Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan The Performing Body During and After the Cold War

by Broinowski, Adam; McVeigh, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9781780935966
• ISBN10: 178093596X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-01-14
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan examines how the performing arts, and the performing body specifically, have shaped and been shaped by the political and historical conditions experienced in Japan during the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. This study of original and secondary materials from the fields of theatre, dance, performance art, film and poetry, probes the interrelationship that exists between the body and the nation-state. Important artistic works, such as Ankoku Butoh (dance of darkness) and its subsequent re-interpretation by a leading political performance company Gekidan Kaitaisha (theatre of deconstruction), are analysed using ethnographic, historical and theoretical modes. This approach reveals the nuanced and prolonged effects of military, cultural and political occupation in Japan over a duration of dramatic change.

Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan explores issues of discrimination, marginality, trauma, memory and the mediation of history in a ground-breaking work that will be of great significance to anyone interested in the symbiosis of culture and conflict.

Author Biography

Adam Broinowski is a research fellow in the School of Culture, History and Languages in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, and has significant experience in theatre and filmmaking.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Occupied Bodies: Aesthetic Responses in New Japan
2. Ankoku Butoh in Socio-Historic Context
3. Ankoku Butoh: (Not) A Dance of the Nation State
4. Gekidan Kaitaisha: Growing the Seeds of Butoh
5. Occupied Bodies in the 21st Century: Vivisection Vision-Animal Reflections
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index