Introduction

This chapter provides an account of Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo, telling the story of the founding of Japanese butoh through their partnership as performers and choreographers, extending to the larger story of butoh's international assimilation. The dance of Hijikata and Ohno spanned national distinctions – it was so close to the awkward, eloquent, gestural body that communicates intrinsically. "Start from the place of handicap," Hijikata's female counterpart Ashikawa Yoko liked to say in her butoh classes, echoing her years with Hijikata. Hijikata's identification with the poverty of his homeland, Tohoku, and his radical use of nativism, popular in 1970s Japan, entered directly into his highly original, comic, painful, and empathetic dance. During a frustrating period in his dance career, Hijikata saw Ohno, twenty years his senior, dance. When the world bears a single political stamp, it will be gone – or maybe like Hijikata, just a sole, surreal dead body standing desperately upright.