Hijikata Tatsumi, dancer and choreographer, is one of the founders of butoh, a new dance form created in Japan. He called his dance ankoku butoh, which literally means darkness dance, and symbolized it with the aphorism "Butoh is a dead body desperately standing up." Hijikata Tatsumi used the word "smell" to explain the perceivable but extra-logical characteristics arising from life and experience that distinguish a certain group from another. The chapter considers the "indigeneity" of butoh in the context of Japanese dance history. Dance in Japan is roughly divided into Japanese dance and Western dance in Japan. The term "Japanese dance" refers to traditional dances that have been passed down from before the Meiji era, and includes kabuki dance and jiuta mai. While Japanese dance continued preserving and improving traditional dance, there was a category of traditional dance that did not fall within the category of Japanese dance.