History of Butoh
An Art Form In Transition
by Don McLeod

Butoh is an avant-garde performance art that has its origins in Japan in the 1960's. After the Second World War, Japan was a country in transition. It was a country still holding onto its old world traditional values while being forced into Western democratic values by America's conquest. During this time there was much student unrest and protest.

Theatre groups were performing socially challenging pieces, and there were daily demonstrations in the streets. Butoh was born out of this chaos. Its founders were a young rebellious modern dancer named Tatsumi Hijikata (1928 -1986), and his partner Kazuo Ohno (b. 1906). Hijikata was dissatisfied with the Japanese modern dance scene, feeling that it was merely a copy of the work being done in the West. He wanted to find a form of expression that was purely Japanese, and one that allowed the body to "speak" for itself, thru unconscious improvised movement. His first experiments were called Ankoku Butoh, or the Dance of Darkness. This darkness referred to the area of what was unknown to man, either within himself or in his surroundings. His Butoh sought to tap the long dormant genetic forces that lay hidden in the shrinking consciousness of modern man.