Description

Rating: Not rated

Tags: History of Ideas, Modernity, Lang:en

Summary

In 1959, Japanese performance artist Hijikata Tatsumi founded a style of dance theatre that drew from both Japanese and European creative sources. What attracted Hijikata, and his contemporaries were the ways in which these sources dealt with modes of expression that were marginalized and suppressed by modernizing practices of the late 19th century. Hijikata’s Ankoku Butoh (Dance of Utter Darkness) was one of several post-war, avant-garde developments that sought to articulate the post-war crisis of subjectivity, as well as reintegrate Japan’s modern consciousness with that of its native, pre-industrial roots. The repression of Japanese pre-modernity in combination with the death and devastation of WWII had resulted in a resurfacing of cultural elements that was often uncanny and grotesque. Hijikata, and his contemporaries (such as photographer Moriyama Daido and filmmaker Imamura Shohei), strategically retrieved these elements and exploited them in their creative works.

These ghostly elements were historically aligned with the marginal classes and had been systematically suppressed during the late 19th century’s period of modernization and rationalization. Their re-emergence after the war in the form of avant-garde arts and performances helped to revive Japan’s pre-war and pre-modern cultural roots. This reclamation and subsequent reintegration made possible an articulation of Japanese subjectivity and identity independent of nationalist rhetoric. For a country emerging from wartime discourse, still reconciling itself with Westernization, these artists’ work was instrumental in establishing both a modern point of reference for the exploration of Japanese authenticity, as well as a critical voice in the face of modernity.

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