Advertisement
I wa going to post this in response to a comment in the "what is the definition of evil" topic, but it's important enough (to me) that I thought it warranted its own topic.
In that posting, in regards to the issue of whether the definition of evil was a topic that belonged in the Butoh Tribe, Littlefish wrote, " if you would agree that butoh was at least partially inspired by the events at hiroshima and nagaski ..."
I'm sorry, but I, for one, would not agree with that statement. This association of butoh with the horrors of the atomic bomb is probably the biggest misunderstanding about butoh that exists in America. I'm not exactly sure where it started, but I think it it almost entirely without basis.
I have studied with at least 2 dozen butoh teachers from Japan and around the world, and not one of them has ever mentioned the atomic bomb. I have about a dozen publications about butoh on my bookshelf, and in all of them the only reference to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki I can find actually refutes (or at least downplays) the idea of their connection with butoh..
That one reference is in the Spring 2000 issue of TDR (The Drama Review), which was devoted to writings by and interviews with Tatsumi Hijikata. In the introduction to that volume, Kurihara Nanako wrote:
"Hijikata's words dispel the misconceptions about butoh and his own work, which have been erroneously essentialized and stereotyped. Butoh is often seen as something essentially "Japanese" or "Tohoku," the northeastern region of Japan where Hijijata grew up. Some scholars too easily try to connect him with Zen Buddhism and other "Japanese" or "Eastern" elements. Others, particularly American critics, see butoh as a direct product of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagaski ... Yes, the war affected Hijikaya greatly, as it affected whole generations of Japanese artists and writer. And of course, butoh contains a lot of "Japanese" elements. However the origin of butoh is far more complex."
That's it. I've also found a 3 sentence comment by Isamu Osuka, the director of Byakko Sha, in the 1989 butoh documentery "Dance of Darkness" by Edin Velez. Osuka says he was born in Hiroshma after the war. His parents lived there during the bombing and spoke to him about its victims. But Osuka is clearly talking about his own life and not making any generalities about butoh. Velez ends a clip of a Byakko Sha performance by cutting to a clip of an atomic bomb blast, but this is clearly Velez's statement. Sometimes I wonder if the whole history of this Western misconception of butoh can be traced to this one documentary.
There is, of course, also the 1960 film "The Navel and the Bomb," directed by Eiko Hosoe and featuring Hijikata, among other performers. I've seen this film (it was presented by Akiko Motfuji, Hijikata's widow, at the 1996 San Francisco Butoh Festival), and I don't see how this one very abstract film, directed by a photographer and experimental filmmaker who was not himself a butoh performer, can lead to the conclusion that butoh was a reaction to the atomic bombs. Motofuji herself said that Hijikata's intention in the film was to talk about the univerality of the human condition. "Everyone has a navel."
Eiko Hosoe's other well-known connection to butoh is a famous series of photographs he took of Hijikata dancing in the rural Japanese countryside, but for Hosoe this work was very personal, reflecting memories of his own childhood in rural Japan, and not even primarily a document of HIjikata's dance or butoh, and certainly not a universal statement on mankind or the war.
I suspect the prevalence of this misconcecption in America has more to do with unconscious needs of the American psyche than anything in butoh.
If anyone can point me to anything in the writings of Hijikata or Ono or any of the pioneering butoh artists, or even anyone authoritative talking on the matter, that can draw a definite connection between the origins of butoh and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'd love to see it. If I am wrong, I want to know, but otherwise maybe it's time we stop perpetuating this unfounded myth.
Thoughts, comments, opinions?
In that posting, in regards to the issue of whether the definition of evil was a topic that belonged in the Butoh Tribe, Littlefish wrote, " if you would agree that butoh was at least partially inspired by the events at hiroshima and nagaski ..."
I'm sorry, but I, for one, would not agree with that statement. This association of butoh with the horrors of the atomic bomb is probably the biggest misunderstanding about butoh that exists in America. I'm not exactly sure where it started, but I think it it almost entirely without basis.
I have studied with at least 2 dozen butoh teachers from Japan and around the world, and not one of them has ever mentioned the atomic bomb. I have about a dozen publications about butoh on my bookshelf, and in all of them the only reference to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki I can find actually refutes (or at least downplays) the idea of their connection with butoh..
That one reference is in the Spring 2000 issue of TDR (The Drama Review), which was devoted to writings by and interviews with Tatsumi Hijikata. In the introduction to that volume, Kurihara Nanako wrote:
"Hijikata's words dispel the misconceptions about butoh and his own work, which have been erroneously essentialized and stereotyped. Butoh is often seen as something essentially "Japanese" or "Tohoku," the northeastern region of Japan where Hijijata grew up. Some scholars too easily try to connect him with Zen Buddhism and other "Japanese" or "Eastern" elements. Others, particularly American critics, see butoh as a direct product of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagaski ... Yes, the war affected Hijikaya greatly, as it affected whole generations of Japanese artists and writer. And of course, butoh contains a lot of "Japanese" elements. However the origin of butoh is far more complex."
That's it. I've also found a 3 sentence comment by Isamu Osuka, the director of Byakko Sha, in the 1989 butoh documentery "Dance of Darkness" by Edin Velez. Osuka says he was born in Hiroshma after the war. His parents lived there during the bombing and spoke to him about its victims. But Osuka is clearly talking about his own life and not making any generalities about butoh. Velez ends a clip of a Byakko Sha performance by cutting to a clip of an atomic bomb blast, but this is clearly Velez's statement. Sometimes I wonder if the whole history of this Western misconception of butoh can be traced to this one documentary.
There is, of course, also the 1960 film "The Navel and the Bomb," directed by Eiko Hosoe and featuring Hijikata, among other performers. I've seen this film (it was presented by Akiko Motfuji, Hijikata's widow, at the 1996 San Francisco Butoh Festival), and I don't see how this one very abstract film, directed by a photographer and experimental filmmaker who was not himself a butoh performer, can lead to the conclusion that butoh was a reaction to the atomic bombs. Motofuji herself said that Hijikata's intention in the film was to talk about the univerality of the human condition. "Everyone has a navel."
Eiko Hosoe's other well-known connection to butoh is a famous series of photographs he took of Hijikata dancing in the rural Japanese countryside, but for Hosoe this work was very personal, reflecting memories of his own childhood in rural Japan, and not even primarily a document of HIjikata's dance or butoh, and certainly not a universal statement on mankind or the war.
I suspect the prevalence of this misconcecption in America has more to do with unconscious needs of the American psyche than anything in butoh.
If anyone can point me to anything in the writings of Hijikata or Ono or any of the pioneering butoh artists, or even anyone authoritative talking on the matter, that can draw a definite connection between the origins of butoh and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'd love to see it. If I am wrong, I want to know, but otherwise maybe it's time we stop perpetuating this unfounded myth.
Thoughts, comments, opinions?
posted by:
|
New York City
|
Advertisement
Advertisement
-
Re: Butoh and the bomb
Mon, January 1, 2007 - 10:30 AMThe nuclear bomb was such an incredibly event in world civilization that many academics, who by training, tend to seek out a singular root cause of everything, like to attribute everything to the bomb.
Certainly, the bomb had a profound influence on many other counter-cultural movements (the beats in America, for instance.) However, this obsessive desire to reduce every post WWII artistic movement to the bomb is a form of lazy reduction that allows third-rate intellectuals to avoid too much historical research.
-
Re: Butoh and the bomb
Fri, January 5, 2007 - 7:21 AMBob, this is a question that has been nagging at me for some time. Like you, I've never had a conversation with a teacher or well-known butoh performer which ever referenced hiroshima. However, I have had conversations in passing with individuals (usually patrons) who claim that the connections between the two are documented/irrefutable. At this time, I have not been able to verify this connection even through research.
However, that individuals, especially those outside the community, draw a connection in the first place is VERY interesting to me on a number of levels. From a sympathetic perspective, it is quite easy to understand how an event which marked a new beginning in the human horror show would have effects on nearly every artistic and intellectual movement which burgeoned close to the time of its occurence. Nevertheless, that this one event , which was instigated by a western colonial power, would lead in shaping all of these movements irrefutably is a bit short-sighted and smacks of the typical western-centric tendency to see everything through its own lens. This tendency denies the integrity of the history, culture, and individualism of those artists seeking new voice. I find it rather annoying personally.
And what if there was, though unproveably, a hiroshima influence on butoh? So what. What butoh was and continues to become can never be reduced to a phenomenon arising from that alone. Presently, what I have experienced through workshops, performances, discussions, and attempts at creating something from all that I have learned don't feel the least connected to that event. And of course I am not japanese and will never be japanese so if butoh could be reduced to an event isolated to the experience of being japanese I wouldn't be as transformed as I am through my practice.
