Rose-coloured Dance: The Politics of Cross-dressing in Hijikata Tatsumi's Ankoku Butoh

Abstract

In Hijikata Tatsumi's Butoh dance, the materiality of the body was expressed in opposition to the textually based modern Japanese drama and idealist forms of contemporary dance. Hijikata's dance exposes the subversive aspects of sexuality and challenges the complacency of current mainstream performance. His early creative period from 1959 to 1968 was predominantly centred on the male dancer. Homoerotic themes proved a consistent feature of his stage practice as he invoked the diverse sexual practices and concepts of gender that had long existed through Japanese history. Androgynous bodies through which an indeterminate gender was expressed were increasingly incorporated into his dance. Hijikata parodied and disrupted the borders which marked conventional gender roles and fixed identities with crossdressing calling attention to the act of gender performance. In this article I problematise the repercussions of these elements, asking if they subverted the fixed principles of male and female or if they served to reinscribe their binary nature.

Notes

Note that Japanese surnames will be placed first, except in the footnotes when attributing books and articles to authors.

America occupied Japan from 1945 to 1952 and in June 1960, the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty (known as Ampo), was renewed, which provoked extreme youth protest.

See William MacDuff, ‘Beautiful Boys in No Drama: The Idealization of Homoerotic Desire’, Asian Theatre Journal, 13 (Autumn 1996), 248–58 (p. 255).

See Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male–Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse 1600–1950 (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1999).

See Tsuneo Watanabe and Junichi Iwata, The Love of the Samurai: One Thousand Years ofJapanese Homosexuality, trans. by D. R. Roberts (London: GMP Publishers, 1989), pp. 121–22 and p. 130.

See Nanako Kurihara, ‘Hijikata Tatsumi: The Words of Butoh’, TDR: The Drama Review, 44 (Spring 2000), 12–28 (p. 18); and Odette Aslan and Béatrice Picon-Vallin, Butoh(s): Études (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2002), pp. 62–63.

Judith Butler, ‘Gender Trouble. Feminist Theory and Psychoanalytical Discourse’, in identities, Race, Class, Gender, and Nationality, ed. by Linda Alcoff, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 201–11, (p. 204).

The performances described in this article, will be reconstituted through visual images contained mainly in Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh: Surrealism of the Flesh, Ontology of the ‘Body’, ed. by Takashi Morishita (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2004). Photographs on pp. 34–35 form the basis of this portrayal. I will also make reference to images in film recordings of Hijikata's original dance.

Jill Dolan, ‘Practicing Cultural Disruptions: Gay and Lesbian Representation and Sexuality', in Critical Theory and Perfomance, ed. by Janelle Reinelt and Joseph Roach (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 334–54, (p. 263).

Ibid., p. 272.

See Gary P. Leupp, Male Colours: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1995), p. 3.

For a discussion of the construction of multiple masculinities and diverse gender differences, see R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).

See Morishita, Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh, p. 47.

See photographs in Morishita, Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh, pp.49–53; and Sumi Yoichi, Fujio Maeda, Takashi Morishita (eds), The Iconology of the Rose-coloured Dance: Reconstructing Tatsumi Hijikata, trans. by Mie Ishii and Bruce Baird (Tokyo: Keio University, 2000).

See Aslan and Picon-Vallin, Butoh(s), p.121.

See Morishita, Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh, pp. 52–53 and 172.

A short extracted recorded piece of Revolt of the Flesh (Nikutai no Hanran) dir. by Hiroshi Nakamura, 1968, is filmed in black and white and belongs to the Tatsumi Hijikata Memorial Archives, Keio University, Tokyo. The CD-ROM with Takashi Morishita ed., Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh: Surrealism of the Flesh, Ontology of the ‘Body’ (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2004) contains fragments from this recording, in addition to photographs that are depicted on pp. 94–103.

Phallic worship has ancient roots in Japan and is still celebrated at many festivals and shrines. It is commonly linked to fertility, ease in childbirth and prosperous harvests.

See Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, trans. by Alan Sheridan (London: Tavistock, 1977), pp. 2–4.

Lacan states that ‘the phallus can only play its role as veiled’. This implies that it can only maintain its authority in the symbolic order if it remains a signifier, that is, if it remains hidden and therefore transcendent. See Jacques Lacan, ‘The Meaning of the Phallus', Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the École Freudienne, ed. by Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (London: MacMillan, 1982), pp. 74–85 (p. 84).

Jill Dolan, ‘Gender Impersonation Onstage: Destroying or Maintaining the Mirror of Gender Roles?’, Women and Performance, 2 (Summer 1985), 5–11 (p. 8).

Samuel L. Leiter, ‘From Gay to Gei: The Onnagata and the Creation of Kabuki's Female Characters’, Comparative Drama, 4 (Autumn 1999–2000), 495–514 (p. 509).

In a solo piece named Divine (1960), for example, Ohno adopted the character of the cross-dressing prostitute Divine from Genet's novel Our Lady of the Flowers (1943).

Ohno Kazuo, ‘Going Back to to the Origin of Life: “My Mother”’, 10 November 1995, Nikutaemo 2 (Summer 1996), n.p.

See Aslan and Picon-Vallin, Butoh(s), pp. 73, 77, 83 and 86.

Hijikata, ‘Wind Daruma’, TDR: The Drama Review, 44 (Spring 2000), 71–79 (p. 77).

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1999), p.175.

Mark Holborn and Ethan Hoffman, Butoh: Dance of the Dark Soul (Hong Kong: Saden/Aperture, 1987), p.14.

Tatsuhiko Shibusawa and Hijikata Tatsumi, ‘Hijikata Tatsumi: Plucking off the Darkness of the Flesh.’ An Interview, TDR (Spring 2000), 49–55 (p. 51).

See photographs of The Rose-coloured Dance and Fin Whale (Nagasu kujira) (1972), in Tadao Nakatani, World of Tatsumi Hijikata, The Originator of Butoh: A Collection of Dance Photographs (Tokyo: Shinsensha, 2003), pp.21–23 and 253–54.

She had worked with Hijikata since 1960. See Morishita, Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh, pp.92–93.

See Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. by Leon S. Roudiez (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 25–27 and 44–49.

Ibid, pp. 256–57 and 388. See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. by Leon S. Roudiez (New York and Guildford: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 9–11.

See Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 57.

Hijikata, ‘To Prison’, TDR: The Drama Review (Spring 2000), 42–48 (p. 47).

Arturo Silva describes Ashikawa's ‘twisted, jerking’ movements and asserts that she ‘mocks sexual congress’. See Silva, ‘Reality Breakdown at Saison’, The Daily Yomiuri, 29 August 1987.

Ashikawa appears in the film of Summer Storm (Natsu No Arashi), dir. by Arai Misao, Tatsumi Hijikata Memorial Archives, Keio University, 1973. In this she dances solo, with mouth grimaces, crossed eyes and claw-like hands.

See Yuri Kageyama, ‘Dogs “dance” for Yoko Ashikawa’ in The Japan Times Weekly, 7 February 1987.

See photographs of The Rose-coloured Dance in Nakatani, World of Tatsumi Hijikata, The Originator of Butoh, pp. 21–23.

Lesley Ferris, ‘Introduction', Crossing the Stage: Controversies on Cross-Dressing, ed. by Ferris (New York and London: Routledge, 1983), pp. 1–18 (p. 18).

Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic, p.116.

Alisa Solomon, ‘It's Never Too Late to Switch’, in Crossing the Stage, ed. by Lesley Ferris, pp. 144–54 (p. 148).

Jean E. Howard, ‘Cross-Dressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England’, in Crossing the Stage, pp. 20–46 (p. 41).

Ibid., p. 21.

Ibid.