My Mother Tied Me on Her Back: Story of Smallpox

Abstract

Hijikata’s 1972 tour de force dance performance, “Great Dance Mirror of Burnt Sacrifice—Performance to Commemorate the Second Unity of the School of the Dance of Utter Darkness—Twenty-seven Nights for Four Seasons,” was a high point for Hijikata.¹ Held over 27 days from October 25th to November 20th at the Shinjuku Culture Art Theater, the dance attracted approximately 8,500 viewers. There were five different performances, each repeated five or six times in succession. In order, they were Story of Smallpox (Hôsôtan), DissoluteJewel (Susamedama), Thoughts of an Insulator (Gaishikô), Avalanche Candy (Nadare-ame), and Seaweed Granny (Gibasan). This series of performances marked an early presentation of Hijikata’s attempt to build an entirely new dance vocabulary that could produce new kinds of movements and effects, and encode multiple narratives.

You can’t kill history. You can’t shoot it with a bullet and watch it recede into whatever lies outside of memory. History is tougher than that—if it’s going to die, it has to die on its own.

Leif Enger