Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Curin, Catherine. Recovering The Body and Expanding The Boudaries of Self in Japanese Butoh, Hijikata Tatsumi, Gorge Bataille and Antonin Artaud
Curin, Catherine. Recovering The Body and Expanding The Boudaries of Self in Japanese Butoh, Hijikata Tatsumi, Gorge Bataille and Antonin Artaud
35. Ibid.
36. Hijikata, ‘To Prison’, and anguish, violates taboos of nudity and redefines the sacred, as the
p. 45. erotic union is identified with the death experience. An intimate
37. Hijikata, ‘From Being
Jealous of a Dog’s Vein’, connectedness and continuity is offered through the intense sexual
p. 58. encounters he enacts on stage, out of which, in Bataillean terms, an
38. For example, as was
described earlier in extreme individual and corporeal disturbance takes place.38 For both
Forbidden Colours
(Kinjiki), a chicken is artists, eroticism distorts the reproductive purpose of sexuality, as it
killed in the context of a serves no usefulness but offers instead a radical negativity.39 In a society
homoerotic scene.
39. See Georges Bataille, which had come to deny the subversive aspects of sexuality while
The Accursed Share: The promoting those that relate to procreation, Hijikata’s work offered a
History of Eroticism,
Vols. II and III, trans. by rejection of the social regulation of sensual desire and epitomised the
Robert Hurley (New
York: Zone Books, principle of transgression, a central concept in Bataille’s writings.
1991), p. 16. Bataille extols the ecstatic power of so-called primitive society, in
40. See Armando R.
Favazza, Bodies Under which the need for a balanced interaction between the imposition of
Siege: Self Mutilation taboos and moments of transgression are recognised and the extremes of
and Body Modification
in Culture and sensual experience are sanctioned and given free play. These are allowed
Psychiatry (Baltimore
and London: Johns in ritual and sacrificial form within festivals, at certain times and on
Hopkins University specific occasions. During these events, laws are suspended, reason
Press, 1987), p. 46.
41. In the performance founders and new values are summoned whose meaning lies outside that
Revolt of the Flesh, of prosaic existence. A non-linear, mythic time is opened, in contrast to
Hijikata performs a
trance-like, wild phallic the rational time of mechanised modernity.40 Hijikata’s performance
dance. His hysteria and
frenzy are so extreme contains such festive and ritualistic imagery that reverberates with excess
they appear to border on and ruin, portraying it as a return to a primal and shamanic reality
a loss of consciousness,
like that which the call to removed from that of consumerism and accumulation.41 His surrender-
shamanism demands. ing body becomes the heart of his dance, ‘sacrifice is the source of the
Such ‘primitive’
overtones are enhanced work [. . .] Because they bear that obligation, all dancers must first of all
by the presence of a
rabbit and pig beside be pilloried.’42 Hijikata often stages himself and his dancers in situations
Hijikata as he is carried of physical danger as their bodies are given full shock potential,
onto the stage, while a
cockerel is seen later punctured and hung from ropes, in what would amount to a dramatic
hanging by its claws.
42. Hijikata, ‘Inner
‘laceration’,43 when the limits of the human form and of the self are
Material/Material’, violated, expressing a primitive impulse and a useless expenditure
p. 39. Donald Richie,
describing the consonant with Bataille’s ideals.
performance Forbidden With the irrational, enigmatic and often bizarre effects created in
Colours, noted how ‘all
the movements performance, Hijikata revels in the labyrinthine reality of the informe,44 one
expressed pain’ (Japan of Bataille’s key terms, which denotes the shapeless and imperfect. Mimesis
Times, 7 March 1987).
43. A word commonly used and representation are defaced by its workings as it resists the tendency to
in Bataille’s works, as in,
for example, his arrest and interpret meaning or to impose a rigid structure. Instead it acts as
‘Sacrifices’, in Visions of a movement of difference, erasure and pure flux, and its operations involve
Excess, p. 130.
44. See Michael Richardson, a return to the material, to the body and to that which is base. Just as
Georges Bataille (New ambiguous arrangements and juxtapositions of words are created in
York and London:
Routledge, 1994), Bataille’s works, the process is reflected in Hijikata’s writings and
pp. 25–6, and Bataille,
‘Formless’, in Visions of performances which embraced the kitsch and distasteful.45 He interweaves
Excess, p. 31. an abundance of dissonant items and places them in unpredictable
45. For example, the pop
artist and graphic relationships, creating a complexity of signs and indeterminacies.46 In his
designer Yokoo Tadanori often chaotic arrangements, Hijikata violates representation, as such objects
was commissioned to
create the poster refer back only to themselves and revel in their own ‘objectness’, their
advertising Hijikata’s The
Rose-Coloured Dance, for incompletion rendering them irreducible to sense or purpose.
which he abstracted the Ugliness, degradation and the abject also feature in both Bataille’s and
two female characters
from the renowned Hijikata’s creative works, which celebrate the body’s propensity to be
painting Gabrielle simultaneously sordid and sublime. The body is transformed and staged
d’Estrée and Her Sister –
of the Fontainebleau in intense postures, creating anomalous forms that question and perplex
62
Strindberg’, in Artaud
on Theatre, p. 42. reoriented the anatomical structure in a series of multi-layered and
73. Hijikata’s gender volatile writings, mostly in the form of poetic fragments, inverting the
nonconformity and
fractured social existence physical form and stressing movement towards the lower parts.85 Bodily
placed him at the organs, orifices and their processes are also continually conjured in his
cultural margins, as,
frequently wearing late poems Here Lies and Artaud Le Momo, in terms such as ejaculation,
women’s attire, he
embodied the heresy, testicles, sperm and blood, as he recasts and transforms his relationship
anarchy and effeminacy with his own physical being.86 In a piece he wrote towards the end of his
that were present within
his creative work. life, having visited an exhibition of the work of Van Gogh in 1947, he
74. Indeed, his subjectivity refers repeatedly to the inner sphere of the body, asking the reader to
was always in a process
of deconstruction, not imagine ‘the pharynx, oesophagus, urethra and the anus’,87 directing
only through the mind-
expanding experiences attention, as do Hijikata and Bataille, towards an unfamiliar orientation.
of hallucinogenic drugs, This endeavour for transformation goes further, as he rearranges the
but also through actively
seeking a number of received forms of the body in his drawings, producing ‘unformed’ or
different character roles
in which to redefine
‘laval images’88 of human and half-human figures that are aberrant,
himself. misshapen and fantastical. Challenging the ordered, enclosed bodily form
75. Artaud’s nervous
condition became proof that behaves in accordance with society’s or divine rules, he defiantly
for him of his own reorganises its bones and musculature, and redirects its fluids from their
possession by an
amorphous and prerequisite functions, as the body secretes and spurts, while its skeleton
imperfect mentality, one is crushed and shattered. Moving beyond anatomy, a ‘body without
that denied fullness and
self-presence. organs’89 is created as a space for a decentred subject, whose mirror
76. Artaud, ‘The Theatre and
its Double’, in Artaud on image is dissolved and transfigured into an anarchic set of riotous
Theatre, p. 122. signifiers. On the Butoh stage, a body with skin, muscle and ligaments
77. Hijikata, ‘Inner
Material/Material’, emerges, which is then redefined, as Hijikata too disrupts the human
p. 39. form, creating entities on stage that are anomalous, interstitial and
78. His was always a
traumatised body that hybrid. His aesthetic offers an open-endedness, deconstruction and in-
screamed in an agony
intensified by his drug completion that at times shatters the anthropomorphic image and poses
intoxication and acute resistant forms of identity which play with the notion of the real.90
psychosis.
79. Hijikata, ‘Fragments of Artaud intended that every myriad aspect of the actor’s body would be
Glass’, p. 63. included and perpetually in process, just as he employed every part of the
80. Makoto Ooka, ‘Tatsumi
Hijikata’s Philosophy of anatomy to interrogate the suffering at the core of his own being.91
Butoh’, in Nario Goda,
Body on the Edge of Crisis: Through a highly trained physicality the actor would become totally
Photographs of Butoh immersed in his actions, which involved a studied concentration brought
Dance Performance and
Stages by Tatsumi to every movement, gesture and facial expression.92 This would be
Hijikata, trans. by Janine
Beichman, John Turrent
supported by an understanding of the musculature and pressure points,93
and Tetsuo Kinoshita so that the actor could connect with specific sites of the spectator’s body,
(Tokyo: Parco, 1987),
p. 10. ‘[t]o reforge the links, the [magical] chain’.94 Most important were the
81. Antonin Artaud, ‘Theatre rhythms of the breath,95 so that the performer would connect with
and Science’, in
Anthology, trans. by Jack hidden layers of emotion and sensation. These internal dynamics were
Hirschman (San stressed, which required the actor’s complete mastery over his impulses.
Francisco: City Lights
Books, 1965), p. 173. In It was this consciousness and rigour that were at the heart of Artaud’s
this, the body image is
dismantled and multiple Theatre of Cruelty, connecting the chaos of his proposed performance
combinations of with the order and discipline necessary for radical deconstruction and
anatomical parts are
created. transcendence. This would involve a sense of physical urgency with the
82. Antonin Artaud, ‘Six actors pushed to the limits of self-experience in radical and ceremonial
Characters in Search of
an Author’, in Artaud stagings where their bodies are laid bare, aflame, coiled and in crisis.
on Theatre, p. 8.
83. Antonin Artaud, Butoh’s emphasis on metamorphosis has a source in Artaud’s
‘Umbilical Limbo- endeavour for transformation, as Hijikata sought to create a new body
Description of a Physical
State’, in Collected culture in performance. He too awakens the breaths of the body and
Works, Vol. I, trans.by responded to Artaud’s principal challenge, to the necessity of gesture and
Victor Corti (London:
John Calder, 1978), consciousness,96 in an immediate event that would be experienced
66
dancers is half-dressed in
a fish-like outfit. See though left suffering and still unappeased. At the same time, Hijikata’s
Morishita ed., Tatsumi near-naked body is rendered corpse-like, signifying its erasure and the
Hijikata’s Butoh, p. 125.
91. His proposals for acting death of the ‘I’, a dissolution of the self that allows for reintegration into
were intricately linked to a realm which lies beyond the rational sphere and in the process makes
the anatomy of the
performer; as in the text room for other, more expanded ontologies.
‘An Affective
Athleticism’, first
published in 1935, he
outlined the craft of the
actor, who, like an
athlete in control of his
body, would aim for
immediacy and extreme
attentiveness.
92. His proposed theatre
would have affinities
with the controlled
rhythms and intense
somatic awareness of the
Balinesian performance
which he attended at the
Colonial Exhibition in
Vincennes of 1931. He
saw this collective event
as an example of ‘pure’
and ‘total’ theatre that
contained a profusion of
signs and obscurities.
93. He was fascinated by the
energetics of the body
and made reference to
acupuncture points.
94. Antonin Artaud, ‘An
Affective Athleticism’, in
Collected Works, Vol. IV,
p. 106; The Theatre and
its Double: Essays by
Artaud Antonin
(Montreuil, London and
New York: Calder Press,
1999), p. 95; and Œuvres
Complètes IV, p. 163.
95. Artaud, ‘An Affective
Athleticism’, pp. 102–
04, and The Theatre and
its Double, pp. 89–91.
96. Artaud stressed the
notion of intentional
action that was crucial
for the arousal of
‘cruelty’: ‘There is no
cruelty without
consciousness, without a
kind of applied
consciousness’ (Artaud,
‘Letters of Cruelty’ [first
letter, 1932: ‘To J.P.’],
in The Theatre and its
Double, p. 80).
97. Hijikata, ‘To Prison’,
p. 47. The Japanese
term for ‘spirit’
employed here is rei,
which has connotations
of mysticism and the
religious.
98. Hijikata, ‘Inner
Material/Material’,
p. 41. The Japanese
term used here for the
word ‘spiritual’, seishin,
has connotations that
differ from the English
equivalent as it signifies
that which is not
physical or real, but is
‘Other’ to the body.
Copyright of Contemporary Theatre Review is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or
emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.
However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.