Placing Protest and Corporeality in the 1960s

The political discourse underpinning Japan’s countercultural production in the field of visual and performing arts throughout the 1960s was intimately bound to corporeality, and more specifically, to the corporeality of the carnal body, the nikutai. Art practices unfolded in their transversal and intermedial facets and were configured as acts (kōi), while being more or less concentric to political actions of remonstration. In such a context, where art, dissent and corporeality interlace, a prevailing trope is that of place (basho). A reflection on protest defined in respect to corporeality and place, this article focuses on Hijikata Tatsumi’s butō within the performance practices that developed as a response to the socio-political crisis established by the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. In particular, in this study reference will be made to the still-unexplored debate articulated during the symposium Geijutsu no jōkyō (Situation of the arts) convened in November 1960. This is to highlight the alternative thinking offered by Hijikata and the incisive role played by the art of dance in framing the perception of corporeality, place and protest in such a revolutionary context.