What is Butoh?

The word of the “Butoh” was come from China. It also appeared in Japanese ancientdocuments 1,000 years ago. Before that the “Butoh” itself meant foreign culture orentertainment. The “Butoh-kai” held during Meiji period also used in the meaning toexpress the western culture. Currently, an enormous information network was set up allover the world, and the speed of the international interchange has really changed.Nowadays all of us facing with the overflow of the information, but that is necessity tostop once and consider the meaning of the “Butoh” again. The character [Bu] of the“Butoh” means to turn/spin, over the mind concentration, it caused a de-soul situationthen to let the spirit of god or ancestors or ghost to go into the empty container orhuman body and make them dance. And for the character “toh”, means step cautiously,jump, while the body absorbed the energy from the earth, the existence of the power toconfine the bad soul of the underground. Also for the liberation from the daily hardworking, the joyfulness of the good harvest, then become a celebration of religiousservice in the rhythm of nature, a ritual ceremony to call the spirits of the ancestral toreturn happily, and after that developed into a national level religious event. Naturallythese “Butoh” exist everywhere in the world. It is not the unique thing that onlyoccurred in Japan. Then, what is the meaning of “Butoh” in nowadays? Due to thepioneer appearance of Hijikata Tatsumi/Ono Kazuo in year 1950-60, those artsexpression was called avant-garde dance (ankoku butoh). After some time the “Butoh”was recognized and spreads out to the world, from then the name “ankoku” wasdisappeared and they started to call it “Butoh”. But I think that “ankoku” is the mostimportant part for me. To set one foot step into the totally new area, actually it is anexperiment mind for me. That is the reason why “Butoh” is defined as art. Why does thehuman desire for the light? I think none of them would like to live along in the darkness,neither in the society nor inside the human himself. We can only imagine the Land ofHappiness, but the Hell is always in front of us. We must continuously face the darknessand death. Even if we try to ignore their appearance, with only express the existingbeautifulness and dreamlike story, it will be turnout to be a poor art performance. The“Butoh” shows that the existence of human being itself is an art. Currently we believethe harmony between the power and simplistic beauty from Europe, excessive belief tothe health, the standard value of the beauty of the proportion, forced to accept the valueof the commercialization of the arts. Especially the tendency is obvious in the dancing.So the “ankoku Butoh” began to pose the doubt about them. Isn’t it the “Butoh”rediscovered the human gentleness after the 2nd world war? What is the “beauty”?What is the expression come from the the unique ethnicity body/culture? Thesequestions are the starting points of the “Butoh”. The arrogant humanism, mammonismare covered the world and begin to alienate human being itself now. The uneasiness forthe human being actually is the human being itself now.

Although globalization is loudly shouted nowadays, each of us has to find our ways tosolve the problems and step forward. “Avant-garde art, zen ei gei jyutsu” isn’t formedby begging hands. False or untrue gentleness and sympathy have nothing to do with“Butoh”, because everyone stands with their own foot to start to dance. And it isnecessary to go through a long pupa period to become to flap like a beautiful butterfly.There is hope in the difficulty, after pass through the darkness then the light of the hopeis waiting for us. While the world is facing with the political turbulences and thechanges of the economy, in fact in our inner side, “Butoh” let us know that there is aboundless space surpassing the reality. The master Hijikata Tatsumi said that “the Butohlearn from nature, the body learn from the things”, I feel that is very meaningful for me.I think that the “Butoh” lives independently in the world, and from now on I will keepon thinking what is “Butoh”.

Yukio Waguri (2013)