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.

That earth spirit

black, dark, flame flickering at the end of the tunnel
i appreciate our ancestors who took care of the soles of their feet

that feet rooted to the earth

that spirit rooted within the body underneath the skin

the soul is not separate from the body
butoh cries out in the darkness for a dance

there is a silent scream

then a piercing sound, you see a Woman's body as she convulses on the ground

you notice the beautiful tendons and muscles in the back and thighs of this one male dancer

Ohno's hands are veiny and paper thin and utterly divine the way it ripples

butoh spirit to the ground and I find my journey for that way of life
starts with taking care of the soles of my feet

Duende and that color black
one step and you won't come back

The Gutai group Gutai Bijutsu
Kyōkai is the first radical, post-war
artistic group in Japan. It was founded
in 1954 by the painter Jiro Yoshihara
in Osaka, Japan, in response
to the reactionary artistic context
of the time. This influential group
was involved in large-scale
multimedia environments, performances,
and theatrical events and emphasizes
the relationship between body
and matter in pursuit of originality.
The movement rejected traditional
art styles in favor of performative
immediacy.

Butoh, Butō is a form of Japanese dance
theatre that encompasses a diverse range
of activities, techniques and motivations
for dance, performance, or movement.
Following World War II, butoh arose
in 1959 through collaborations between
its two key founders Hijikata Tatsumi
and Ohno Kazuo. The art form is known
to "resist fixity" and be difficult to define;
notably, founder Hijikata Tatsumi viewed
the formalisation of butoh with "distress".
Common features of the art form include
playful and grotesque imagery, taboo
topics, extreme or absurd environments,
and it is traditionally performed in white
body makeup with slow hyper-controlled
motion. However, with time butoh groups
are increasingly being formed around
the world, with their various aesthetic
ideals and intentions.

Shozo Shimamoto and Jiro Yoshihara
founded Gutai together in 1954,
and it was Shimamoto who suggested
the name Gutai. The kanji
used to write 'gu' meaning tool,
measures, or a way of doing something,
while 'tai' means body. Yoshihara
considers it to mean "embodiment"
and "concreteness." The group
was officially known as Gutai Bijutsu
Kyokai; Art Association of Gutai.

Butoh first appeared in post-World
War II Japan in 1959, under
the collaboration of Hijikata Tatsumi
and Ohno Kazuo, "in the protective
shadow of the 1950s and 1960s avant-garde".
A key impetus of the art form was
a reaction against the Japanese dance
scene of the time, which Hijikata felt
was overly based on imitating
the West and following traditional
styles like Noh. Thus, he sought
to "turn away from the Western styles
of dance, ballet and modern",
and to create a new aesthetic
that embraced the "squat, earthbound
physique... and the natural movements
of the common folk". This desire found
form in the early movement of ankoku
butō. The term means "dance of darkness",
and the form was built on a vocabulary
of "crude physical gestures and uncouth
habits... a direct assault on the refinement,
miyabi, and understatement, shibui
so valued in Japanese aesthetics."

Coming about during postwar Japanese
reconstruction, Gutai stressed freedom
of expression with innovative materials and
techniques. Gutai challenged imaginations
to invent new notions of what art is with
attention on the relationships between body,
matter, time, and space. After the war, attitudes
regarding cultural exchanging changed amongst
nations as the art environment involved great
optimism for global collaboration. Since artists
were pursuing advances in contemporary art
transnationally, the art environment of the time
fostered thriving conditions for the Gutai group.
For example, with the Treaty of San Francisco
in 1951, there was an increase in cultural
exchanges between Japan and its new western
allies. Gutai artwork began being shown
in exhibitions in both American and European cities.

With post-occupation Japan's emphasis
on freedom, the United States' goal was
as well to promote abstract art in order
to promote democracy. Like the social
reforms of the Allies occupation of Japan
after the war, the United States wanted
to steer Japan, and other axis nations,
away from the more communistic art style
of socialist realism. This helped spread
Gutai art since it sponsored its creation.
One example is the Guggenheim International
Award exhibition that begun after the war
and tactfully included work from Japan,
a former axis state, in order to invite
non-western art into the purview
of contemporary abstract art as it cooperated
with the democratic propaganda.

Here’s to strippers, who don’t like to be called strippers,
Although smart women have been taking their clothes off
To spectacular effect since the dawn of time—
Go to the Brooklyn Museum and see the history of women, lesbians all,
Every woman you’ve ever dreamed of naked as the earth, shorn of leaves,
Like bon bons set out for Santa Claus,
St. Cyr’s dreams of bubbles—
The abstract strippers walking across my retina like nomads in the desert,
Her voice a meaty thing, chewing her way out of the toilet,
We want *** to drink from beautiful woman like rain—
The abstract expressionist beat method
Was born three years after Dylan Thomas died
And seven years before Sylvia Plath,
Decca had rejected the Beatles as out of style
Before anyone had ever really heard them, avant-garde has-beens maybe,
But Gypsy Rose Lee was still dancing and writing
And Martha Graham was still dancing and writing
And Isadora was looking down from her see-through cloud
So we could see up her headless tunic and Mary Wigman was a legend
Too big for Richard Wagner to conceive,
And Trakl and Kleist never met a great stripper
Like Toulouse Lautrec painted masterpieces
From the spurting blood of a syringe—
Doctors order sunshine and she shines
And rock and roll moved Bettie to jazz cellars
Where Pollack and Kerouac drink the wine—
The Soviet Union had good ugly strippers but that’s over now—
Now they’re pretty expensive but not any good,
If you were reading On The Road while crying over the death of Pollack
And laughing at the birth of rock and roll
While jerking off to Bettie in *******
You were there at the big bang—
Picasso and Einstein lining up behind TS Eliot and Pound to kiss your ***
Eugene O’Neill and Lenny Bruce looking on
From their basement apartment windows,
****** addled sailors waiting for 1969 (Hart Crane the only poet to beat himself to death---) Glacial ice melting
under Diana’s roller-coaster heat—
No color, line or shape, Araki, Gutai, Butoh and Kaiju emerging from Japan
After the war and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
All of this been subsumed into manga cosplay,
Though no one knows or is asking why
Mothers pride themselves on giving good head
They don’t close their eyes or dream of monsters,
It’s all about the prince no matter what lesbians say, lesbians like **** too
And they know where to get it but that’s too easy—
Better to have a crush on a stripper who won’t turn you away
Than a boy or a fashion model that needs money and drugs to survive,
Just give it time and an Asian girl will love you—