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Paper short abstract:

The paper will focus on an analysis of Setoyama Misaki's Invisible Clouds (Mienai kumo, 2014) and scrutinize how central problems of contemporary Japanese society are addressed from a global perspective.

Paper long abstract:

In the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 disasters an immediate and ever increasing output of post-Fukushima theatre productions could be observed. While there was a strong focus on documentary, only few playwrights made use of fiction or tried to address some basic problems of contemporary Japanese society as revealed by the disaster. Setoyama Misaki's Invisible Clouds (Mienai kumo, 2014) is an interesting case in point. The promising Japanese playwright and director, who was born in 1977, raises the question of individual responsibility and hints at the global dimension of the nuclear disaster by putting 'Fukushima' in a Post-Chernobyl context. The play is an adaptation of The Cloud (Die Wolke, 1987), a best-selling youth novel written by Gudrun Pausewang (b. 1928) in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster when large parts of Europe were threatened by nuclear fallout. The story unfolds around a young girl escaping from the radiation released by a similar disaster in Germany. Setoyama introduces the character of a Japanese playwright who happened to read Pausewang's novel as a youth and now, after the March 11 disasters, travels to Germany to have an interview with the author. Apparently, the additional character is an alter ego of Setoyama being known for her interest in staging reality and developing her plays based on meticulous research and in-depth interviews with the people concerned. I will argue that, while the geographical distance between Europe and Japan facilitates audiences' critical engagement with the delicate subject, the Japanese figure in the story links the nuclear disasters of Fukushima and Chernobyl and brings the message home.

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Paper short abstract:

Recent debates in dance studies focus with more emphasis on the complex interrelation between dance and politics questioning, for example, the extent to which performance can influence society. In reference to this agenda this paper discusses controversial aspects emerging from Murobushi Kō's dance.

Paper long abstract:

Recent debates in dance studies (Franko 1995, Lepecki 2006, Kolb 2011) focus with more emphasis on the complex interrelation between dance and politics questioning several issues, such as the extent to which performance can influence society. In reference to these agendas this paper discusses controversial aspects emerging from Murobushi Kō's dance.

Murobushi occupies a relevant position in articulating butō's original intent of corporeal revolution. He is a significant heir of Hijikata Tatsumi's radical project of anti-dance, considered as guerrilla and as an attack to the establishment. As a consequence, Murobushi develops dance as an intervention by means of his own body and against his own body integrated into the system. His counter-discourse and artistic investigation elaborate critical assessments of identity, body and dance in relation to knowledge, gender, society, politics, ideology and religion. He relentlessly interrogated the borders of butō, while combining social conflicts with questions of corporeality and performativity. However, he never explicitly addressed social issues in content. Nevertheless, mirroring himself in Michel Foucault's biopolitics, Murobushi pursued, especially in his last two decades, a corporeality which embodies the thought of the outside and which works against mechanisms of power.

In addition, Murobushi played a fundamental role in disseminating butō/Butoh overseas, and contributed to a certain reception of this art outside Japan, while stimulating new dance solutions in the international contemporary dance scene.

Under analysis are put paradoxical configurations rising from a confrontation between his early practice of shugendō and his anti-religious attitude, between his influence outside Japan and his critical stance towards a stereotyped image of butō, his radicalism in performance and his non-interventionist character.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper will read "Amahara", the final production by the Osaka-based Ishinha company following the death of its artistic director in June 2016, in relation to site and community. It will ask what it means to mourn in, as and for theatre in the 21st century.

Paper long abstract:

Performing on deserted beaches, and in villages, temples, dockland warehouses and urban railyards, few theatre companies have traversed the range of landscapes and settings that inspired the Osaka-based Ishinha. Yet though journeys real and imagined had been key themes in Ishinha's recent works, with the death of its founder and artistic director, Yukichi Matsumoto, in June 2016, its members decided the company, too, had run its course.

In October, with Matsumoto presiding in spirit, Ishinha performed its final piece, titled "Amahara" ("Heaven Field") in the grounds of the eighth-century Heijo Palace in Nara. Impressed by this natural amphitheatre with mountains and hills on three sides and the historic town of Asuka, seat of the Imperial throne from 538-710, to the south, quickly saw its potential as a performance space.

Although Amahara was presented as a new work, it drew on elements of Matsumoto's past plays, including what he called his "20th-century trilogy": three plays loosely themed around the idea of migrations. The trilogy comprises "Nostalgia" from 2007, about poor Japanese emigrants to Brazil; 2008's "Kokyu Kikai" about war orphans in Poland; and 2010's "When A Grey Taiwanese Cow Stretched," which looked at the historic movements of people to and from Japan across the islands of Southeast Asia from Okinawa to Taiwan.

Hence in Amahara, geographic references to sites around Heijo Palace tied into a broader spiritual sense of geography that was fundamental to Ishinha's work. The piece followed staging notes Matsumoto left — including one specifying that an abandoned, wrecked ship should be constructed in the palace grounds as the setting for the production.

In the wake of the director's death, the production took on a different meaning. The site became a funeral ground, and the performance a ceremony, attended by "pilgrims" to celebrate forty years of stage history. Reading Amahara as performance, site and community, this paper will ask what it means to mourn in, as and for theatre in the 21st century.