笠井叡　舞踏をはじめて　＜12＞

Akira Kasai Begins Butoh <12>

Akira Kasai studied under Kazuo Ohno, interacted with Tatsumi Hijikata, and gave birth to the word "butoh". He will talk about his life and his own butoh.

In August 1972, I held a Tenshikan performance of “The Ball for the Three Sacraments” at the Tenshikan. I met Mr. Iwao Takahashi, who opened the way for me to go to Germany.

The venue for the Tenshikan performance of “The Ball for the Three Sacraments” was the Kosei-Nenkin Kaikan, where Mr. Iwao Takahashi came to see the performance. Mr. Takahashi is the person who introduced Rudolf Steiner to Japan, and meeting him was one of the reasons I went to Europe. However, it would be about 10 years before I actually went to Germany.

I had always wondered why there was no spiritual studies in Japan. I thought that the basic study of the inner world of human beings could only be found in spiritual studies. Japan is a Buddhist country, so one could go to a temple to learn about the world of the mind, but I had no interest in that. However, as I researched more and more, I learned that the path I was seeking to enter the inner world of human beings through the body was apparently found in the Tibetan esoteric Buddhism. I learned that Tibetan esoteric Buddhism is the deepest way to enter the inner world of human beings through yoga. I was 24 years old when I decided to leave everything behind and go to Tibet to study.

But China made Tibet an autonomous region, and that put the brakes on me. I contacted a person who had infiltrated into Tibet during the Second World War and asked him how I could get into Tibet, but he told me that I would no longer be able to study anything about esoteric Buddhism there. If I had gone to Tibet then, I would no longer be dancing. The basic study of the human interior was more important to me than dancing. If there really was a basic study of the body that could replace natural science, I felt strongly that I wanted to master that more than dance at that time.

I researched in my own way, summarized what I thought basic science was like, and published my own book, “Angelology,” in 1972. I wrote it over a period of about four years in parallel with my solo performances, before Tenshikan was established. Mr. Takahashi took a look at it, and we began a relationship because he saw that there were young people who had the same awareness of the issues as he did.

When Mr. Takahashi told me, “What you want to know is being done in Europe by a man named Rudolf Steiner,” I became very interested. As I got to know and study Steiner through Mr. Takahashi, I realized that there was something as deep as Tibetan esoteric Buddhism. If not for that, I think I would have been studying “angel theory” things for a long time. In addition to dance practice at Tenshikan, we also started a study group where we all read “Theosophy,” which was translated by Mr. Takahashi.

I began studying the language in parallel with my Steiner studies. Dancing is not just about the body. Just as there is light and there is darkness, if you think of it as a pair of concepts, you have to know the language in order to know the body. Then I wondered how much I knew about words. I began to think that if I did not know the body of the word, I would not be able to know the body. This was something I worked on in parallel with the beginning of the Tenshikan collective.

In 1973, the Tenshikan Butoh performance “Seven Seals” was held. Performed at the Akasaka International Artists Center every Saturday and Sunday from June 30 to September 30 for three months.

The 1973 “Seven Seals” was the first official Tenshikan Butoh performance.

In opening this performance, I published the “Tenshikan Guidelines”. I myself have always worked freely on my own, but when people gather together, I am forced to put forth my ideology. The manuscript I wrote at the request of the student association of a university in Osaka was the basis for the “Tenshukan Guidelines,” beginning with the sentence, “Tenshukan is a time-space with the -anarchism- on the X axis and the -body ranking system- on the Y axis. ......”. It is abstract and difficult to understand, but if you read it carefully, you can feel the thoughts of those days. This became one of the principles of Tenshikan.

The Akasaka International Artists Center was a large dance studio located behind TBS, and performances began at 6:30 p.m. and lasted until almost 10 p.m. at the longest. On weekends, dozens of young people dressed in white hakama-like costumes would gather and dance en masse to a variety of songs by Bach, Beethoven, King Crimson, and the Beatles, playing them loudly. I am sure they thought it was some kind of dubious religious group or something.

One time, I was the only one who jumped out of the group and proceeded to the front of the TBS headquarters while dancing. I suddenly realized that many people were gathered around me. The Akasaka International Artists Center holds at most 60 people, but hundreds of people were there watching me dance. I thought to myself, “Well, this is a better place to simply share my dance,” so I decided to dance in a larger place and continued on my way.

I crossed in front of the Akasaka Tokyu Hotel, stood in the middle of the Akasaka-mitsuke intersection, and continued dancing there. Because I started dancing in the middle of the intersection, cars were stuck. But I feel really good with the lights hitting me from all sides. I knew what I was doing, but I felt like I was possessed by something and I couldn't stop myself.

As I was dancing around in a good mood, some yakuza brothers came up to me and said, “Brother, come straight to our club and dance with us”. They probably thought that if I went to their club dancing, they would get a lot of customers. But I didn't want to listen to them, so I ignored them and went straight to dancing at the intersection. Then someone called the police, or maybe and five police cars came. I thought that if I entered the Hie Shrine, the police cars would not be able to chase me, so I danced and moved on, but many people followed me into the shrine. Eventually, the police caught up with me and I was captured.

I was put in a police car at Hie Shrine and taken to the Kojimachi police station. But when the questioning began, my body did not stop. The police officers were glued to me as I continued to dance while being taken for questioning. “What is this?” they, asked, and they stopped taking my statement. One young police officer looked at me so intently that I looked at him like I was his savior and preached saying, “What are you going to do after this is done? Then, although it is not a story of joining a faith, he almost quit his job as a police officer and joined the Tenshikan club.

I danced in many places, but that was the first time I danced inside a police station. I could do whatever I wanted inside the police station, and no one could stop me anymore. The police officer said, “That's enough,” and in the end there was no blame. A police officer said, “We will take you home,” and he drove me to the theater in a police car. When I returned to the theater, the performance was just finishing. Everyone was still dancing on that side of the stage. I danced my way into the midst of the dancing group and danced until the end of the performance.

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Profile

Akira Kasai

Butoh dancer and choreographer, who became friends with Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno at a young age in the 1960s, and gave numerous solo butoh performances mainly in Tokyo and elsewhere. In the 1970's, operated Tenshikan Butoh dance school where he trained numerous butoh dansers. From 1979 to 1985, studied abroad to study in Germany.Studied Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy and eurythmy. After returning to Japan, he did not perform on stage and was away from the dance world for 15 years, but returned to the stage with "Seraphita". Since then, he has given numerous performances in Japan and abroad, and has been praised as "the Nijinsky of Butoh". His masterpiece "Pollen Revolution" was performed in various cities around the world. He has created works in Berlin, Rome, New York, Angers, the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine de France, and elsewhere. https://akirakasai.com