笠井叡 舞踏をはじめて ＜17＞
Akira Kasai Begins Butoh <17>
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.
Moved from Freiburg to Stuttgart and enrolled at the Stuttgart Eurhythmium. I studied at the prestigious school of eurythmy and transitioned from Butoh to the world of eurythmy.
Stuttgart is one of the largest cities in Germany and is located about 200 km north of Freiburg. I had no money on hand, so I just procured airfare and headed to Stuttgart anyway.
The same thing happened when I went to Germany. I have no assets at all, and I have no savings that I can cut into. I had always thought of money as something that would follow me like a shadow, and I never thought about what I would do for a job or how I would earn my income. I never thought about what to do with my work or how to earn money. Because of this, I guess I had somehow lost the habit of thinking about economic issues and acting accordingly.
When I went to Stuttgart, I did not think about how I was going to make a living. However, at the time, there was an overwhelming housing shortage in Stuttgart, and even Germans were having trouble finding a place to live. There was no place for a family from abroad to live. We went to real estate agencies to look for a place to live, but everywhere we went we were told that there were no houses available for rent. We were completely at our wit's end. It was the students from Freiburg, where I was teaching aikido, who helped me out. They had heard through the grapevine that Kasai was having trouble finding a place to live in Stuttgart, and they told me about a real estate agency where I might be able to find a place.
I immediately asked about the real estate agency, and the owner told me, "There is a mysterious lady who has devoted her life to helping people from Asia. She is a very rich woman named Mrs. Busac, and she might be able to rent you a room. You should ask her". I was skeptical, but when I told Mrs. Busac about the situation, she simply said, "You can use my apartment. Mrs. Busac doesn't know who I am or what I am like. However, I was a student who came to Germany to learn about European culture, and she kindly offered me "because it is very important." Mrs. Busac's room is in a so-called "luxury residential area," a magnificent apartment that would be very difficult to live in under normal circumstances. I have found a place to live, but of course I will pay the rent. We have to somehow manage to pay for housing.
I met a person named Ms. Irene in Stuttgart who helped me out. When I spilled out to her that I was having trouble making rent, she said, "Don't worry. Leave it to me." She told me that in Germany there is a system that provides a housing allowance to those who meet certain conditions, and that I should apply for it. Ms. Irene offered to write the documents for me, and she prepared a set of documents for me, even though my German was still not very good. Three months later, I was easily approved and was given a monthly housing allowance of about 60,000 Japanese yen. It was about the same amount as the rent I was paying Mrs. Busac, and I no longer had to worry about rent. In addition, all housing expenses for the half year I spent in Germany until my application was approved would be covered, and further in addition, I would receive a family allowance too.
Germany was in debt to various countries when it lost the war, and a law was passed to provide allowances to families with children, for example, if a foreigner came to Germany as a laborer. My family fell under this category and was eligible for the child allowance. It is about 60,000 Japanese yen for three children. The children also receive free schooling, and together with the housing allowance, we are guaranteed about 120,000 yen per month for the duration of our stay in Germany. It is a very strange system, but in any case it is a lot of money for me. I have cleared all my financial problems. I can now concentrate only on my studies without doing any labor.
The three children were enrolled at the Freie Waldorf Schule in Stuttgart. It is a school of Steiner education, and Eurythmy is also studied there.
Another reason we originally went to Germany was to give our children a Steiner education. The Waldorf Schule has what in Japan would be called an elementary school, a junior high school, and a high school, and classes remain the same from the first grade all the way up to the tenth grade, which is the final year of school. The homeroom teacher is also the same, and students are taught by the same teacher for 10 years.
Freie is German for freedom, Waldorf is the name of a tobacco company, and Schule is a school, meaning Free Waldorf School. It does not mean free education, however, but rather free from interference from the state. It means that we do not accept any instructions from the state that tells us what to do or not to do.
Basically, Waldorf School takes a lot of money from economically affluent families, but not from those who are not so well off, so the tuition depends on what kind of work the parents do. In fact, when my children attended the school, there was a son of an automobile company owner, and his family paid a considerable amount of tuition. On the other hand, a family from a foreign country like mine, who is not economically privileged, would pay very low tuition. In that sense, I think it is a liberal school.
In Japan, Steiner schools are well known when it comes to Steiner education, but there are very few of them, and most families move close to the school to send their children there. I hear that many parents want to send their children with developmental disabilities or other problems to a Steiner school, and certainly such children may benefit from learning in a Steiner education. However, in Germany, children are rarely sent to Waldorf schools in this sense, which is probably different from Japan.
The majority of families in Germany who send their children to Waldorf schools do so in pursuit of a free school education. In recent years, however, the percentage of Waldorf school students who go on to university has become extremely high in Germany, and there has been a reversal of this trend, with students saying that they want to enter a Waldorf school because they want to get into a good university.
In general, school education is centered on memory learning, in which a lot of information is crammed in a classroom, but in the case of Waldorf schools, the focus is on experience, and students experience many things in class. Instead of teaching theory first, they let students experience things by growing plants, making crafts, and using concrete objects. For example, when studying math, instead of saying, "What is two plus three?" "It is 5," they teach saying, "What is 5?" "It is 1 and 4" 1 plus 4 is 5 or 2 plus 3 is 5 an answer derived from thinking, with the calculation coming first. In contrast, "What is 5?" "It is 1 and 4." is an answer derived from experience. Words are not simply learned by reading and writing, but are experienced by connecting them with dance or music.
Eurythmy is one of the important lessons at the Waldorf School, and students always learn it in class. Using the functions of the senses, such as sight, hearing, and touch, is very important for children. Since theory and memory-based work becomes stronger around junior high school age, experiential education should be done in elementary school time. On the contrary, it is said that cramming education during elementary school time will weaken the senses in junior high school time.
Continue to Akira Kasai Begins Butoh <18>.
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