Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates Murobushi Kō's exploration of corporeal art in relation to body-paint, focusing on his silver-body politics seen as a way to eschew power, surveillance and forms of identity in connection to Guattari and Deleuze's nomadology, and suggesting references to Minamata disease.

Paper long abstract:

Since Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours, 1959), when Hijikata Tatsumi appeared with his black-painted skin (kuronuri), the practice of applying colours on the naked body, or parts of it, has become a distinctive feature of butō dance. The emblematic white body-paint (shironuri), implemented especially after Anma (The Masseur, 1963) and adopted increasingly during the 1970s, may be viewed as a powerful device able to erase the performer's age, (human) identity, gender, and social status, thereby pulverising residues of subjectivity and exasperating the corporeal presence/absence on stage.

The aesthetic strategy of covering the body with colour can be understood as facilitating the heteromorphic process of the trans-body actualised in butō.

In the late 1990s Murobushi Kō re-elaborated this trans-body, opting for the silver makeup (ginnuri). Previously, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he had experimented with cross-dressing, eventually adopting kuronuri to stage the self-mummified miira, gold dust (kinpun) paint in his cabaret dance, and shironuri in his female choreographies. In his later years, Murobushi envisaged a corporeal identification with quicksilver/mercury (suigin). Being extremely volatile and toxic, this metallic element embodies speed and mobility, androgyny and gender fluidity.

This paper investigates the evolving stages in Murobushi's persistent concern with the exploration of corporeal art as a political enactment in relation to body-paint. Particular attention will be paid to aspects of transcultural and transnational migration within his silver-body politics seen as a way to eschew power, surveillance and forms of identity in connection to Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze's nomadology (1996). It will also suggest possible references to the Minamata disease.

Paper short abstract:

In 1950s-60s, many Japanese dancers represented 'black' in various way. There will be the ambivalent feelings to the USA and black people. This research investigates the context of the emergence of Butoh by focusing on this representation of 'Kokujin'.

Paper long abstract:

From the latter half of 1970s, Butoh has spread widely to the outside of Japan, and its one of the most impressive image is 'white' color. While Hijikata Tatsumi's dance piece Kinjiki (Forbidden Color) in 1959, thought as the first Butoh performance, he painted his body black to represent the black male character from Jean Genet's novel. So Butoh starts with black rather than white. Arimitsu Michio argues this blackness as a 'counter-culture of (Eurocentric) modernity' and the establishment (Arimitsu, 2019).

However, it was not only Hijikata who represents 'black' or 'Kokujinin' (the term used in this era) in the dance. After WWⅡ, Japanese modern dancers picked up the figure or subject that concern to blacks (the social movement of African American, musics and dances of Africa, or other topics that connect to black). For example, Kaitani Ballet Company reinterpreted Porgy and Bess by G. Gershwin in ballet style in 1955 and the dancers painted their faces black. The future butoh dancers and their surroundings also make the dances focusing on black (ex: Tokyo Seinen Ballet's Prize Stock (Shiiku) based on Ôe Kenzaburo's novel, and Fujii Kunihiko's performance Negro and the River inspired by Langston Hughes's poem). In total, there are more than 40 pieces that represented black by various ways in the period of 1950s-60s. Why did Japanese dancers take this figure in their subject ? What does this phenomenon show us in the situation of after WWⅡ ?There will be some problems Japanese have had after WWⅡ, and especially in the relationship to the U.S.A. The ambivalent feelings to the black people by Japanese also appear there.

This research investigates the context of the emergence of Butoh in another way by focusing on the representation of 'black' in post-war Japanese modern dance.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses that the "Butoh" shares problematics posed by French contemporary thought. This study attempts to clarify how Min Tanaka and Ko Murobushi present their unique post-human bodies responding to the disappearance of modern human subjectivity as Michel Foucault claimed.

Paper long abstract:

The present study puts its focus on the conceptual and practical echo between Japanese avant-garde dance "Butoh" and French contemporary thoughts. There has been great discussion about Butoh as Japanese unique style of dance. In fact, Tatsumi Hijikata established his unique body referring to the habitude of his home town in the north-east region of Japan. Conversely, as The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (2018) indicates, some researchers have shown an interest in Butoh's internationality and inter culture, avoiding an essentialist trap. However, what seems to be lacking is considering the resonance between the butoh's second generation and contemporary French thought. It is important that how Min Tanaka and Ko Murobushi have found the parallel relationships between their artistic activities and some concepts of French thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Gille Deleuze, Pierre-Félix Guattari.

For examples, Min Tanaka obtained opportunities to encounter with Foucault, Roland Barthes after his premiere in Paris in 1978. Ko Murobushi also had his premiere in Paris in same year, and Jean Baudrillard wrote a critic about his performance. And in compilation of Murobushi's texts published after his death, we can find that Murobushi cited from texts written by Foucault and Deleuze in order to work out a plan for his last unfinished piece.

Tanaka and Murobushi succeed surely the key concept and dancing method of Butoh as "the dead body", "the body which cannot stand up" invented by Hijikata, however, it should be noted that they seemed to refine these concepts by themselves and to realize the disappearance of modern humanistic subjectivity as Foucault claimed. To be concrete, Tanaka left his almost naked body as like object on the road in the city of Ginza and was arrested. Murobushi also animalize or materialize his body as shown in some pieces.

From examining their discourses and practices pushing the limits of humanistic figure legally and conceptually, it is suggested that these two dancers propose some examples of post-humanistic body. Accordingly, the investigation I attempt to indicates that they respond critically to contemporary philosophical problematics as Rosi Braidotti considers in The Post human.