Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle: the “nikutai” in Murobushi Kō
10.6092/issn.2036-1599/1624
Come pronosticato da Guy Debord, in questa società dello spettacolo, in cui il reale consumatore è un consumatore di illusioni, siamo mossi dal principio del feticismo della merce. In un contesto simile la merce è una illusione effettivamente reale, e la sua manifestazione generale è lo spettacolo. L’impegno manifestato dall’avanguardia giapponese negli anni ’60 di contrastare e protestare contro il meccanismo capitalista attraverso atti performativi alternativi non è più preoccupazione centrale. Paragonando il nostro presente con quegli anni, l’abuso di potere oggi è probabilmente molto più capillare, considerando che la sua diffusione esponenziale e onnipervasiva conduce a una condizione di onnipresenza. Di conseguenza, l’idea che l’avanguardia possa costituire un meccanismo per resistere al capitalismo viene completamente messa in questione. Anche i propositi di radicalismo conservati in uno dei teatri del corpo più rivoluzionari, il butō, sembrano sbiadire in una proposta statica. Nel tentativo di tracciare un contesto del nikutai radicale (l’immediatezza del corpo materiale come proposto dal fondatore Hijikata Tatsumi) e di politica del corpo come vessillo della resistenza alla società dello spettacolo, un eloquente esempio risulta essere il lavoro del performer e coreografo Murobushi Kō. Questo saggio esamina in specifico l’intento di innovazione visibile nel suo progetto Experimental Body realizzato con il suo gruppo Kō&amp;Edge Co. attraverso performances come Bibō no aozora (Shinjuku Park Tower Hall, 2003) e Heels (Kagurazaka Die Pratze, 2004). 12/2015: si fornisce una versione rivista dell’articolo completa di immagini.
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Katja Centonze
Danza e ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle: the “nikutai” in Murobushi Kō
Text.Serial.Journal
https://danzaericerca.unibo.it/
Studi
2009-10-27
2009-09-11
2016-04-07
163-186
danzaericerca
Katja Centonze
2009
10.6092/issn.2036-1599/1624
163
2036-1599
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186
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle: the “nikutai” in Murobushi Kō
https://danzaericerca.unibo.it/article/download/1624/999
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                                163



                                             Katja Centonze


                    Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle:
                         the “nikutai” in Murobushi Kō1


    Introduction
    The spirit of the 1960s was generated by a specific historical situation,
crystallised by the ANPO treaty crisis that provoked a series of explicit
declarations of resistance and demonstrations. Decisive events took place
against the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, first signed in 1951. One
well-known example was the incident at Haneda Airport against Prime
Minister Kishi's departure for Washington on January 16, 1960. Many groups,
including the student organisation Zengakuren, expressed their dissent through
mobilisation and public protest. So successful were the demonstrations that
President Eisenhower's visit to Tōkyō on June 16 was suddenly cancelled.
Maruyama Masao has regarded these protests in defence of human rights and
episodes against abuse of power by the government “a revolutionary event in
Japan's history” (Packard 329). Widespread public opinion in Japan seemed to
be manifesting a strong reaction, principally directed against any form of
foreign domination. There was a diversity of opinions within oppositional
groups on many matters notwithstanding the broadly shared opposition to
outside forces. For example, Zengakuren students felt extreme alienation from
normative political processes and were split in their support or rejection of the
authority of the Japanese Communist Party (Packard 336)2.
    Protest in the arts had been displayed by the avant-garde wave of the 1960s
angura (underground theatre) that represents an important moment in reacting
against the theatrical status quo in Japan. Angura has synthesised problems that
involve not only Japanese questions, but also “global”, if not contemporary

1
  This article has been published in the review Global COE Bulletin. Theatre and Film Studies,
2007, vol. 1, Theatre Museum, Waseda University, Tōkyō, March 2008, 85-110.
2
  “Demonstrations in postwar Japan - known in Japanese as 'demo' - have become part ritual,
part recreation, and part protest, the mixture varying with the occasion and the participants.
Contrary to some reports, they are not 'riots', though they have led to riots; neither are they
spontaneous, being carefully organized and tightly disciplined. There were 223 demo involving
an estimated 961,000 people in Tokyo between April 1959 and July 1960” (Packard 262).
164                                                                         Katja Centonze




questions of human existence. The high level of innovation reached in those
years is testified to by Uchino Tadashi's words: “we can now acknowledge that
this was a time of rare productivity and rich creativity in Japan's theatre
history” (Uchino in Fensham and Eckersall 41). It is also acknowledged that
these innovations draw on already established theatre practices seen in a great
variety of traditional and popular performing arts in Japan (see Centonze
2004). One of angura's unique aspects is the way that it synthesises these
aspects with contemporary aesthetics and aspects of the international avant-
garde.
   The artist Franz Marc, member of the original European avant-garde group
Der Blaue Reiter, defended the work of art from its economic evaluation and
commercial potential. Fifty years later, ankoku butō carried out a similar
rebellion, although their source of resistance to commodification was at the
level of the body rather than in the visual field. A crucial point was the fact
that ankoku butō rejected techniques cultivated in Western dance. But more than
this, butō sought to radically rethink the parameters for dance altogether. It
sought to remake dance as a form of corporeal experience on a fundamental
level by stripping away all extraneous elements. Butō rejected not only society
and its values but also the wider field of performance, its history and Japan's
artistic heritage.
   However, it now seems that the fundamental aims of this most influential
body-theatre are slowly fading. Many critics suggest that butō is becoming more
fixed into a series of static propositions and, thus, moving far from its original
breaking force. We might say that the situation is worse than Morishita Takashi
describes, when he says that “it is [...] certain that butoh [sic] has lost some of its
strength” (Morishita 6; my emphasis). Emerging from the underground scene,
butō inevitably underwent several phases of institutionalisation and has been, at
least in part, absorbed by the system itself. Some factors that have contributed
to this creative crisis are Hijikata Tatsumi's death in 1986 and the consequent
interruption of his project Tōhoku kabuki keikaku. Also, the retirement from
the scene of one of the most intense dancers, Ashikawa Yōko, and the death
in 2003 of Motofuji Akiko, called the “great mother” of butō, have led to this
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                             165



decline. The consequent dispersion of the young dancers of Asbestokan 3 has
further exacerbated the sense of crisis.
    In this essay I will present perspectives, that describe where butō stands
today, with its radical decline in mind. A particular focus will be to examine
butō in relation to the work of Guy Debord and the situationists. This
perspective, I will argue, opens new critical pathways to assess butō in its
historical and contemporary manifestations. Finally, I will consider the work of
Murobushi Kō, who is one of the most significant artists whose career spans
the historical period of butō performances, and who continues to create works
in the present day. My intention is to show how his pieces mark new
possibilities for butō as a radical art form, that explores the body and society at
a fundamental level.


    The Society of the Spectacle
    Compared to the 1960s, abusive use of power today is probably even more
dangerous, since its exponential and pervasive diffusion leads to a condition in
which power is seemingly omnipresent. As a result, the idea that the avant-
garde can be a mechanism for resisting capitalism has been thoroughly
questioned. Nowadays we are in the dominion of an electronic globalism that
stretches its veins into a diffused, worldwide theatrical intermediality.
Paradoxically, fighting the rapid accumulation and excess of information seems
to have become anachronistic. Probably it is now the time for an explosive
artistic force to resist this 'invisible' field of colonisation. But where are
performative solutions to be found?


    A prescient analysis of this condition was presented in 1967 by Guy
Debord in his influential work Society of the Spectacle. Debord was a leading
figure in the situationist movement combining art and politics in France in the
1960s. The situationist notion of spectacle refers to the sense of extreme
alienation experienced by humankind when faced by a pervasive
commodification of existence. As Debord writes, life and our experience of

3
  Since the 1950s Asbestokan was the studio of Motofuji Akiko where great part of Hijikata's
work has been centred. Unfortunately it was closed at the end of the 1990s for financial
reasons.
166                                                                          Katja Centonze




reality is reduced by the “autocratic reign of the mercantile economy elevated
to the statute of irresponsible sovereignty” (Debord 2001, 190). In other
words, reality is over-determined by spectacle:


                       In societies where modern conditions of production prevail,
                   all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles.
                   Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a
                   representation. (Debord 1983, thesis 1)


   Characteristic of the society of the spectacle is to manipulate reality
through mediatisation and spectacularisation, thereby transforming means into
ends. In this situation, where the spectacle sanctions the automatisation of
images, and where “the real consumer becomes a consumer of illusions”
(Debord 1983, thesis 47), contemporary humankind is moved by the principle
of commodity fetishism. In such a context, commodity is a factually real
illusion, and its general manifestation is the spectacle.
   This critical position asserted in Society of the Spectacle was reaffirmed years
later in Debord's Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle (1988), where he notes
that after the 1968 revolts - which did not succeed in their intent of
destabilising the organisation of society in any country - the power of
spectacle has been strengthened (Debord 2001, 190). Nowadays we see that
spectacle has permeated reality as a whole, and a new form has even arisen
which Debord calls “integrated spectacle” (Debord 2001, 194).
   In light of Debord's important theory, which conflates spectacle with the
excess of media (Debord 2001, 192; my emphasis), it would be interesting to
reflect on how multimedia performance and the mixed space of bodies and
technology respond to Debord's ideas.
   In discussing such possibilities, however, we should bear in mind the fact
that the aesthetic itself is no longer outside the world of the spectacle.
Everything produced by the electronic age including aspects of our body, art,
and the latest commercial offerings are seen as desirable and tempting. This
makes critical perspectives on art in the age of spectacle complex and difficult
to formulate. We must acknowledge that we are “inside” while adopting certain
strategies of critical distance. As a banner of resistance to the society of the
spectacle, trying to find a context of radical nikutai (the carnal body, or the
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                                      167



immediacy of the material body in performance as advanced by the founder of
butō, Hijikata Tatsumi), a good example is the work of dancer Murobushi Kō.


    Murobushi Kō's Profile
    Murobushi's experimental artistic project appears unique in its performative
manifestation, and his body expression is singular. His dance is different in
aesthetic terms, but his intent seems to be very close to the purpose of scenic
revolution advanced by Hijikata: to work on the anarchic force that the
nikutai/carnal body is endowed with (Centonze 2002). Dance critic Ishii
Tatsurō gives Murobushi a special position in butō history. Ishii states that the
situation of butō in present Japan is not necessarily good and that it manifests a
rampant stylisation that has lost sight of what should be the core of butō. He
argues that Murobushi Kō is an unusual butōka [butō dancer], who continues to
sacrifice his body like an ascetic, resisting the process of inertia, by provoking a
sharp crack in contemporary butō: “Murobushi brings butō back to its origins
and its essence awakening a large number of people inside and outside of
Japan [to its potential]” (Ishii; my translation).
    Murobushi's training in butō started in 1968 under Hijikata's guidance.
Together they performed in Ishii Teruo's cult movie Kyōfu kikei ningen [The
Horror of the Malformed Man] (1969) inspired by Edogawa Ranpō 4. After
giving up dance for two years, in 1972 Murobushi collaborated with Marō
Akaji, Amagatsu Ushio, and others in forming the company Dairakudakan. In
1974 Murobushi founded the butō journal Hageshii kisetsu [The Violent Season],
a sort of manifesto of rebellion with writings of different prominent authors,
including Yamaguchi Masao, Hijikata, and Tanemura Suehiro 5. Murobushi also
performed striptease with Ashikawa Yōko in the nightclubs of Kabukichō in
Shinjuku.
    Also in 1974, Murobushi began to direct the first female butō group
Ariadone. Two years later, he founded the all-male group Sebi as a gender
4
  Murobushi also worked with Italian director Liliana Cavani in Dove siete? Io sono qui (1993), and
supervised the choreography in the Mexican film Vera (2002) directed by Francisco Athie.
5
  Murobushi declares in his unpublished note Edge ga tatsu/Fukkan ni yoseru [The Edge
Stands/On the Reissue, 2001] that Hageshii kisetsu was neither a flyer of a theatre company nor
a bulletin. Hageshii kisetsu should be intended as a transient event, an event in fieri that combines
unrelated elements, “like a dancing liminal space (Edgena shimen), beautiful like a voluptuous
demon” (Murobushi 2001; my translation).
168                                                                             Katja Centonze




opposite. In 1978, the two companies presented several productions in Paris
and then toured through Europe spreading the knowledge of this dance
outside Japan. A fruitful collaboration with Carlotta Ikeda developed and
produced works including Zarathustra (1980, revisited in 2005), Utt (1981), and
Hime (1984). Murobushi also worked with Motofuji Akiko, and choreographed
for Endō Tadashi. After presenting Hyōhaku suru nikutai/Corps Nomade [The
Roaming nikutai/Corps Nomade] in 1986 at Studio 200 in Ikebukuro 6, he started,
in 1988, to concentrate on performances with his wife, Kusanagi Urara, at that
time a dancer with Ariadone. Together they created intense duo pieces like
Ephemere (1988) and Working Process (1995).
     Murobushi was also keen to develop interaction between artists in Japan
and in the West, as is shown by the Ko Murobushi Company, founded in 1986,
which included Western and Japanese dancers in productions such as Panta
Rhei and Les Larmes d'Ėros. Here Murobushi was assisted by the Italian butō
dancer Pier Paolo Koss. Murobushi has toured through Asia, the United States,
South America, and Europe taking part in important international dance
festivals like Montpellier Danse (2000), ImPulsTanz, London Butoh Network and
Biennale Danza Venezia (2006), where he performed his solo Quick Silver.
Recently he collaborated with Kuroda Ikuyo, exponent of a new dance wave,
the so-called Shinnikutaiha, in Mimi (2007), performed in the Red Theatre,
Akasaka.
     In 2007 he joined the project Torcito Parco Danza in Lecce that explored the
Salento folk culture. He opened his butō to the tradition of Tarantism, showing
a particular attitude in experimenting with border crossing in his performance.
     What is noteworthy about Murobushi's works is the combination of
influences informing his dance. Still today his encounter with Hijikata
continues to give him moments of inspiration. Adding to this is a unique and
special body technique that draws on folk religion from Japan's past. To this
end, in 1970 he conducted a two year exploration of shugendō, an eclectic
combination of Shintoism, esoteric Buddhism (tendai and shingon) and Taoism,
principally based on body practices. These practices find expression in
yamabushi kagura, dances in order to benefit and entertain the village

6
    The musical conceiving of this performance has been developed by Hosokawa Shūhei.
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                    169



community and kami (gods) (Averbuch 1995). The yamabushi, or ascetics living
in the mountains, cultivate experiences that sharpen and refine human
perception, thus endowing the ascetic with the capacity to insert themselves in
the world of nature which is powerful and which ultimately eludes human
control. To adapt the practitioner's body to the power of nature the yamabushi
retire into the mountains, going on days-long wanderings without protection,
for example, resisting the cold, and acquiring abilities in jujutsu, a form of
magic associated with traditional performing arts. Shugendō concentrates pivotal
elements of Japanese performativity and is prevalently practiced in north-
eastern Japan.


    Towards the nikutai in Murobushi's butō
    Those who have viewed Murobushi in performance cannot ignore the
incredible control he exerts over his body. This is the fruit of training the
reactive sensibilities of the body throughout his nearly 40-year career.
    From the ascetic experience of yamabushi to his butō expression, there
emerges a constant experimentation that is directed nearly exclusively towards
the body in performance. Murobushi's body is sculpted by a life of practice.
The particular form of his feet seems to be adapted to create a dry and
resonating stamping movement, as in Japanese fumu. A prevailing characteristic
of the dancer is the curvature of his spine: close to feline agility, his wild
catlike motion flows, while his naked curved back shows every single vertebra,
nerve, and muscle. The act of oscillating between highly sensual and
grotesquely violent moments has the effect of creating a sense of aesthetic
distance.
    Murobushi is able to reach an elevated sense of concentration in the body.
As in Hijikata's butō, this sense of nikutai pertains to anarchy and chaos, and is
therefore in contrast to the ordered system of classical ballet or modern dance.
On stage, the immediate source of Murobushi's movement eludes us. It seems
to begin in many centres at once; sometimes from a small point, it spreads out,
develops, expands, and finally splits into precise and contrastive moments.
These are sometimes performed with violence (hageshisa), but at the same time
with infinite lightness. So, for example, in an exercise often used in workshops,
170                                                                                 Katja Centonze




something (for example an insect or some different sense of self) would push
its way through the body. In some moments in Murobushi's work there is a
sense of intention in regard to the movement while in others the movement
appears to be uncontrolled and as a response to, or result of the physical
condition. In this sense, Murobushi both acts and is made to act (see Centonze
2008, 130-133).


    As the title of Hijikata's famous work Hijikata Tatsumi to nihonjin: nikutai no
hanran [Hijikata and the Japanese: The Rebellion of the nikutai] (1968) shows,
butō should push the dancer's body to its limits and show a pure raw physicality.
The material that emerges from the anarchic state of the raw body constitutes
the original and most radical purpose of butō. Hijikata directs the dancer's
attention to the dynamics produced by a body always in transition, a body of
infinite possibilities and change. The path leading towards the discovery of a
carnal body (nikutai) is through this physical experimentation. The butō dancer
always aims to reach this carnal body and thereby experiences its anarchic
nature.
    Japanese vocabulary offers diverse terms to refer to the English word
“body”. In the case of nikutai7 we are confronted with a carnal body that is
subjected to the laws of nature. This material is transient and ephemeral,
organic, and biological. The nikutai is the body of instinct and impulse, the
body taken in its plasticity and pliability. There is always the possibility for
physical deterioration in this kind of body. Its highest expression and potential
is shown in processes like metamorphosis, modification and mutation
(Centonze 2002; 2003-2004; 2004; 2008). For this reason, the butō-nikutai is not
fixable on a choreographic level. The dance of the carnal body cannot be
systemised through aprioristic techniques. As Shibusawa Tatsuhiko stresses,
nikutai intrinsically possesses the qualities of kiki and fuan, i.e., crisis and
anguish (Shibusawa 103). From this, it is possible to deduce that nikutai is the
shintai made of flesh. Shintai, here, can be defined as the body moulded by

7
  Besides nikutai, we might find, among others, words such as karada, mi, or shintai to describe
the body. If we analyse the term nikutai, niku designates the flesh and the muscles, and tai is
translated as body, substance, object, reality, style, form. Shin in shintai denotes the body,
person, one's station in life, heart, soul, mind, ability, flesh, container.
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                                         171



society, the systemic body that is invested by social categories and community
values (Centonze 2002, 2003-2004). According to Hijikata, the dancer should
empty his shintai and make it a container (utsuwa to shite no shintai) (Mikami 137-
138)8. In so doing the dancer moves towards and embodies the state of nikutai9.
    The work of Murobushi often seems to point to the organic nature of the
body and shows its plastic essence of corruptibility and transformability.
Murobushi acts visibly on the nikutai, so that the body eludes being captured or
placed into a state of logical fixedness. He believes that performers should
operate outside of and beyond the dictates of conventional society. When
discussing butō, he insists that it should be outside any kind of system. It
should re-establish through performance the condition of tandokusei, the
character of singleness, separateness, and independence. His works give us a
clear example of the autarchic nature of the carnal body, which, if linked to
the artistic sphere, reveals its autonomy and self-sufficiency. Talking about his
solo performance Edge (2000), Murobushi suggests that the “carnal body
trembles on the Edge and is the Edge” (Murobushi 2001; my translation).


    One reason for referring in this essay to Guy Debord's thought and praxis
is to draw attention to the erasure of images and the disillusion of images that
occurs in his works. Although comparing dance to cinematography might be
unusual considering the fundamental differences between the body as a
medium and film, it is interesting to notice how Debord's praxis and politics
intersect with the notion of ankoku (utter darkness) in Hijikata's butō. Both
forms exhibit a kind of aesthetic reductionism that removes any sense of
clarity and work instead between shades of darkness.

8
  In regard to the discourse on the body as a hollow container in Japanese culture see also
Gunji 230-234; Centonze 2008, 126-128.
9
  In his study of nikutai and shintai in dance and criticism, Matsumoto Koshirō argues that for
the person who chooses the nikutai, lives it critically and, from this point, wants to create a
fictional nikutai (the shintai of butō), history (rekishi) is not a tale (monogatari) but becomes a state
of reality. By narrating the idea and the image of the shintai “that has to be like this” one is
faced with vivid history. Matsumoto concludes that Hijikata is the only butōka who has
effectively faced this type of history. Accordingly, the common thought about shintai-nikutai
dialectic is that the former is endowed with a historical character and the latter coincides with
the state of things (jōkyō), but the problem lies in the impossibility of establishing a theory of
nikutai, as well as a theory of the state of things. The following implication is that investigating
critically (on a discursive level) nikutai means creating the shintai of dance (buyō no shintai)
(Matsumoto 288).
172                                                                              Katja Centonze




     The insurrectional act of Debord's anti-art is directed towards the
manipulation not of content in cinema, but of the image itself. Debord's
radical praxis presented in Hurlements en favour de Sade, a black and white sound-
film without an image track and screened in 1952, implies “radical sound-
image discontinuity, negative sequences, multiple simultaneous acoustic inputs,
direct manipulation of the celluloid surface through tearing, writing, and
scratching, and an active engagement of the spectator a la 'expanded cinema'”
(Levin 337)10.
     In his essay Thomas Y. Levin quotes Raoul Vaneighem speaking at the fifth
Situationist International (SI) conference:


                         It is a question not of elaborating the spectacle of refusal, but
                     rather of refusing the spectacle. In order for their elaboration to
                     be artistic in the new and authentic sense defined by the SI, the
                     elements of the destruction of the spectacle must precisely cease
                     to be works of art. (Levin 328)


     The butōka Murobushi adopts a similar approach in his works. He stresses
the point that his sense of butō is a refusal of dance as art, noting how the
dancer does not and must not dance. He often approaches this through a
strong sense of repetition in his work. Reproducing the same forms intensely
he challenges the carnal body and its physical limits. Repetition in this sense is
both a reduction of form in the choreographic sense and the accumulation of
form as an experience of intensity. Thus, this sense of repetition can be said to
produce new experiences as well as exhausting old ones.
     Murobushi's performance often includes vocal cries. Such sounds of
breathing and crying are responses to the physical state of his body. This adds
an acoustic dimension to the sense of nikutai in his work with cries, screams,
and deep-breath-contractions halfway between human and animal.
     Another constant presence is Murobushi's spoken interjections that at first
appear incomprehensible and self-referential, but develop into statements and
rhetorical questions to be grasped by the audience.

10
   The technique of damaging the celluloid is called “chiseling”. Levin writes: “In fact, in
abandoning the image track entirely, Debord pushes the gesture of chiseling - the damaging
treatment of the filmstrip - to the limit: namely, the total destruction of the image” (Levin
344).
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                               173



     Important elements in his performance are the self-ironic, simple comments
about movements he does on stage, as if he would shift from the dimension of
performance into a quotidian situation. Murobushi's dry sense of humor
stimulates hilarity even in the most serious situation. An example was seen
during the performance Edge (2000)11, when Murobushi hit the wall behind
him and with a normal voice showing surprise said “semakatta!” (that was
narrow). This provoked spontaneous laughter among the audience, although
the general atmosphere of the performance was one of high tension. Other
characteristics of his work include moments of abrupt “interruption” where
Murobushi seems to be reflecting on something, or when he violently tumbles
down from the stage, as he did during Edge (2003) at Teatro Rasi, Ravenna.


     We can compare these repetitions and “interruptions” or discrepancies to
the strategies of distanciation in Debord's filmic productions. As Levin
comments:


                                  Another important strategy of distanciation involves the
                             depiction of the film crew, images of the clapper, the repeated
                             refilming of a still photograph, and the staging of intentionally
                             inept sequences in which the “apparatus” (camera, projection
                             equipment, off-camera spectators) is visible. (Levin 358; my
                             emphasis)


     It is more than evident that what is referred to as “apparatus” in the quoted
context, should be compared in the case of Murobushi's dance with the
“organic apparatus”, the nikutai and the sense of repetition discussed above
(see Centonze 2003-2004, 29).
     Murobushi's works also create a strong sense of communication with the
audience that occupies a special position in this context. His body is like a wire
linked to the audience. The audience receives stimuli not only based on
impressive sound-effects or artificial devices, but their sensations grow also in
complete silence and the absence of scenery or technical artifice.
     The issue of spectatorship is likewise central in Debord's writings and
provocative productions. “The absence of film” serves as a stimulus for the
11
  This work was performed at Die Pratze/Kagurazaka. The solo Edge is a series that includes
Edge 01, Edge 02 and Edge 03.
174                                                                                Katja Centonze




audience to react against the fostering of the passive consumption of the
“spectacular” and to be involved in a critical engagement with the work instead
(Levin 347).


     Bibō no aozora (Handsome Blue Sky, 2003)
     With the intention of pushing butō in new directions, Murobushi began to
collaborate with three young male dancers, Suzuki Yukio, Hayashi Sadayuki,
and Meguro Daiji in a new company called Kō&Edge. In the work Bibō no
aozora12 inspired by the text of Hijikata, each dancer responded differently to
the experience of working with Murobushi13 .
     In the opening scenes of the work a piece called Metal, composed by Gōto
Osamu, was played. Slowly, three large brass panels lying horizontally on the
stage appeared from the darkness. The light faded again and in the following
scene the three young dancers, half-naked and wearing only black underpants
and silver designs on their bodies, appeared behind each panel. The image on
the bodies suggested a piece of armour 14. Raising the brass objects, the
performers advanced towards the audience meanwhile smashing them to the
ground. They stopped, facing the audience. They stood behind the panels and
slowly began to strike the external surface of the objects with their hands until
reaching a climax. After a brief moment of stillness, they shook their bodies
and the metal. Vigorously moving the panels, they reached a crescendo, their
bodies interacting with the brass “bodies” in front of them. They smashed the
metal objects to the ground and jumped very high, landing on them. There was
silence. With the panels curved over their bent backs, they turned in a sort of
dervish rotation until they crashed together.


12
   Bibō no aozora was performed in December 2003 at Park Tower Hall in Shinjuku in occasion
of the Hijikata Memorial during the Petit Jade Festival. The new male group is produced by
Kaibunsha.
13
   The three young performers also make solo productions and direct their own company.
Suzuki and Meguro started butō at Asbestokan and were students of Motofuji Akiko. Three
years ago they were still engaged in butō, although both were refusing the intent of Hijikata's
archaeology of Japanese nikutai. Since 2002 Suzuki has been directing his own company Kingyo,
and is presently conducting his experimentation in the contemporary new wave Shinnikutaiha.
On the other side, Hayashi, at that time, felt more as a contemporary dancer, taking his
distance from butō. Recently Hayashi decided to leave the performance scene for a while, and a
new member, Iwabuchi Teita, joined the group Ko&Edge Co.
14
   The body paintings were designed by the artist and performer Kubikukuri Takuzō.
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                   175



    These panels were not objects easy to handle. Each of them weighs 18 kg
and their sharp edges can easily cut the performer's skin. This is an example of
the ways that the body is pushed to the limits of endurance in butō. Brass
panels had been used in Nikutai no hanran by Hijikata and have become a
symbol for butō. Murobushi suggests that the panels evoke an image of rice
that shines like gold before it ripens. And in this context they become like
bodies. In the program the costume designer was not listed by name but
instead the word “shinchūban” [brass panels] was written.
    In the scene following, the three panels were smashed one upon the other
as the dancers also smashed into each other. The effect suggested a new kind
of body unit (with six legs, six arms, and three heads) that started to breathe
deeply onto the metal object. The silver body designs that previously appeared
unconnected suddenly revealed patterns as the bodies lay on each other in
unusual ways.


    In choreographing this scene, Murobushi wanted the three dancers to
experience a sense of sexual desire or perversion (tōsaku). The interplay among
the three dancers was also ironic in that the sense of desire evident in the
relationships between the performers was undercut by humour and mockery.
The young dancers created a curious chain of confusion as they were unable to
choose among each other.
    Murobushi entered the performance space later in the performance. At first
he was dressed in black pants and a jacket signifying his connection to society
in general. In the process of the performance he removed his clothes thus
crossing into a butō existence. Later he joined with the other dancers in an
electrifying sense of union.
    Murobushi takes the panel, and places it vertically on his neck, while he has
his back turned to the audience. In this uncomfortable position that
progressively brings him down towards the floor, he takes off his black jacket
without interrupting the contact with the new object. The next image is of
incredible force. The head is replaced by the vertical panel and the dancer
stands under this 18 kg metallic shield. The object seems to have cut off the
dancer's head, like a guillotine and towers over the decapitated body seen from
176                                                                               Katja Centonze




behind still wearing the black trousers. After the first contrasting contact with
the cold, heavy, and sharp body of the panel Murobushi makes the metal
violently tremble while it becomes an extension of himself. But the struggle is
only at its beginning. The object's force overwhelms the dancer who, struggling
with fatigue, tries to resist without any success, until his shaven head is trapped
between the stage-floor and the panel.
     Facing the audience he voices incomprehensible things and at last he says
“ippai” (”it is full”, an expression Murobushi often uses when he approaches
something on stage). The panel glides over his head and Murobushi starts to
attack it, as if it was an alter object (representing the otherness to the proper
body). He stands up, frees the metal from the wire, pulls it up, kicks it with
determination also with his knees, showing aggressiveness, distance and
extreme control at the same time. An attack and assault on the alter body15, that
bends under his force, occurs. He blocks the waving panel with his teeth, flexes
and drags the object, smashing it on the ground with his mouth. In the
meantime, the three dancers, each with their arms wrapped around their bodies
are struggling to move forward. Finally, Murobushi takes off his trousers,
ridding himself of the only sign of society left and the four bodies pass from
spastic and desperate movements to a gradually lighter atmosphere. The
elements pertain to a “poor theatre”: body, brass panel, light, music and sound
effects, but the exchange between them is kaleidoscopic, amplifying the bodies
and refraining them.
     A multilayered relationship between the bodies of the performers and the
brass panels was suggested. The crisis of the body and its breakdown is seen in
the reflection of the broken and fragmented images on the rectangular
surfaces. We can associate these images with virility and the sex organ.
Paradoxically, armed with the body against the body, pushing the body beyond
its limits, challenging the body itself the dancers confront their own physical
characteristics with those of the panels. Both show moving expanses endowed
with ductility, workability, toughness, and hardness. The performance is rich in


15
   It seems that the panels represents his own idealised body, the desired body, an obsessive
attachment to the body of another person, the différence and différance, in a Derridian sense,
from the dancer.
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                                    177



impetuosity, violence of gesture, imposing force, but also shows very soft and
cathartic moments of poetry and homoerotic sensuality.




Photo 1. Bibō no aozora,
Shinjuku Park Tower Hall, Tōkyō,
6-7 Dec. 2003.
© Yamauchi Junichi.



                                             Photo 2. Bibō no aozora.
                                             © Tanaka Hideyo..




Photo 3. Bibō no aozora.
© Tanaka Hideyo.




                                             Photo 4. Heels,
                                             Die Pratze/Kagurazaka, Tōkyō, 13-14 Apr. 2004.
                                             © Kamiyama Teijirō.




Photo 5. Heels
© Kamiyama Teijirō.
                                             Photo 6. Heels
                                             © Kamiyama Teijirō.
178                                                                             Katja Centonze




     Bibō no aozora seems to be a manifesto of the self-sufficiency of man and his
independence from woman. The final emphasis is given in the last scene,
which begins after the audience starts to clap. While John Lennon's song
Woman plays, the company is lined up at the back of the stage with their backs
to the spectators. Slowly they turn towards the audience and start to advance
with grotesque poses. The performers begin deforming their faces with
grimaces that become more and more amplified, as if they were desperately
trying to cry out and scream with all their force (see photo 3). The grotesque
contrast of this scene with the text of the song is more than evident.
     The programme notes written by Murobushi were as follows:


                     Bibō no aozora

                     Men only crumble
                     With hot breath crumble and fall
                     Crumbling and falling hit the bones
                     Only that

                     Nothing happens...

                     Only a beautiful melody is played, towards extinction
                     Is it possible to create a cruel and comical dance?

                     In desperation distortion
                     Immersion in the change of the proper body

                     Nude spreading sweat
                     For gainlessness
                     Victory does not win consequently there is no defeat
                     No, the very defeat wins
                     The very hurt and weakness are strength
                     (Murobushi 2003; my translation)


     In this text we can see the declaration of the independence of man from
woman.


     Heels (2004)
     Heels16 offers a contrasting perspective. After their experience of the male
domain, the journey of Kō&Edge continues on a different path. In a passage
from one body to another, getting in contact with alterity, without marrying
16
   Heels (Experimental Body #1) was performed in April 2004 at the small theatre Die Pratze
at Kagurazaka, Tōkyō.
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                       179



definitely the différence, but trying to live it rather as a contagion, Kō&Edge
experimented with new states of being and diverse affections of the nikutai.
The transitional and heteromorphic carnal body occupies a special place in
Hijikata's butō and one of the most complex praxis is that of the naru shintai
(see Mikami 134-136), the body in transformation, the body in fieri. Murobushi
lays explicit emphasis on the critical body of a performer who has to
experience, in an unending process, delaying identities in a dimension of non-
identification.
    Heels signals the beginning of a new performance series called Experimental
Body that is built on the foundations of Bibō no aozora, where the group could
explore new gender territory. Virility puts on stiletto heels. In contrast to male
eroticism, as cultivated in Bibō no aozora, this time Kō&Edge Co, as they are now
renamed, explore female eroticism. The male performers dance under special
names created for the performance: Murobushi became “Koume”, Suzuki
“Candy”, Hayashi “Fiifii”, and Meguro “Scarlett”.
    The initial part is quite similar in structure to Bibō no aozora, but in this work
the focus is on female orgasm, consequently the aesthetic results appear
modified. The three young dancers wear black pants and coloured and
lacquered high heels. Murobushi makes his entrance in a pair of red geta that, at
a certain point, break under his violent dancing. The accident does not
interfere with the performance, as he continues his excited stamping dance
without interruption. In a following scene, the company appears with wrapped
heads suggesting tension, suffocation, and entrapment. Diverse moments of
Heels are even more impetuous than in the former work. Sexuality emerges in a
more evident way. A further element of technical difference is the heightening
of difficulty in the execution of the work. The performers' balance is
challenged by the high shoes, which besides their height, were cheap and made
of plastic. These flimsy shoes have to support violent movements, the total
weight of the performers' bodies and the heavy brass panels. This implies a
greater risk of injury in performance if the action is not executed with
precision. Furthermore we have to consider the space of the theatre Die
Pratze/Kagurazaka. The stage area is limited and, as the place was full, the
audience was sitting partly on the stage-floor. In such a reduced space it could
180                                                                           Katja Centonze




have become a dangerous situation considering that the dancers did not smash
only their bodies to the ground, but also the huge brass panels. Persons in the
first row were stoically assisting, while only one tried to distance herself from
the scene. The panels fell always exactly without touching the spectators,
demonstrating the control of the dancers, especially Murobushi, who worked
in close proximity with the audience.


                   Heels

                   Stopping breath the breath of in between from breath to love
                   wear the brass
                   panels as costume once more
                   Put on the heels of desperation
                   Paralysed hips of fragility heels of impotence
                   Stopping breath wear the brass panels once more
                   Acephal cavity of wrapped head the thin membrane's asphyxiated
                   body
                   From the inside to the outside quiver from the outside to the
                   inside continue to hit
                   Skin of deep innermost turn over with the heels star become a
                   bird-star.

                   ... as fusion/instant-melting? On the Edge, it is not like this, while
                   exposing [oneself], the fact to “become” things like continuous
                   change and metamorphosis; and then, opened to the unexpected,
                   to be an event of encounter and hybridisation. (Murobushi 2004;
                   my translation)


   A development in this experimental study of the body was seen in April
2004, when Suzuki, Hayashi and Meguro executed a strip-dance,
choreographed by Murobushi, at the night-club Show-up Ōmiya Gekijō, where
usually female artists appear.


   Definitely more scenic elements than in Bibō no aozora and Heels are involved
in the solo Subete wa yūrei [All Ghost], performed at Wenz Studio in March
2004. Murobushi, appearing on a ladder half-naked with only a white short
tutu, moves in front of the video-installation curated by him and Gōto Osamu,
who supervised also the music. His use of the body inscribed in a context of
mediatisation of art emerges in balance with the alterities (other media) on
stage, focusing the attention of the audience.
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                    181



    Preceding Heels, this performance was part of a three-day series, Gisell(s)
(2004), developed for the female dance group Dansu 01. In this further
experimentation, centred on “vulnerability”, the choreographer has tried to
create a contemporary-butō stage.
    If we compare this project with his work with Kō&Edge, his difficulty in
directing the female dancers, who were engaged for the first time in a butō
performance with Murobushi and are prevalently of contemporary dance
education, has been visible.


    Politics of the Body as Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle
    The descriptions and arguments advanced here show a performative
condition in Murobushi's work that I would like to extend to the critique of
the society of the spectacle, as depicted by Guy Debord.
    According to Debord the end of cultural history is visible in “the project of
its supersession in total history,” and in, “the organization of its preservation
as dead object in spectacular contemplation” (Debord 1983, thesis 184). As a
consequence, “society's former common language confronts its artificial
recomposition in the commodity spectacle, the illusory representation of the
non-lived” (Debord 1983, thesis 185). In his essay, Debord treats the end of
the art world with its progressive integration into the capitalistic order, as the
“loss of all human mastery” (Debord 1983, thesis 189).
    Generally speaking, body and skill occupy a peculiar position in Japanese
performing arts and the former is cultivated as an “impersonal medium”
(Muroi). This implies a concentration in theatrical praxis on the execution and
use of the body, creating and favouring the factor of mediatic investment of
the body per se. We might observe a reductionist process of the concept and
praxis of technology even in the pre-electronic age. We might notice a
tendency for the body as a technological organ(on), on which it is necessary to
operate with constancy and firmness making it manageable for artistic
exigency. The body is a real and simple instrument or tool to work with.
182                                                                                Katja Centonze




     What emerges is a technological perspective of body itself, the body seen in
its articulations and objective impersonality, and, especially in performing arts,
it takes shape as a form of theatre-technology in its structural interaction 17.
     Probably the most evident différence lying between body and media, until
now, is reproducibility: notwithstanding cloning, the same body is not able to
reproduce its ontology a second time.


     Debord, dwelling upon Dadaism and Surrealism, states that the former
wanted to suppress art without realising it and the latter wanted to realise it
without suppressing it (Debord 1983, thesis 191). Generally speaking, one of
the bases of butō is its opposition to structurally organised choreographic
formulas, embracing the concept of anti-dance. Notwithstanding this attitude,
we might recognise the creative character, which is still alive in Murobushi's
case.
     In Murobushi's praxis the nucleus of authenticity of artistic expression is
still preserved, as a sort of alarm of the confused world we are actually living
in. What is realised is not alienation detected by Debord in the mechanism of
consumerism, but Verfremdung that helps to prevent the contemporary man
from being captured by his or her predestination dictated by the mainstream,
the control of economy in the social sphere (Debord 1983, thesis 17) and the
“monopoly of appearance” (Debord 1983, thesis 12). Murobushi tries to
eradicate the morbid symptom of fallacious appearance in spectacularistic art
by working from its inside, making use of its toil, and using the body as a
material. Although the body is near the point of its vanishing, the performance
insists on live action in a vivification of communication and unique
relationships between performer and audience, without falling into what
Debord describes as “the alienation of the spectator to the profit of the
contemplated object” (Debord 1983, thesis 30).


                        Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple
                     images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic

17
  I develop this aspect also in other articles of mine. I defined this reductionist process and
the tendency for the body as a technological instrument in traditional performing arts as well
as in butō “the diachronic polymorphism of wazaogi” (see Centonze 2004, 73-75; 2008, 130-
133).
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                                  183


                             behavior. The spectacle, as a tendency to make one see the world by
                             means of various specialized mediations (it can no longer be
                             grasped directly), naturally finds vision to be the privileged human
                             sense which the sense of touch was for other epochs; the most
                             abstract, the most mystifiable sense corresponds to the
                             generalized abstraction of present-day society. But the spectacle is
                             not identifiable with mere gazing, even combined with hearing. It
                             is that which escapes the activity of men, that which escapes
                             reconsideration and correction by their work. It is the opposite of
                             dialogue. Wherever there is independent representation, the
                             spectacle reconstitutes itself. (Debord 1983, thesis 18)


    The images reflected by the performances mentioned above do not
invigorate or support the passivity of the spectator inserted into the system of
the society of the spectacle. They are not appearances or substitutes for
actions, but, generally speaking, the visual result coincides with scenic acts
without special effects. The audience is stimulated and activated in a dialogue
and not a monologue typical of the social spectacle. It is induced to critique.
Murobushi's work does not leave to technological devices the performative
exploration, but concentrates on the performer in the act of production.


    In regard to an important problem in Japan's theatre culture that arose in
the 1980s, Uchino Tadashi analyses its tendency towards what Harootunian
defines as, “national poetics,” which implies the suffocation of a critical
engagement in performative arts (Uchino in Fensham and Eckersall). In the
1990's, following Uchino's outline, theatre was animated by a new spirit, a new
need appears on the horizon: “to come up with some kind of performative
way to deal with our political reality” (Uchino in Fensham and Eckersall 47).
Uchino selects two groups that, according to him, show a conscious
engagement and commitment in the arts, Dumb Type and Gekidan Kaitaisha.
He observes how their performances are filled with “political bodies” signed
with precise categories.
    It seems difficult to me to detect in Murobushi's productions and artistic
attitude what Uchino denounced as the narrativised theatre culture of angura.
Although the dancer Murobushi experiences yamabushi culture he does not
seem to be involved in a “rhetoric (al) discourse on the 'absolute difference' of
Japanese-ness” (Uchino in Fensham and Eckersall 37).
184                                                                                 Katja Centonze




     Rather than the condition of “political bodies” in Japanese contemporary
theatre, I would like to emphasise the instance of body-politics, i.e., the
expression of contestation incarnated in the basic and organic nature of our
physical being. The politics of the carnal body in butō, is visible on the
chorographic level. As dance, butō unfolds a breaking and dissident body-
criticism that implies a radical resistance to the body as manipulated by the
society of the spectacle. The body is pushed beyond its limits, and its core
should be preserved from aestheticism, sensationalism, or exhibitionism. This
way, the radicality of nikutai becomes a political act. Reaching a high intensity
this employment of the body implies a political position. Movement becomes a
political praxis, anti-capitalistic in its economy.


     Conclusion
     Following the arguments mentioned above, we might recognise in
Murobushi's performative action an inclination towards what Uchino defines
“[...] theatre as cultural intervention, not as dream machine which reflects our
unconscious fears and escapist desires” (Uchino in Fensham and Eckersall 47).
     The critical fracture is offered by the reduction of performance to the
performative act per se, placed beyond its content 18. The radicality of such an
operation implies that the performing or scenic moment becomes a moment
of political denunciation, above all against the performer's own body. As has
been evident in Heels, the provocation was not directed at the audience but was
realised especially in Murobushi's nikutai. It is the dancer himself who is
exposed to the physical risk that the performance entailed. The fullness of the
performative act, fruits of a long discipline exerted on the body, goes beyond
the mise-en-scène. The authenticity of Murobushi's dance expresses itself
through the strictness, rigour, and gravity with which he acts on the body. The
dancer generates a critical dialogue with his body. Positioning himself in
confrontation with it, he reduces his art above all to the manifestation of states

18
   In this essay I took intentionally into consideration only the performative act of Murobushi,
although his dance, cultural research, and reflections are stimulated and nourished by lectures
of, for example, Friedrich Nietzsche, George Bataille, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, Gilles
Deleuze, Felix Guattari.
Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle                                        185



of being, thereby criticising his own body. The relationship that derives from
such a condition is inevitably one of distance. Far from the aesthetisation of
the gesture, the absolutisation is accomplished only if aesthetics is brought
back to its ultimate aim. What is realised is not the form, but movement, the
dynamics of action that pricks the senses of the spectator. An aesthetic event
in its etymological definition, aisthētikós, means what concerns sensation and
perception. A sort of declaration of independence of the performative body
that manifests its artistic autarchy, and covers the functions of all components
strictly necessary to a theatrical act.
    The deep wounds made on Murobushi's neck by the brass panels were not
exhibited, nor was the pain he must have felt the next day when repeating the
performative action. The artistic dimension may emerge, when the effort is
evident, but does not flow into exhibitionism. What is this effort? Effort is
directly linked to the working nikutai, our technological being that produces
work, ergon, in a physical dimension.
    Murobushi's performative choices preserve a certain equilibrium and
measure in consumption and economy of movement, of aesthetics and of
aesthetic devices. What prevents the performance from its reduction to an
informational complex that reigns in our electronically mediatised society is a
certain consciousness of the importance of doing by itself.
    Although butō is involved in its decline, we might state that Murobushi is
always on a search for virginal creativity in his art, trying to advance the
gestation of the gesture into poetical violence.


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