The Butoh-fu A year later Hijikata stopped dancing altogether to focus on working with his disciples. After 1974 he developed a series of works at his newly acquired home and theatre, the Asbestos-kan. In this series of works for the Ashikawa-led Hakutôbô (White Peach) group, Hijikata worked more extensively with images and associations remembered from his childhood days in Akita. A clear method- ology began to develop. A student of his at the time, Waguri Yukio, describes his choreographic method as working to “physicalize images through words.” These words were called butoh-fu (butoh notation). Hijikata verbally improvised streams of butoh-fu, and the dancers, triggered by the words, danced them (D’Orazi, 339). Here is an example of butoh-fu from Waguri’s CD-ROM collec- tion of notes on Hijikata’s work, Butoh-fu Kaden: YOU LIVE BECAUSE INSECTS EAT YOU A person is buried in a wall. He becomes an insect that dances on a thin sheet of paper. it makes rustling noises, trying to hold falling par- ticles. The insect then becomes a person, so fragile that he could crumble with the slightest touch, who is wandering around. (quoted in Waguri, 1) Each image is taken into the body and given full expression. The dance be- comes more complex as the images pile up on top of one another. Hijikata developed an intense working relationship with Ashikawa during the 1970s. Every morning the two of them went down to the studio alone, where Hijikata beat a small drum and spit out a stream of butoh-fu for Ashikawa to dance. In this way Ashikawa trained to memorize and embody thousands of Hiji- kata’s images, switching between them endlessly. No one else was allowed to join them in the studio (Holborn, 14; Kurihara 2000, 21). Initially an art student, Ashikawa’s sensitivity to imagery and lack of prior dance training contributed to her ability to internalize Hijikata’s butoh-fu. Towards the Bowels of the Earth, 38 According to Ashikawa, Hijikata spoke of “writing dance,” and found paral- lels between the writers’ craft and his own (Holborn, 16). He was a voracious reader, often copying down influential pieces and tacking them on the wall of the studio (Kurihara 1997, 4). Hijikata disciple Nakajima Natsu remembers Hijikata handing out a list of books to read during the week: “Whenever we weren’t danc- ing, we were discussing books” (quoted in Klein, 55). In addition to the butoh-fu method, Hijikata developed in his own journals and essays a unique take on the Japanese language, abandoning traditional grammar structure and often making up his own terms. This oblique writing style often read like surrealism. For ex- ample, here is a segment from his book Inu no Jô Myakuni Shitto Suru Koto Kara (From Being Jealous of a Dog’s Vein, 1976): When I think about spirit exalted to physiology, my taste remains unperturbed, remorselessly smashing even the shadow of a naked body sobbing on the edge of the abyss. After that, however insig- nificant, however indistinct, I feel that a piece of me that is difficult to discern remains in subtle light. This is the way things are. I am someone who rejoices when people die. It makes no difference if they are intellectuals or even those who defend writers. There is a wind-bell echoing in my cursed head and I want only to sit down, like a child on the threshold of wholeness who is waiting for some- thing to be handed out. But in three years my hair grew too heavy to flutter in the wind. I make the “farmhands” who come to my house in Meguro eat like cows, with their eyes closed, and urinate standing, with their heads hanging down. I have transformed my- self again and again into a strange and brutal musical instrument that does not even sweat and I live my life turning a stick of silence beating on silence into a shinbone. I have transformed myself too into an empty chest of drawers and a gasping willow trunk. I have also seen ghosts doing sumô [wrestling] in a parlor and have been able any number of times to create a baby who picks up their bones and bleeds at the nose. One day an evil wind, like a beautiful woman, came moving in a clot, and when it touched me there on my head I, too, hardened into a lump (Kurihara 2000, 58-59). Towards the Bowels of the Earth, 39 Hijikata scholar Nanako Kurihara writes, “Undeniably, Hijikata created a smoke screen of strange behaviors and language, but this was all part of his conscious strategy to make a mythic image of himself and his work” (Kurihara 2000, 14). Like the American composer John Cage, who smartly crafted his personal image to appear as an aloof genius, Hijikata carefully nurtured an image of his work and persona as bizarre and inscrutable. Both men were led by an intense conviction in the importance of their work to take pains to package their public face in as suitable an atmosphere as possible, even if it meant a tendency towards self- mystification. Hijikata’s wildly impressionistic writing style reflects the anti- intellectual, anti-establishment aims of his butoh practice. (Paul Roquet: Towards the Bowels of the Earth)
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 06:30:03 +0000
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