ABSTRACT
In his lifetime, Hijikata witnessed Japan's military build up preceding World War II and its post-war Westernization. In 1968, Hijikata choreographed one of his most quoted works – Hijikata Tatsumi to nihonjin: Nikutai no hanran. His first experiment in butoh, Kinjiki, performed for the Japanese Dance Association 'New Face Performance' in 1959 in Tokyo, was based on the homoerotic novel Kinjiki by Mishima Yukio and featured a chicken being squeezed between the legs of Ohno Yoshito, the very young son of Ohno Kazuo. Hijikata and Ohno, studied with proponents of German Expressionism – as expressionist creativity probing a collective unconscious spread to Japan and other countries. Cross-gender dressing, cross-cultural dressing, and use of music from around the globe attest butoh's postmodern eclecticism and East–West amalgamations. Hijikata's anti-social courage gave birth to the theater dance movement that he called Ankoku Butoh.
