Consideration of Butoh-fu

Butoh-fu is a form of notation of Butoh choreography with words. It is one particular method among dance notation systems spanning all times and places. Many pre-existing dance notation systems in the West have been expressed with abstract symbols, and in Japan there was also an age where dance movements were expressed with sketches of human figures like Hokusai Manga¹. In modern times there is also more analytical and precise method of notation that use computers. Butoh-fu is one method that uses words to make an imaginative Butoh space and manages and shares time and space, physicalizing imagery through words. Words are compulsory in order to understand one another, but there are also cases where the differences of interpretation or sensitivity to words, variations in the arising of an image, or emotional elements included in words make it difficult to hold the same image as another does. It is not even easy to translate Japanese into foreign languages. This is all the more the case when it comes to the language of Butoh. You could say that Butoh notation is the work of chasing after the image of an unclear entity using particular words. One excellent method that Hijikata Tatsumi utilized was using paintings as a primary source. Just like the words “you can tell in a glance,” visual information can be shared quickly by using paintings. The information gained through humans’ eyes is easy to understand because of its certainty and large volume. In order to decipher the form, movement, material quality, mood, time and space from the painting and make it into Butoh, it is re-arranged as the language of Butoh. That way of organizing and limiting the information has a characteristic unique to Hijikata’s Butoh, but it is difficult to describe briefly. One theme of Butoh is the continuous transformation of the two-dimensional space of the painting into the four-dimensional space of Butoh. Of course, it is not the case that all of Butoh’s choreography uses paintings as sources. There are probably more instances of making dances from poetic words or music. However, if we regard the human eye as the shutter of a camera, then all of the scenery from the real world would be like a series of single paintings moving in one direction. Either way, it is necessary to continue heightening the individual’s sense and approach² in that imaginative space. He or she has to work towards words awakening the individual’s rich memory, the heightening of the intermittent function of dreams, and then the very charm of that individual’s physical features. One condition that comes out in this is that one has to develop his inner power to struggle against outside forces and handicaps in the choreography coming from words. Then, the body is placed in a condition where one has to directly face the fundamental problem of what is “inner” or “outer” for oneself. Finally, while probing these things, various boundary-producing films enveloped in the body begin to become unstable, and the expansion and contraction of the body, the spreading of the nerves, the sensation of the skin come to hold an important place in Butoh as physical sensations. Words continue to stimulate our sense of exploration as also a catalyst. People who do Butoh have to sharpen the feeling/sensation of their whole bodies as a signal receiver. Perhaps this is how the Butoh of Butoh-fu is. However, Butoh choreography that is re-staged by using Butoh-fu will not be exact or uniform. With this, there lies the large problem of what is the re-staging of Butoh works.
The choreography made by Butoh-fu can be largely divided into two worlds. One of those is “Naru” (Becoming). “Naru” (Becoming) means “transformation,” or rather “possession.” However, although one does “become” the things that the Butoh-fu designates, if one completely becomes that thing, perhaps the choreography received externally will not have any effect, and that expression will stagnate as a certain state of trance. Then, one more world, of “living an imaginative space,” becomes necessary. That is the state of awakening, being self-aware, and being able to manage oneself. He or she tries to maintain these two at the same time. Keeping these two states, worlds, which seem to be split, is the difficult part of Butoh-fu’s Butoh. Furthermore, he or she perceives that the thing that is keeping these two states is not himself dancing, but one more life called Butoh. There is also the case where his or her condition is split between the two and yet neutral to them, and this is also Butoh. It seems that at this point the problem is where the person doing Butoh has eyes attached to himself. Hijikata’s words, “all technique exists in the soul” necessarily raises the question of “what is technique?” The technique of remembering, the technique of forgetting, and another technique that directs all of those kinds of actions. The qualification of a Butoh performer is the endeavor of taking words thrown at them externally as an object or entity in itself and making coincidence into something inevitable. What is demanded from Butoh is taking hold of true, creative ability. If I say that Butoh is the thing that exists on the tips of words, for example, what can be picked out from Butoh-fu is the result of the Butoh performer’s creative ability in itself. The reason why is that human beings have built up culture by using words, and Butoh is not an exception to that.

“The vessel that does Butoh is also the vessel that invites Butoh in. In either case, the vessel has to constantly maintain a hollow condition… Butoh is the incessent substitution of emptiness.”
Hijikata Tatsumi

“The Japanese ‘to be reflected’ is one type of natural law, and there is a part of it that is not the active ‘to reflect.’ Flowing is the first principle of ‘to be reflected.’”
Gunji Masakatsu

“Hijikata Tatsumi’s Butoh is not becoming a corpse while becoming a corpse, a theatrical space that fixates on the corpse.”
Ichikawa Miyabi

The words of these masters give us valuable hints in order to continue researching the Butoh of Butoh-fu.

Previously, in my own organizational style I categorized a lot of the Butoh-fu (almost all of which was choreography for performances) choreographed by Hijikata Tatsumi, and published it as the DVD-R “Butoh Kaden,” and that was classified from heavy things into light things. However, now, before re-examining the details of that categorization, there are some things that I have to make clear. That is the understanding of “Naru” (Becoming) a word that appears often in Butoh-fu. There is a group of choreography of becoming a ghost or wall or melting meat, becoming a beast, and becoming a flower. Why is Hijikata’s Butoh-fu a continuation of transformations? I think that the biggest reason is because Butoh is an art of time.
In An Aesthetics of Dance, Gunji Masakatsu writes “Dance is an art that makes that shape moment by moment, while at the same time erasing it with one’s own hand. … Without trying to show it to people, and nevertheless moving people deeply, perhaps it should be called an art of life that has surpassed technique.” “I think that the feeling of ‘being possessed” is conscious and subjective. I think that to become possessed there is a double consciousness. One cannot become an actor without the ability to be possessed, but at the same time he or she has to keep themselves, or rather, their subjectivity.”
My understanding of the dance mentioned in these two passages is by replacing “actor” with “person who does Butoh.” The series of transformations in Hijikata’s Butoh-fu is the flow of life. Expression has to become like flowing water. Flowing is the life of Butoh.
“Dance is for the sake of Dance, and it is not for the sake of seeing the dancer’s expression or knowing their soul. The dancer is nothing but one transmitter. If the dancer tries to show something in the dance piece, the machine will abruptly shut down. This is stopping the movement of life as dance.” These words are talking about traditional Japanese dance in An Aesthetics of Dance, but can it be applied to Butoh now? Early Butoh began from the powerful personality that was Hijikata Tatsumi challenging the pre-existing dance world with the violence and perverted eroticism that he carried in his hands. Evidently the main figure is Hijikata, who we should even call a super- personality, and Hijikata was Butoh itself. Perhaps one person’s raw scream, just as it was, transformed into the graphic Butoh. Hijikata was also the one who brought his intense ego and spirit of negation to the cultural situation of Japan, in which the concept of the individual has shallow roots. Wasn’t it the individual or the ego itself which was the essence of Butoh’s expression? However, circumstances change with time. In “The Season of Dance called Butoh,” Gunji Masakatsu says the following about the late period of Hijikata’s Butoh. “Isn’t Butoh an expression of gentleness, discovering that humans are humans in the midst of darkness that fell upon animals of skin and bone remaining after the violence of war? In that, there is no enthusiastic vanity such as individuality, ego, or creation. Here there can be seen a new dimension cut off from modernity.” The difference in the emergence of the early and late periods of Hijikata’s Butoh are clear. However, we can only guess that there must have been a certain necessity for change within Hijikata Tatsumi. If I return to what I stated earlier about “the substitution of emptiness,” something is always trespassing into an empty vessel, taking root there, and then fleeing again. That is probably the dead, ancestors, spirits, or fallen gods. It is not strange that Hans Bellmer’s little girl, Francis Bacon’s pope, or Itoh Jakuchu’s chicken inhabit this vessel. The vessel’s main character is changing, one after another. “Becoming” begins first with making one’s flesh into an empty vessel. It is similar to how traditional Japanese performing arts begin with the basic training of “killing off what is unrefined, or natural.” However, the topography of the land of the dead which was cut out from the traditional performing arts still strongly remains in Hijikata’s empty vessel, in which darkness stands towering over it. It is the origin of the name Ankoku Butoh.
Ichikawa Miyabi’s point that “Modern dance enforced the submission of the flesh under the beautiful name of freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and defeated the flesh so that it became a medium of imprisonment” perhaps can ironically be said about not only modern dance but a lot of Butoh today.
It seems that Butoh is also being swayed by the vices of modernism. Wasn’t it that which Hijikata’s Butoh decided to flee from? Wasn’t it that the late period of Hijikata’s Butoh placed oneself in nature and became one part of it, thus moving from the antagonistic dichotomous world to a rich, holistic world? Hijikata’s last words were that the weakened body in itself is the form of Butoh, and then he left this world and is on the other side. Another problem that comes from transformation is the relationship between Butoh and Shamanism. Hijikata Tatsumi said that “When one wishes that he had been born physically disabled then finally he has begun the first step of Butoh,” and Gunji Masakatsu also explains the following in his search for the magical origins of Japanese performing arts. “There are a number of cases in which people with physical defects have served as Japan’s shamans. …Those born sickly and weak, having crossed the line of death once have been given the qualification to be a dancer… Perhaps Japan’s dance was sought after for the movement or expression of “Tamafuri³,” returning to the beginning of a fierce dance, in which that which was scarred on the soul has searched for a body as a temporary residence.” Perhaps Gunji Masakatsu acknowledges Hijikata’s Butoh because he sees the origin of dance in it. It feels like there is an exchange of souls between an avant-garde artist and a researcher of the classical performing arts. The shaman’s sacrificial flesh or state taken by madness, the trip descending into Hades, apparent death and metamorphosis, existences which come back as comforters or witch doctors, all of these are vivid reminders of Hijikata’s Butoh. A researcher of shamans writes that “for the Shaman, all the phenomena of the world are anthropomorphications of the universe. Rocks, plants, animals- these are all subjects with a personality,” and I’d like to think about how this connects with Hijikata’s Butoh-fu. Hijikata was just one Butoh artist, and he put his life into his flesh being the existence of Butoh itself. He was not conjecturing some religious effect. It was not summoning god or protecting the lineage that god descends upon, nor was he making god capital for artistic commerce. That is unsullied. Hijikata clearly said, “my dance is unrelated to shrines and temples.” He also said, “there is nothing as troublesome as naturalistic mysticism.” One mustn’t take refuge in mysticism for a trance that is like feeling high from drugs, confirming one’s actions, or easing the anxieties of existence. It is a continuation of encircling what one does not know with words, and then chasing them again when what is not understood swiftly runs away. Words are what is understood. Anyone thinks that they want to get far away from this never-ending, eternal movement. However, what is not understood is oneself, even before god. You cannot run away from yourself, so dance or Butoh is probably necessary in any age in order for people to forget themselves. Hijikata was probably also the one who challenged this paradox held by humanity.
In “Butoh Kaden,” I categorized Butoh-fu into seven worlds. These seven are “Anatomical Drawing,” “Burned-down Bridge,” “Wall,” “Birds and the Beasts,” “Flower,” “Nerve Disease Ward,” and “Abyss.” I tried organizing them from heavy things to light things. However, using heavy things and light things to divide them was for convenience, and the questions of what is heaviness and what is lightness has to become a theme. If one tries to express heaviness, the more he firmly tries to plant his legs, the lighter his body will become. A heavy body is a thrown-out, forgotten expression, it is the incompetent and the abandoned. It is a loss of hope, abandonment, an incompetence called heaviness. Not being able to express it is probably becoming one expression, but that is not clear. Also, the heavier the feelings of the person are, the lighter he wishes to become. Lightness and heaviness are always living together inside of a person.

Perhaps how we have confronted this invisible heaviness or fear of chaos and darkness is the history of mankind.
“The fear of chaos and darkness is the fear of all of the distances that mediates between oneself and the visible object being swallowed up, everything being painted one black color, and losing the distinctive gap between subject an object.” Tanemura Suehiro.

Over half a century has passed since Hijikata’s Butoh let out its cry at birth as Ankoku Butoh. “Ankoku” is, perhaps, a word that suggests many things such as evil, incompetence, loss of hope, fear, death, hell, descension, the invisible, the undivided, chaos, and darkness. In the world’s trends today, since the word “Ankoku” disappeared and has been consolidated as “Butoh,” it seems that the time has come to re-think the meaning of this word “Ankoku.” The darkness of the pre-war/ post-war burnt remains even covers the world today. The need to re-consider this is not Butoh’s future; it is Butoh’s present. The Butoh that seems to be enslaved under the name of “self expression,” will one day come to its extinction. What will remain are only the scars of one’s battle with oneself. What Butoh has to do now is only to dig deep under one’s own feet. To touch upon the base layer of humanity requires the courage to stand tall by oneself in the darkness. Butoh is completely a trip of self- discovery.
To go back to the main theme, I’d like to begin re-examining the worlds of Butoh-fu that were compiled in “Butoh Kaden.” Let’s begin thinking about this from the first world of “Butoh Kaden,” which is “Anatomical Drawing.” It is the world that is the heaviest and at the very base of Butoh-fu. In Butoh-fu, there is the word “heavy face.” (To be at a loss for what to do, to not know what to do, the heaviness of sorrow, the heaviness of negligence, the heaviness of a broken gaze. the state in which one’s front and back are completely cut.) Even in just the one phrase “heavy face,” these physical states and psychological conditions are hidden. The paintings that are the source of these words are by Francis Bacon. Hijikata is documenting the dances of Bacon as “the labyrinth of the flesh” or rather “A favorite theory of the flesh.” Perhaps one more heaviness is the timelessness which has an endless cycle. “Follow the circuit of the organs” is a phrase used often in the words of Bacon’s Butoh. Ichikawa Miyabi points out about Hijikata’s flesh that “it is flesh that repeats the circumvention of the flesh.” I have been asked by Hijikata, “What happens when something that you try to dance appears suddenly inside your own body?” During practice, while beating a drum he yelled, “Your flesh is crying alone by itself, something unstable is just barely being supported by form.” “The flesh is a vessel laden with technique, like an objet of desire” are also the words of Hijikata. He broke down into pieces, disassembled, and categorized the characters in Bacon’s paintings, rearranged each piece into new, twisted relationships, repeating the contraction/expansion of the flesh, plotting the protrusion of parts of the body, and converting Bacon’s characters into this movement that enlarges and transforms the flesh into space. Here there is the flesh, which is grappling with a mechanism that doesn’t have the leeway for the simple mental composition of the Butoh performer to enter. I wonder how we should understand what Hijikata said during the rehearsals for the Bacon dance, “As mystical as what is real.” In the “Anatomical Drawing” world of Butoh-fu, there are other paintings besides Bacon’s, which are important sources. There is Francisco de Goya. According to Andre Malraux, the world of Goya is “communicating the universal human emotion of being beyond help.” In his theory of Goya, Shibusawa Tatsuhiko writes that “Goya interprets the world through his image of unbearable insanity, the tragedy of being trapped while living in the prison of the flesh.” Many of the characters from Goya’s paintings appear in the Butoh-fu, appearing and then disappearing like phantoms from the darkness. The darkness is not just behind, but also in the body and inside the eyes. A character that has never been seen before appears from the darkness deep inside the body. Goya himself said that “the slumber of reason gives birth to monsters.” We are probably keeping monsters that we have never seen before inside the dark rooms of our bodies. That darkness, anxiety, creepiness, the inability to be saved is the time and space of Goya’s dance. I was suddenly asked “what is darkness?” during rehearsal and was at a loss for words; Hijikata said to me “Look, there is darkness inside the carp fish in my hard- it is heavy.” Also, the words “the sincerity in chaos” are also formidable. Is chaos referring to the flesh, or to my existence, or to the complicated choreography in the Butoh-fu, or to the universe, and in any case, what is “sincerity”? This is a word that speaks to us while being depicted in Rodolphe Bresdin’s prints. These are words that spoke to us as we rehearsed, about the density of the theatrical space, in which it is thought incapable of combining the macro and the micro any more. It is about when human beings lose their foundation as humans, the flesh loses its outline as the flesh, and there is the solitary dance of the most suitable person. He said, “the farthest thing in this world is one’s own flesh” and then rehearsal was done for the day. What exactly is imagery for a person who does Butoh? A momentary visual image is gone before one knows it, like blowing bubbles with the mind. That is not an image. The image, for a person who does Butoh, is an image that will influence me as a subject, something that has the power to transform my body, something that will lead me to a state where I no longer know the difference between myself and the other, and possibly a power that will pull me in with a power stronger than my own, no matter how much I resist. That is something that becomes stronger and more certain with time. The word “sincerity” is perhaps the bravery to plunge into those unknown worlds, or possibly the intention to settle one’s own matters by oneself. When thinking about “heaviness,” there are countless ones, like “the heaviness that is withstanding heaviness,” “the heaviness of nameless flesh,” “the heaviness of living things in the deep sea, which is wet and has no form,” “or the heaviness of a rock that does not move.” Although most of the dances of the world place their focus on “lightness,” the heaviness of Hijikata’s Butoh is not to fly from the earth’s surface, nor is it to be attached to and roam about the surface of the earth. Its stage for dancing is the human being as the earth, and it is a heaviness that descends down into the human himself. It is the heaviness of human existence. That is something that cannot be weighed. It makes me think of the time that a famous choreographer praised Butoh, saying that “Butoh has tamed gravity and made it an ally.” However, I think that is a Western person’s impression of Butoh, and I do not think that Butoh is the antithesis of Ballet.
I’d like to move on to the second world of “Burnt-down bridge.” According to Gunji Masakatsu, “Hijikata’s Butoh is not an art that made the flesh its material; since it is a dance that is the action of eating the flesh itself, it is the Butoh of death.” Just as these words represent, Butoh has pushed “death” to the forefront. In post-war Japan when Japan’s dance world was carrying the empty slogan of the power and beauty of a healthy body, Hijikata appeared wearing the kimono that the dead wear, bringing along with him offensive beauty, evil transformation, and scorn. This dance, which conceived of the flesh from the perspective of death, drove a fat, bright red and burning stake into the capital of Japan in its Showa period, scattering darkness in the midst of a cloud of ashes. The “burnt-down bridge” is a human who stands firmly between the heavens and the other-world while having burn scars all over his body, in the burnt ruins after the war. It is a human who is dying moment by moment. He has already lost the outline or condition of being human, a persisting pain and dirtiness. Burnt ruins and insanity. (Can he even move?) Hijikata writes “a thing that is essential for humans to exist.” In order to move through this world of “burnt-down bridge,” pain comes in. Let’s go through the Butoh-fu. (The many layers of the face, Spasm, Bacon’s face, Michaux’s nerves, Solidification of one arm, The neck of a horse, Beggar, Skeleton, The underside of a mask, Adhesion, Pus, Sliding, Shifting…) In order to understand the Butoh-fu, it is important to clearly separate what is multi-layered and what is blended and opaque. A comprehensive layering is necessary. Then, what is required here is not just to become a passive and receptive body, but to also have the spirit to dive into experimentation. It is the extra something. There are thirteen words in the phrase of the many layers of the face, and there is dance hidden in between each of these words. The way of transitioning between each word decides the speed and density of the dance, and that density builds up the strength of the dance. The soul of the flesh, which has melted and fused back together in an indeterminate shape, gradually has the flesh shaven off of it, becomes thin, has its bones exposed, and becomes a skeleton. This process is Butoh. It is said that there is a form to Hijikata’s Butoh, but it is not that the dance is continuously being cut from a stamped-out shape. What oozes out from the shape, protrudes from the shape, cannot be contained within it and distorts the shape, changes its quality, and calls out the next shape. Sometimes the shapes also slowly mix together, but sometimes the shape suddenly becomes empty and the next main character penetrates into the shape at a terrifying speed. Especially because there are shapes that are broken, that disappear, at the tip of that there is one more shape of Butoh that becomes faintly visible. There is not enough time to meet that high demand from Hijikata. One time, when I was having “Butoh Kaden” translated into English, the translator asked me a question. “Why does the word ‘pus’ appear so often in Hijikata’s Butoh?” I do not remember if I could explain to him well or not, but perhaps we can say that pus is one membrane of the flesh, since it flows from the inside, and hardens, becoming skin on the outside- the inside floods to the outside, the outside soaks into the inside. There are many important points in my rehearsal notes for “Pus.” Those words are “the overall afflicted parts. Pus’s thick parts are myself. Cannot stand pus’s blood. There is one more core besides the me who is dancing.” The Butoh performer is facing the open cave of the body and weakly crying, “help me,” while being trapped in the space that is these “overall afflicted parts” and “one more core.” The space is ailing, the space hurts; it is how humans are broken, the agony of death. Space is the body, of course. The boundary line between the inside and the outside erode each other and become vague. Is the space pus, or is it oneself that is pus. When pus flows from inside the body, perhaps one will become like de Kooning’s girl, and when the pus is spread out and becomes like a thin film, it will probably change into Turner’s dark grey sky. Also, the dried-out and mineralized scars probably look like amber-colored hard candy with the sun shining through them. It is correct that the young girl made out of hard candy appears from pus. By flowing, hardening, being spread out, changing color, crystallizing and becoming thin, pus is a bridge to cross over into another world. Tanemura Suehiro writes the following about Turner’s work: “There is an insane and illogical perspective, a double focus, and the shape of something melts into something else… drawing time that is drawing… writing while erasing.” The flesh is also a canvas with many paintings layered on top of each other in the way that Tanemura writes, and the flesh always has an unstable shape while repeating the acts of drawing and erasing. Then, that instability supports the dance. Furthermore, decomposition, vaporization, digestion are guideposts to the next transformation. What is important is to be particular about oneself. Dance begins from scrutinizing one’s own flesh.
The third world “wall” is written about in the Butoh-fu like this: “You are already constructed;” “The flesh is being made into a nest by a bug called time, and trying desperately to tie together what is crumbling moment by moment;” “Flesh is a thing- Time is the flesh;” “The flesh is the beehive of time and space.”
The “wall” dance is a battle with one’s own flesh. It is a provisional work, eccentrically related to the interior of the flesh, as if tofu would become a tile if it was drawn. First of all, we have to think from the problem of what is the material of the flesh. Perhaps we have to encounter Bruegel’s beggar who became a wall made out of coarse particles or Giacometti’s thin structure with which we seemingly cannot come into contact. They are compressed and painted over heavily. We continue to thicken the wall while shifting it, making the three-dimensional body all the more three-dimensional. We have to thicken the density of the interior of the flesh at the same time that we extend it into space; the wall appears by simultaneously carrying out the opposing actions of diffusion and concentration. Also, onomatopoeia is used often in the Butoh-fu for “wall.” For example, “to harden <GACHI>⁴, to crumble <BORO>, to break <BOKI>” – it is clear how these are distinct when compared with “to harden <KACHIN>, to crumble <POROPORO>, to break <POKIN>.” Material quality, a sense of volume, and speed are included in the shorter onomatopoeia. There is a very Japanese sense being exhibited here. Focusing on the materials of the flesh is to face the time that those materials have. However, pursuing the materials of the body is not limited to Butoh. In both large-scale wars that used weapons of mass destruction, human beings were blown into pieces, robbed of a dignified death, became a cruel soul of flesh and were neglected. The flesh, silent and made into a thing, was neglected and left on the roadside. That is probably the same even now. The informal movement that came about after the war also has a connection to the wretchedness of war. The relationship between oneself and one’s flesh was re-pursued, asking what is the flesh, what is the self, and what is expression. Dubuffet said that “Paintings direct things to their bodies.” If we restate these words, perhaps they would be asking how to paint the flesh as a thing. He also states, “Flow is made between the two solid extremes of the depicted object and the painter who draws the object.” Since in Butoh the action of drawing the object is done with the body, it is easy to understand the space between the extremes by using the word “distance.” First, there is the problem of the distance between the artist and the artwork. Hijikata said that, “I am the artwork, so I cannot show it at a moment’s notice.” Mishima Yukio said the following: “The moment when the artist and the artwork are both one body, is when one’s intended beauty is completed at the same time that one’s sensuality is suspended, and when the flesh becomes nothing but an object for the other; in other words, it is the moment of death.” In the background of these words, Hijikata’s “corpse desperately standing erect” casts its shadow. However, Butoh does not make one’s own flesh into an artwork like a sculpture. The flesh in itself is the expression, but Butoh is what protrudes from that flesh. It seems like Hijikata fought to forcibly pull that back into his own flesh. He was desparately trying to plaster his body with Butoh. No, perhaps at the tip of that he was trying to plaster his own body onto somewhere. It is heavily weighing on the words, “the negative tendency.” The following line is in Butoh-fu: “The ghost entered into the wall, came out again, and disappeared into the space.” When translating Butoh-fu into English, the translator asked me “Who is the ghost?” “Where is the wall?” English requires a subject. The English for that line became “Before I knew it I became a ghost, and that ghost suddenly entered the wall that appeared out of thin air.” In Butoh, the disappearance of the ghost and the wall are all things that happen in one’s own body. The vagueness of the subject in the Japanese language also shapes the characteristics of Butoh. In the studio, when the word “ghost…” is said, there is soon a “me” who has become the ghost. I think that this lack of questioning is also valuable⁵. Isn’t there a saying that “when there is only questioning there is little fruition?” I’d like to move onto the fourth world of “the birds and the beasts.” Here I would like to consider the “birds and the beasts” of Butoh-fu, which is neither the story of birds carrying souls, the prophecies of gods, nor does it have a relationship with the mimicry theory of Japanese traditional performing arts that “begins with monkeys and ends with foxes.”

“For Butoh, which plays with the fineness and coarseness of fragility, the stimulation of forgetting one’s humanity leads to a state of good will for everything underneath human beings.”
Hijikata Tatsumi

“Obviously, Humans are reincarnated in Japan. When it comes to Noh, which came about in the middle ages, animals and plants are the main characters. In the West, there is no such drama in which these things such as grass, dew, or snow can become the main character.”
Gunji Masakatsu

“Strange animals born from a deranged imagination became the appearance of the natural instincts hidden in humans.”
Michel Foucault

“Humans go back to being animals in dreams.”
Platon

There are many suggestive and valuable words such as these, but now I cannot go deeply into them. I would like to begin with what I experienced myself in rehearsal. When rehearsing the Butoh-fu “beast,” I’d go on all-fours. It is mysterious, but I would then be strangely enveloped in a sense of relief. I wonder why. Perhaps it is a momentarily release from my daily pretense of being a human that stands on two legs, perhaps it is being seduced to anonymity; there is a different horizon spreading before the beast’s eyes that is different than the human’s, and this is fresh and new. I wonder if that is the instinctual vestige from before standing on two legs, but I completely think that I don’t want to do anything, that I want to stay like this and not go back to being human. Rather than acting out the gestures, lightness, heaviness, or suppleness of an animal, I would rather be invited away to the slumber of animals. I think that I would like to do nothing and sleep like that. “When I chased after animals I became unable to sleep.” I have the feeling that there is an essential something hidden in the dance of the animals that is neither an imitation nor a depiction of their appearance or abilities. Hijikata said that “you have to be touched by the hand of god that has a 100% conviction in the whimsy of animals.” Can that be done? By extracting just the word “whimsy/caprice” I become completely lost in a labyrinth. Even if I demonstrated my dance as an expression of whimsy to the audience and they also felt it as so, if all of it were action according to my plan then it would not be whimsy in the least. It is the same if I make the challenge of destroying all of the pre-decided dance on stage and then trying to improvise. Here lies the problem of choreography and improvisation. Dancing whimsically does not mean to dance freely and improvisationally according to one’s feeling. That is nothing more than a shitting out of expression and a waste of oxygen. The issue here is the attitude for entering into Butoh, evoking the flesh that is easily tricked, the process of tricking oneself. Choreographed dance is by all means danced as improvisation, and the dance called improvisation is choreographed in the moment. So, does whimsy refer to some state of trance, and is that a world with no relationship to neither whimsy, nor choreography or improvisation. Transformation is something that one moves toward from himself. Whether it be the world of the beasts, or the world of the birds, it is getting close with that world. There, the birds and the beasts are all my teachers of Butoh.
The central task of the “bird” world is the “metamorphosis of material quality.” A crow transforms into an old woman, a white dove into a child. This resemblance and closeness of material qualities is a characteristic of Hijikata’s Butoh-fu. It can be taken in as a drama of a bird becoming a tree, becoming light, becoming body temperature or downy hair. Also, contrast and emphasis are keys to metamorphosis. There are several dances of birds in Hijikata’s Butoh-fu. “Crane, Stuffed (Taxidermied) Bird, Crow, Dove, Duck, Owl, Peacock, Michaux’s Bird, Goya’s Bird- there is not enough time to list them all. Each bird is closely related to its own time and space. For example, perhaps the long line of a crane’s neck will ultimately connect to Bermell’s young girl made of string, or the union of accumulated cocoons. The white feathers or round chest of a dove connects to the slumber of a white, powdered baby, and one sees the appearance of a flower of white light on the undersides of his eyelids. The long feathers of a peacock have the possibilities of annihilation or vaporization after the abstraction of the bird’s nerves. It is important to pursue metamorphosis in this way by borrowing the shape of the bird. Sometimes, when looking at a bird or a beast, I have a feeling of a presence, something that you can call a sixth sense. I wonder how exactly that is connected to Butoh.
Let’s peer into the fifth world of Butoh, “flower.” About the flowers in Noh, Gunji Masakatsu explains, “With the plant ‘flower,’ they are symbolizing the human body, and in this there is the aesthetics of the Japanese people” in A Collection of Writings about Dance. Also, he says that “However, even in explaining ‘flower,’ Zeami doesn’t try to reply to the intellectual demand for what kind of thing a flower is, but instead answers how to acquire the flower” (An Aesthetics of Dance). Of course I also borrow Butoh Kaden’s “Kaden” from Fuhshi Kaden ((The Flower of Noh)), but all I can do is to try my hardest so that it doesn’t end in simply an explanation of Hijikata’s technique. The following passage is written in the beginning of the Butoh-fu’s “Flower.” “Flower is emotion. The interior floods to the outside. A speed that is erased by the flower. Erasing the order held by the body. Enveloped in the flower petals that are stolen away. I wonder why when one lets it be he becomes the closest to the image of the flower.” In Butoh-fu, there are many flowers written down along with paintings. “Cotton Rose” “Rose” “Butterbur” “Daffodil” “Lotus” “Wild Flowers” “Dahlia” “Plum blossom,” and others are also “Flower of Frozen Light” and “The Flower of Redon’s Firefly.” Let’s consider the Butoh-fu for “pollen.” “A room full of pollen, thickness, slumber, enveloped, heavy cloud of flowers. In a blind haze. The thin string from the fingertips, plucking the flower, flower petals. A flower child enveloped in hat, hair, and pollen. Thicken the pollen, and slowly vaporize. Only the sensation of the fingertips moves downwards.” It is Butoh-fu that choreographs the process of a young girl, who has taken one step into the room of pollen, walking, and in this time she slowly and yet at a startlingly speed transforms into a flower, and further becomes particles, becoming one with the space of pollen, becoming pollen itself, and then finally vaporizing and melting into the space, disappearing. To be stolen away, and to be neglected are keywords of the flower dance. The disappearance/annihilation of the flesh, that is not the brute force like what was shown with the wall dance, but it is a state of opening the body and being receptive. Rather than the attitude of taking part in the planning of one’s own world of transformation, there is more of a Butoh with a receptive body here. Vaporization, annihilation, changing into the space, and ecstasy are also important elements. Perhaps the flower dance is the feeling of wanting to be stolen away, wanting to disappear and go away. It is the transition from the active time of animals to the receptive time of plants. The consciousness of flowers as a Japanese aesthetic also lives in Hijikata’s butoh. However, in Hijikata’s words, “a pure flower, not something that is an abstract of an abstract, a pure flower,” I feel like it is saying “that is not it” to those who would make the flesh abstract. I think it seems that he is asking if expression will come about after abstracting the subject all the way to abstracting the flesh. What exists after the consciousness and the flesh are vaporized is a left-behind, empty shell. The feeling of the flesh being an empty shell entangles with the feeling that now I am being made to live by the flower. Opening the closed flower, this Butoh- fu world is the turning point in which you give yourself over to something else.

The sixth world, “Nerve Disease Ward.”
“He is the utmost passer-by, a prisoner passing through… Insanity is rather a subtle relationship that human beings make with themselves… The actions of black magic and of sacrilege against god, when one culture stops accepting the effectivity of those actions, they become pathological… Image is not insanity in the least. Insanity holds its own origins within the action of giving true value to an image… Then it seems that having a nerve disease is just because of feeling too much. It is the case that it is called illness when one has too much of a bond with all of the existences in his surroundings.”
Michel Foucault

It seems we would have to read huge medical or anthropological texts in order to investigate the relationship between nerve disease, or rather insanity, and Butoh. It is beyond my capacities. At this point, the only thing to do is to examine the relationship with insanity by drawing upon the several paintings that Hijikata liked and made into Butoh-fu.
Hijikata’s words are also in the Butoh-fu for “nerve disease ward.” “Spasmic dislocation. Whole body afflicted. From the relationship of the flesh to material quality, to the relationship of the flesh and human characters. All superlative alchemy masters are patients of nerve disease. Slough off the patternization of the nerves and the influx of emotions” are such words among many.

Dances made from the paintings by Henri Michaux
• “Mescalin, the protrusion of the nerves. Ink pot, the abstraction of a scream. The analysis of elegance.”
• “The cape of lightbeard, lightness and dilutedness. Having to do with the fractured sensitivity of the 2-meter tip of light.”
• “3 faces. The teeth of pomegranate, white face, a face, with the right eye and left half melted, is connected by hair.”
Sometimes Michaux’s dance was also done improvisationally. This was a rare case in the studio.

“I am immersed in my body. That is my center, in between movement and rest. That is, at times, one part of my body that is far away from the regulation of my brain. It felt like a twitching, electric organism.”
“The fight with a splatter swollen with ink begins, writhes, and rages. Then, it immediately seeks my understanding and presses for a prompt decision.” Henri Michaux

At the same time that Michaux was one patient, he was also an extremely composed clinical pathologist.
I’d like to introduce some of the Butoh-fu called “The Walk of only Nerves and Touch.”
“The cranium’s twig broke <POKIN>, ears are attached to the nose, birds are about to take flight from the temple on the face, bugs crawling up from the feet, crushing the bugs under the feet <JARI>, a violent spasm in the cheek, the little finger jumps up <PIKUN>, the throat’s flute, a sound of a spoon falling on the back, tree leaves fall down <SAKUSAKU> inside the head, the body sinks a little, when trying to walk the door to the little room in the chest is shut <GACHA>, a slug crawling along the tendon of the neck, a grasshopper jumping from the feet, the beard of space, a horse’s neck, entangling vines, ran away leaving a strange laugh behind.”
I can hear the voice, “What in the world are you doing? Where will you go?” In this choreography, there is no nerve movement that is the same. The speed, direction, material quality, sound of each nerve is different. It seems that the more one tries to completely control it, things that cannot be controlled will arise, and the body plays the orchestra of the nerves and becomes a republic of the nerves.

There is also a lot of choreography from Wols paintings.
• “Wols, the bundle of nerves running to the base of the chest, the nerves piercing the face, the plasterization that stops in the middle, nerves that multiply into the space, and then move downward as if nothing happened.”
• “In shellfish, there is a Christ in each of the thousands of branches, and I have not been born. I am moving towards the center of a room, waiting for results that will not come out. The shellfish is the universe, and I make nothing.”
• “Animals from the vacuum, my peers in the middle of the vacuum, but I eternally cannot meet them. From another three-dimensional figure, to another flat surface. Nothing was about to begin. Teresa, Munch, Wols’s layering is behind it, moving through the vacuum, an animal’s face comes out.”

Actually, the choreography of Wols is difficult, and even I am not confident that I could understand and dance it. Of course, Wols’s words are included in the Butoh-fu, but I get the feeling that it is like a zen question and answer.
Rehearsal was not done in Hijikata’s studio in the order in which I organize it. It was rehearsing for performances, and so there were various things stuffed into one dance. The title is a flower dance, but in that Bacon and Michaux are mixed. These things from another world appear abruptly but also with necessity. In the choreography for the nerve disease ward, Shohaku’s⁶ frog characters or small doves also make appearances. It seems that this chaos is also the appeal of Hijikata’s Butoh. It excels in the surrealistic technique in which the unexpected and a series of small surprises appear. Perhaps this is also one of Hijikata’s talents.
Hijikata’s Butoh philosophy is “Even an accumulation of a thousand movements cannot win against one transformation.” Perhaps one thing is the emphasis made by contrast, but he has persuasive words for evoking the body that is easily tricked.
Hijikata’s Butoh ideology is probably “an insane person who has completely mastered a technique.”
Hijikata became a patient like Michaux, became a clinician, made himself into an artwork as a dancing insane man, and threw questions of what is expression and what is insanity at the audience, who also have the same flesh. Butoh is contagious like insanity.

A strange and unfamiliar living being is wriggling in anguish in the darkness (Anatomical Drawing).
As soon as it began to gradually take a human shape, it was burned in the hell fires of naturalness (Burnt-down Bridge)
The flesh, plastered towards the interior, becomes a wall and further becomes a thing (Wall)
Flesh that is easily tricked, the time of god’s called caprice, transformation. (Birds and the Beasts)
The flower of compassion blooming in the empty shell of the body. (Flower)
The string of the nerves splits, and the body is suspended from above. Insanity. (Nerve Disease Ward)
In this way, we swiftly moved through 6 worlds.
The last world is the seventh world, “The Abyss.” Here, the central dances are “ghosts” and “light.” These words are listed together: “Ghosts are transforming at a wonderful speed.” “The dialogue with where one is going, the dialogue with the space, the dialogue with departed spirits.” “Dismantled by countless lines of sight.” “Towards a place with no time and space and white flowers blooming wildly.” “Mist, haze, fog, fading, the phrase if light things become particles even more.” “Even the outline is coming undone.” “A diluted thing is melting into its surroundings.” It is the Butoh-fu of the ghost dance, wherein the whole body is becoming particles, spreading out, becoming thinner, diluting, and melting into the space. I previously pointed out that that job of the Butoh artist is to read a painting to change its two-dimensional surface into a four-dimensional object, but the dance of the ghost follows the opposite process. If a painter is trying to press the human body into the canvas, the Butoh performer is trying to spread out the four-dimensional figure of the body until it is flat and must make it into a two-dimensional painting; however, this canvas in the first place is one’s own body. What if that canvas in itself was annihilated. It is a speed that cannot be touched. Then, it flows in the negative direction. The annihilation of the boundary line between self and the other. A body, like a daydream that has lost its way, has almost already disappeared from its feet. The ghost that appeared from the darkness melts into the white light and goes on to disappear. What remains is only an after-image.
Even traced back to Noh or Kabuki, the stage curtain was raised by the appearance of deceased spirits. The unordinary idea that the body is a temporary house, and its qualities of being able to be possessed probably drew near the deceased spirits.

The Butoh-fu for “The Process of Vaporization.”
“The strawberry in the eyes, the rose inside the mouth, an untouchable smell, the flower at the feet, the face became a firefly, the vaporization of the face, the <PAYAPAYA> of the hand, the mesh behind the back, cutting the throat with a butterfly’s cocoon.”

The Butoh-fu for “The Gaze of light”
“Baby deer in the bottle in front of you, behind you the eyeball of a poorly made cicada, the light behind the back of the head, the light penetrating the inside of the ears, the light of the fingertips, the light in the chest, ascending Boccaccio, inside the light, being apprehended by the cocoon of light, Wols’s light, the space of an egg, from the accumulation of nerves, drooping branches, melting, time gets wet, under the nose, under the chin, hair flowing from behind the ears, being taken apart by the light, light in the cocoon, light in gauze, the reflecting beam of the eye, blurred crayon, hollow space.”
White is the color of light and also the color of the dead.
What was Hijikata’s words from his dying hours trying to tell us?

“God’s light is in its dying hour.” Hijikata Tatsumi

In this memo I have re-examined the seven worlds according to “Butoh Kaden.” However, there are several ways of compiling Butoh-fu, and I am re-arranging them each time I make a Butoh piece. Several worlds are newly flowing into each Butoh scene. Even if it is the same choreography, there are many times when it is different when danced again. Dance is a raw thing, so it is important how fresh it is. I think that the problem of re-staging Butoh-fu or the tasks of sharing them is a problem that has to be solved in daily rehearsal, but I also hear the voice of Hijikata saying, “Aren’t you too caught up in the details and letting go of what is important?” I also have to listen to the voice of Hijikata, who devoted his life to Butoh, speaking to me in the background.
“A Consideration of Butoh-fu” was written as an introduction to the DVD-R “Butoh Kaden” and my own Butoh-fu, as well as a memo for myself. Within this writing I have abbreviated the titles of my teachers. I would like to offer my feelings of gratitude to my teachers who guided me.

Waguri Yukio, 2015.