This essay was for an Japanese Theatre class. I 'chose' to write about the history of Butou. This essay took forever, a lot of research, not only of Japanese Butou, but European dance and art movements. I think I used every book and magazine at the library and the rest I J-stor'ed.

The Expressionist Movement, Pantomime, and Butou

     Ankoku Butou, Butou for short, was a dance movement began by Hijikata Tatsumi in the late 1950’s Japan. Employing the use of minimalism—both of backdrop and the actors dress— requiring that not only the actor be capable of expressing emotions through actions instead of speech, but that the audience be able to read and interpret the actors movement into a feeling that holds relevance to each individual viewer. The result is a separation from socially constructed ‘norms’ as both the actor and viewer reach into themselves—the self unaffected by the stresses and expectations of society, but the natural self. Hijikata obtained inspiration from his childhood on the countryside and works of European Expressionism and Pantomime which debuted in the early 1900’s Eastern Europe.

     To understand Butou and how it came into existence, it is imperative to evaluate the man behind Butou, Hijikata Tatsumi. Born in the country town in the Tohoku region located in Northern Japan, Tohoku is marked by its extremely severe winters and forested mountain landscape. Infants and small children were held in a straw basket, called an izume, and placed in the middle of the rice patty as their mothers on. In an interview with Hijikata 1906, Hijikata recalls that

…no matter how you scream and cry, you can never reach the grown-ups who are working. You urinate and defecate and of course a puddle forms on the bottom of the cradle. You cry and cry and everything goes black and you lose consciousness. Maybe you dream. Constantly alternating between sleeping and waking, you no longer know what’s happening. Then, when you are taken out of the cradle, your legs are all cramped up and you can’t move…” (Shibusawa 54)

     As with the children, legs bent from hours on end of being left in a tight, uncomfortable basket, the same happened to the adults toiling sunup to sunrise in the rice fields. Such strenuous labor in the fields, along with baring heavy rice baskets on their backs, and the unforgiving cold weather, their bodies were left permanently bent and twisted from hard physical labor and constantly being hunched over. As a child Hijikata witnessed his father beating his mother countless times, being so much as able to count the loud, purposefully stamps of his father’s feet as he drew closer to his mother and the punctuation of his hands striking her as she bent to shield herself. Hijikata’s play consisted of slicing a sickle through barrels or puddles of water to watch the effect, or violently huffing in and out to watch his chest fiercely heave up and down. All of these images in Hijikata’s childhood created the basic formation of Butou—humanity stripped down to its most primitive form. At the age of 23, Hijikata traveled to Tokyo to dance but finding little work to support himself, as a result he would often have to go without food or proper shelter. The people of Hijikata’s Kohoku were twisted in baskets as small children, twisted under the weight of work, and, in old age the freezing cold and years of labor kept them in that form until death; that twisted form are the roots of Butou. The rubbing of hands to starve off cold, the doubled over form of hunger pangs, and the body’s natural desire to seek shelter from that cold is the essence of Butou. The terror that lurks just under Butou reflects the sounds of his father’s feet, knowing that in moments would come the sound of flesh striking angrily at flesh and his mother’s desperate pleas. Although these experiences would be considered scarring and traumatic to most, Hijikata translated these experiences as natural. Hijikata considered Tohoku as “raw nature” (Kurihara 21), and his time in Tokyo also strengthened his views on what s natural and what is unnatural. Tohoku’s countryside was pure compared to the Post-World War II Tokyo that was moving into an industrialization and rebuilding period, creating pollution and health issues such as mercury poisoning. It was during this period, Hijikata in his early 20’s, that he read vast amounts of European expressionist literature, which echoed and made concrete the ideal that within life “the ugly is beautiful, death is life” and “poverty became a virtue; lice emblems of prosperity.” (Kurihara 18). Through reading, traveling, and seeing Expressionist plays did Hijikata find a kindred spirit in what he considered ‘natural’ art-- a sharp contrast to the over-done and forced postures and expressions of Kabuki and Nou plays. At last, in 1959, Hijikata produced his first Butou play, Kinjiki.

     Knowing Hijikata’s background and inspiration for Butou, Tohoku and the Expressionist movement in Europe, the next step is to examine the Expressionist movement. The Expressionist movement began in 1910 in Germany and lasted for about 15 years. Expressionism sought to separate man from society, and the result of this separation would be a more ‘natural’ and ‘pure’ man. Man stood alone, taken out of his lineage and bourgeois traditions. The central purpose of Expressionism is best stated in Mel Gordon’s article in the Drama Review, entitled “German Expressionist Acting”:

…the followers of Expressionism propagated the philosophy of the worth of Man—all men. Essentially, they thought, Man was good, born good. Only a restrictive society and denatured consciousness were preventing Man from searching and feeling the true, inner ecstatic reality of life. Instead, society’s institutions—the family, the government, the military, the business and land- owning classes—were pushing Mankind into cycles of materialism and misery. There was only one solution, the Expressionists felt: revolution—not necessarily the substitution of one government for another, nut rather a revolution of the spirit. If Man could learn to trust his emotions, then he….would be in touch with the laws of the universe….the New Man’s unique awareness of Mankind’s—as well as his own—place in the universe and his ability to act upon it….No books could of philosophy or psychology could instruct the New Man in this cosmic understanding; instead, he would have to seek it directly…In such a primordial state, one’s entire being is expressed…muscles and joints may be twisted and contorted, sounds akin to animal barks or single syllables may be produced in his throat. (35)

     Thus is effortless to see the correlation of Expressionism and Hijikata’s Butou. During his interview, Hijikata states that a Butou performer must be

…a frozen bone that transcends gender… They [people] create a desert around themselves, then complain there is no water. Why don’t they try drinking from the wells within there own bodies? They should instead drop a ladder deep inside their own bodies and climb down. Let them pluck darkness from within their own bodies and eat it. But they always seek resolution from outside themselves. (Shibusawa 51)

     Expressionist believed that Man’s suffering was due to social constraint and that Man must break these bonds in order to return to the natural Man, and once returned to his natural state, Man could exceed self understand to understanding of things universal. However, to achieve this, once again, Man must look to himself and not society. Hijikata felt the same way-- the things mankind yearns and desires for, instead of searching within the confines of society, that they should and can find these things within themselves-- they have only to turn away from the outside world and crawl into their own bodies and examine their own depths. Thus, for both Expressionist and Butou performers, the conventional must be thrown away, the inner self serving as its replacement.

     In Expressionism, as in Butou, the motions of the body and the backdrop are used to convey emotions—far better than words are cable of conveying as visual content entails sight and words to describe the motions must be processed, the ‘natural’ mind takes in the image and the body ‘naturally’ responds with tears, laughter, anger, any array of emotions. The forms of Expressionism are best described in that “The Expressionist does not paint an object, but his own reaction to it….often distorting form to penetrate essence and reveal the truth that lies behind outward appearances. The results are highly emotive… and often ugly… traditional principle of ‘beauty’, ‘symmetry’ and so forth gave way to exaggeration, distortion, grotesqueness, startling colour clashes and vehement emotional release” (Padmore 41). For instance, to wordless describe the Expressionist movement and the feelings invoked, take a moment to concentrate on Edvard Munch’s masterpiece, The Scream. What feelings are invoked as you look at this image? Feelings are invoked by Munch’s use of colors, expression, and the disarrayed chaos in the background. Words would forcefully instruct the viewer what to feel-- “be happy” or “be afraid”— which is forbidden in Expressionism and Butou, on the contrary, both art forms demand that the viewer look into themselves for an interpretation. Is there a single definition of terror from individual to individual? Is grief expressed in the same gesture from individual to individual? Without a doubt, many would consider the things witnessed by Hijikata during childhood as gruesome in a way that there is a desire to turn away from scenes of children crumbled in baskets or the violence of physically abuse but for Hijikata, such scenes were as natural as drawing breath rather than appalling. For emotion invoking visual aid, Expressionist and Butou artists remove clothing, to expose the natural actor undecorated in a raw natural state; “the final removal of all corporal disguises—clothing, skin—in order to uncover the actor’s own” (Gordon 36) . In almost all world societies, clothing is mandate, nakedness taboo, so the semi-clad dancer would automatically incite shock from the audience, people bound to societal ethics. When clothing is used, however, it is used in a way that it emphasizes the body; for example flowing clothing to become an extension of the body while tight close fitting clothing accentuates the body Monochrome, splashes of bright color, or strategically placed colors or cloth serve to emphasize parts of the body relevant to the play or define the dancer from his surroundings. The stage is also key to emotion invoking. Expressionist stages usually consisted of “irregular, no parallel lines…often shaded with impossible shadows…distorted stage properties and painted backdrops” (Gordon 45) While some, especially more recent Butou performances, have backdrops similar to before mentioned Expressionist stages, Hijikata began Butou on a stage that was basically empty and dark, save for a dim light on the dancer. This light was used to further accentuate the ribs, eye hollows, and muscles in the body, reflecting Hijikata’s notion that one must crawl into darkness of one’s self. As a rule of thumb, when music is including, for both art forms, the more erratic the music, the better. Sharp cymbals, primal sounds that invoke the beating of the heart or the wilderness—the most important use of sound is to make the dancer’s movement sound correspond with the sound— a transformation from “a state of catalepsy to hysteria at the sound of a music note” (Gordon 17). So the stage has been set, the dress of the actor, the stage, and the sound. All serve to cater to the primal, unlearned, emotional responses of the viewers. Considering people tend to have a feeling towards something before they can lash together comprehensible thought, the use of the visual effects in Expressionism and Butou urge the viewers to break away from society and ‘feel’ within themselves rather than dissect and analyze what they have seen. Expressionist artists and Hijikata desired to keep form simplistic, as to not take away from the true nature of the play—the emotion—not elegant or extravagant sets or costumes that take away the audiences attention to the emotion.

     Next, both art forms required that the dancer bring internal emotions forth and express in body movements: lighter movements for gentler emotions while writhing and spasm-like movements for pain, yearning, or the grotesque. Therefore, the dancer is usually required to express the feelings of the choreographer in opposed to their own. Expressionist dance can be categorized into three forms: the Ich, or I, performance, the Schrei, the scream or ecstatic, performance and the Geist, or purely spiritual performance. In the Ich performance, one character moves freely and sporadically while the other dances on stage move grotesquely and in unison. Schrei performances emphasize dream-like, hazy movements. Schrei performers in are usually novice performers who forget the producer’s choreography and sporadically break into their own dances, as a, Schrei has a freer, spontaneous atmosphere than in Ich and Geist performances. Geist performances, of the aforementioned performances, was considered the “ultimate vision of pure expression without the conventional intervention of dramatic characters or intricate plot—a sort of absolute communication between the playwright’s/director’s…mind and his audience” (Gordon 42). Hijikata’s Butou contained the elements of Ich, Schrei, and Geist performances, excluding the liberties taken by novice performers in Schrei. Most Expressionist performances depended on a close relationship and understanding to the director who choreographed the performance, and for Hijikata, this control was a necessity. “For Hijikata, the body is a metaphor for words and words are a metaphor for the body” (Kurihara 16). Once again, Hijikata was a voracious reader, and words held great importance to him. If there was not a word to portray what he felt, he made one—examples are magusare, meaning rotting space, or nadare ame, for dribbling candy (Kurihara 14). Hijikata even wrote Butou in his own notation, later dimed butofu. During intense choreography sessions Hijikata had with his top understudy, Ashikawa Youko, Hijikata would fire off words and Ashikawa would express them with her body, writing down, in butoufu, the movement that Hijikata felt corresponded best with his words. These sessions reached an intensity that Hijikata and Ashikawa felt that they exchanged bodies in the process. Both Expressionist dance and Butou project to the audience an idea of the performers inner struggles or desires, when in truth the performers’ bodies are a canvas for the director—the directors words and feelings are spoken and the performer must covey those words or feelings in a way that is satisfactory to the director. The performer is a physical script that the director writes his or her lines upon that the audience must be able to decipher. The influence that the Expressionist arts had on the young Hijikata, mingled with the contorted figures of his childhood and rough adult life, is obviously tremendous. Although there is not much evidence or discussion of Hijikata having been influences by Pantomime as well, when examining Butou and Expressionism, it seems impossible not to mention Pantomime. Pantomime arose in 16th century Europe and was considered a low form or opera. Although the thought of pantomime, shortened to ‘mime’ now-a-days, may bring to mind the circus or men dressed in black and white forming boxes with their hands, Pantomime has been and can be a more serious form of art. In general, most pantomimes do not speak, and rarely use props. Pantomimes work in dimensions of real space; in short to say that they take the length, depth, and breadth of real objects and translate them into virtual space. That is to say, if a pantomime is acting ‘smoking’ a cigarette, they must do so in a way that one watching would actually come to believe that the pantomime is smoking and cigarette—in fact, the viewer feels they can actually smell the smoke. “The great pantomimes each have in a distinctive way gone beyond representation, changing the literal limitation of movement into a personal language.” (Hollis 66). The pantomime is usually only limited to himself, everything else he needs, he uses his body, and the senses of the viewer, to express it. For instance, when traveling, a suitcase is usually heavy, the pantomime knows this and knows that the viewer know this as well. To recreate this heaviness, a good pantomime will begin to sway, grunt slightly, even sweat under the weight of this invisible suitcase, effectively convincing the viewer, who has also more than likely had the experience of bearing a heaving suitcase, that not only is their something in the pantomime’s hands, but something heavy. Once again, pantomimes are not working with illusion, they are working with real space—actually mentally picturing what it is they are doing, what the thing looks like, its size and shape, and using their body to act out that mental image. Pantomime uses common knowledge, knowledge that society does not need to teach—fire is hot, a boulder is heavy, snow is cold, yawning and rubbing the eyes signifies tiredness, rubbing the stomach usually signifies hunger, a frown displeasure, a smile pleasure and so forth. All of these things have been experienced, regardless of age group or social class. And it is with this common knowledge the pantomime can work, and the viewer can understand what the pantomime is acting out, making pantomime a universal, classless art. Butou has no script, the performer will not announce to the audience, “This is what I’m going to do now!” and do it, Butou weighs on the importance of the performer to act out raw emotion. Pantomime and Butou performers create with their bodies what cannot be seen by the eyes, and despite this, both performers are still quite capable of conveying to the audience almost precisely, though it can rest as a matter of interpretation from viewer to viewer, what they are doing.

     The Expressionist movement and pantomime are European forms of art that encourage a break from society by using the natural human form, unadorned, to express emotion. Hijikata also felt that society should not be the rule of thumb for all of mankind to follow, but instead that each person should look within themselves to find what they wanted in this world. Not only did all these movements, Expressionist, Butou, and Pantomime, require the performer to translate emotions into movements, but that the viewer would take this and read into with their own true inner feelings, not what society teaches them to feel, not what society tells this is hideous or beautiful. Each art form desired that Mankind return to a more natural state and for Mankind to realize that to find unity in the world and universe, that unity within the self must soon be found. Through his reads of Expressionist works, Hijikata picked up these ideas and mixed them with his vivid memories of his childhood in Tohoku and rough life as a young adult. The end factor of the merging of all these ideas was Ankoku Butou, The Dance of Darkness.

© Caroline Alicia Harris

post script If you are the copyright owner of anything metioned in the above essay, I do have the bibliography os my sources if you need to see them. I choose not to post them on this site, in the hopes nothing will be reused.

&return