Abstract
The 1968 Hijikata Tatsumi and Japanese People: Rebellion of the Body was an outrageous spectacle, and it is seen generally to be a turning point in the evolution of Hijikata’s dance. In truth, the dance does indeed occupy a middle position between the early dances and Hijikata’s later, more complex and structured dances. It also marks a turning point in Hijikata’s connection to his country of origin. However neither the transition in choreography nor in ethnic understanding has been sufficiently articulated. I begin by analyzing Hosoe Eikô’s photographic exhibition that was advertised on the same poster as the dance, “Extravagantly Tragic Comedy: Photo Theater Starring a Japan Dancer and Genius (Hijikata Tatsumi).” I will then examine several comments by Hijikata about his sister and mother that have become well known in the study of Hijikata. I close with a reading of this important dance.
This seems a Home—and Home is not—
But what that Place could be
Afflicts me—as a Setting Sun—
Where Dawn—knows how to be—
Emily Dickinson
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Notes
Epigraph: Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson ed., (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1960), 443 (poem 945).
Hosoe Eiko, “Notes by Hosoe Eiko” in Jean Viala and Nourit Masson-Sekine, eds., Butoh: Shades of Darkness (Tokyo: Shufunotomo, 1988), 191–92.
Akita Senshu Museum of Art ed., Hijikata Tatsumi Exhibition: The Metamorphosis of the Wind (Akita: Akita Senshu Museum of Art, 1991).
Hijikata Tatsumi, “Watashi ni totte erotishizumu to wa inu no jômyaku ni shitto suru koto kara,” [For Me, Eroticism Comes From Being Jealous of a Dog’s Vein] Bijutsu techô 21, no. 312 (May 1969), 128. WB, 58.
Tomioka Taeko, “Hijikata Tatsumi: Shikkoku no suodori” [Jetblack Uncostumed Dance: Hijikata Tatsumi] Bijutsu techô 20, no. 304 (July 1968): 160–69.
Susan Sontag, “Artaud” in Susan Sontag ed., Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings, trans. Helen Weaver (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), xvii-xlix.
Martin Esslin, Antonin Artaud (New York: Penguin, 1977).
Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 84.
Artaud, Heliogabalus, Or, The Anarchist Crowned trans. Alexis Lykiard (London: Creation Books, 2003), 106–13.
Stanca Scholz-Ciona and Samuel L. Leiter eds., Japanese Theatre and the International Stage, (Boston: Brill, 2001), 327.
Yumiko Iida, Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan: Nationalism as Aesthetics (New York: Routledge, 2002), 83.
David Goodman, Japanese Drama and Culture in the 1960’s: Return of the Gods (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1988), 3.
Tanikawa Kôichi, “Buta to kirisuto” [Pig and Christ] Bijutsu techô 38, no. 561 (May 1986), 52.
Antonin Artuad, “The Theater of Cruelty (First Manifesto),” in Mary Caroline Richards, trans., The Theater and Its Double, (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 90–95.
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© 2012 Bruce Baird
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Baird, B. (2012). Pivoting Panels and Slashing Space: Rebellion and Identity. In: Hijikata Tatsumi and Butoh. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137012623_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137012623_4
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