Hijikata Tatsumi as Trickster / “Rebellion of the Body” 1968--2018

In 2008, Keio University Art Center organized the exhibition "1968" and introduced materials concerning the Butoh dance stage "Tasumi Hijikata and Japanese" by Tatsumi Hijikata. We explored how this Butoh stage came to be called "Rebellion of the Body", and reconsidered significance this show had. Presenting "Rebellion of the Body" in 1968, the current exhibition intends to review Hijikata's activity in the following 2 years, when he aimed for revolution in dance construction and method. Intensively snapped and filmed, his strange body got a lot of media exposure. He was called "demon", "devil", "magician", or "the king of defective children", and he himself said that he felt jealous of dogs' vein or that he wanted to be defective. After all, was he "abject", or trickster? By the way, 2 stage works appear this year, which seems to reinterpret Hijikata's butoh as "abjection" or "play of resurrection": Choy Ka Fai's “UnBearableDarkness” and AMAREYA THEATRE's ”DEADMAN EATING WATERMELON”. This exhibition introduces them by both installation and demonstration. Tatsumi Hijikata insisted that he himself was his work. Even today, can we regard him as “the cultural hero”? As is usual with exhibition about Hijikata, this exhibition will also reconsider who Hijikata was as well as what his Butoh was.

Organized by Keio University Art Center