The first butoh piece, Kinjiki; Forbidden
Colours by Tatsumi Hijikata, premiered
at a dance festival in 1959. It was based
on the novel of the same name by Yukio
Mishima. It explored the taboo of homosexuality
and ended with a live chicken being
held between the legs of Kazuo
Ohno's son Yoshito Ohno, after which
Hijikata chased Yoshito off the stage
in darkness. Mainly as a result
of the misconception that the chicken
had died due to strangulation, this piece
outraged the audience and resulted
in the banning of Hijikata from the festival,
establishing him as an iconoclast.

The earliest butoh performances
were called in English "Dance Experiences."
In the early 1960s, Hijikata used the term
"Ankoku-Buyou" – dance of darkness,
to describe his dance. He later changed
the word "buyo," filled with associations
of Japanese classical dance, to "butoh,"
a long-discarded word for dance that
originally meant European ballroom dancing.

In later work, Hijikata continued
to subvert conventional notions of dance.
Inspired by writers such as Yukio Mishima,
Lautréamont, Artaud, Genet and de Sade,
he delved into grotesquerie, darkness,
and decay. At the same time, Hijikata
explored the transmutation of the human
body into other forms, such as those
of animals. He also developed a poetic
and surreal choreographic language,
butoh-fu (fu means "notation" in Japanese),
to help the dancer transform into other states of being.