)

1. Setting:

2. Ôta's background: born in Manchuria, China, forced to flee as a young child after the war ended and the Japanese returned to Japan

Script

Global Performing Arts Database

Scene 1

interactive script

image slide show

(All Scenes)

Video: Theater in Japan: Yesterday and Today (Mizu no Eki 8:55-11:50; from "Married Couple" scene)

Youtube video of full length production. "Married Couple" begins @ 24:00

C. Influence of traditional theater?

a. "Code of Divestiture": silence, stillness, empty space (ma)

minimal setting, props

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

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

d. shomen staging (staged with actors facing front)

image from Shibaraku, image of full stage

e. emphasis on using the body for expression rather than psychological realism