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Morishita Takashi on Hijikata Tatsumi & Nakanishi Natsuyuki’s Saruhashi Sōko

 
Hijikata Tatsumi (1928-1986)
Born in Akita prefecture in 1928, Hijikata Tatsumi moved to Tokyo after the Second World War. Unsatisfied with the many Western styles of dance he was studying, he began working on a a new form and presented Kinjiki in 1959, which came to be known as the first butoh performance. Throughout the 1960s he produced a series of “happenings” and experimental works imbued with violence and eroticism. He became a pioneering force in the Japanese avant-garde, laying the foundation for butoh with other leading cultural figures of his time. From the 1970s, he devoted himself to creating work based on his native Tohoku, and developing a new methodology using butoh-fu [butoh notation].
 
Nakanishi Natsuyuki (1935 - 2016)
Nakanishi Natsuyuki was born in Tokyo in 1935, and graduated in Fine Art (oil painting) from Tokyo University of the Arts. In 1962 he became known for performing a “happening” on a platform and train on the Yamanote Line. In 1963 he presented Clothespins Assert Churning Action at the 15th Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition. That same year he formed Hi-Red Center with Takamatsu Jirō and Akasegawa Genpei, and together they held radical performance events at galleries in Ginza and on the streets. He began working with Hijikata Tatsumi in the 1960s, designing and producing stage sets for many of his works including Rose Colored Dance: To Mr. Shibusawa's House (1965). In the 1980s, he presented a series of oil paintings entitled Murasaki, Murasaki [Purple, Purple], and continued to work with vigour on his paintings.

 

Morishita Takashi on Hijikata Tatsumi & Nakanishi Natsuyuki’s Saruhashi Sōko
In cooperation with Butoh Laboratory, Japan
Interviewer: Mizohata Toshio
Film Production & Editing: iina naoto