Hijikata Tatsumi and Butoh: Dancing in a Pool of Gray Grits
Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History
Bruce Baird

Palgrave Macmillan, January 2012
ISBN: 978-0-230-12040-2, ISBN10: 0-230-12040-7,
6.000 x 9.250 inches, 310 pages, Includes 59 pgs illus,

Hijikata Tatsumi’s explosive 1959 debut Forbidden Colors sparked a new genre of performance in Japan–butoh: an art form of contrasts, by turns shocking and serene. Since then, though interest has grown exponentially, and people all over the world are drawn to butoh’s ability to enact paradox and contradiction, audiences are less knowledgeable about the contributions and innovations of the founder of butoh. Hijikata Tatsumi and Butoh traces the rollicking history of the creation and initial maturation of butoh, and locates Hijikata’s performances within the intellectual, cultural, and economic ferment of Japan from the sixties to the eighties.

Reviews

“‘Butoh is always an unfinished project,’ writes Baird, and this form of contemporary Japanese dance, now appreciated around the world, can be seen, in his words, ‘as an art form with meaning yet which resists finalized interpretation.’ Central to the development of the form is the work of Hijikata Tatsumi, both as a choreographer and a dancer, and this detailed and sympathetic account of his performances and his writings is, in my opinion, by far the most complete and rigorous available in any language. Baird’s meticulous and evocative descriptions of Hijikata’s performances, often accompanied by rare photographs, is brilliantly managed, and the dancer’s often oblique writings, as explicated here, go a long way to help place Hijikata’s accomplishments firmly in the social, political, and spiritual milieu of postwar Japan. This is a study which should be of great significance, not only to those with an interest in postwar Japanese arts and cultural history, but to anyone who appreciates the achievements of modern dance.”–J. Thomas Rimer, professor emeritus of Japanese Literature and Theatre, University of Pittsburgh

“Baird provides a marvelous guide into the dizzying yet compelling world of butoh and its innovative aesthetics and intriguing juxtapositions. Students and scholars of performing arts and the avant-garde will relish his gorgeous and stimulating analysis.”–Laura Miller, Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri-St. Louis