笠井叡 舞踏をはじめて ＜21＞
Akira Kasai Begins Butoh <21>
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 1985, I left Germany and returned to Japan for the first time in six years. I distanced myself from the world of Butoh and began teaching eurythmy.
When I finally returned to Japan, however, after being away from Japan for six years, I could not understand anything when I watched TV or heard a song. No matter what I did, I was always bewildered. Most troubling of all was the fact that my body had become completely useless in the Japanese dance world.
My main activity after returning to Japan was to teach eurythmy. However, eurythmy was not yet common in Japan at that time, and Japanese people did not understand what I was talking about when I showed them how to dance it. But that did not make me want to dance Butoh as I had done before I went to Germany.
People who want to try eurythmy are not from the dance world, and the majority of people who come to learn are those who are interested in Steiner education and those who are interested from a medical standpoint. Rather, people in the dance world would say, “The eurythmy that Kasai teaches is not interesting at all. What's the point of wearing all that fluttering stuff, it's like kindergarten dancing,” and they looked at me with a dismissive attitude.
Eurythmy costumes are made of two thin pieces of clothing: a “kleit,” which is shaped like a dress, and a softer “schleier,” which is worn underneath. In German, kleit means “dress” and schleier means “veiling” or “veil. The only difference between men and women is the collar. Collarless one is for women and collared one is for men. However, I usually wear collarless garments, not collared ones.
Eurythmy and butoh are very different from each other, and people who knew me before I went to Germany and butoh dancers may have had a hard time accepting me. Moreover, since I had gone to Europe without explanation, many of the people who came to Tenshikan thought that they had been abandoned, and many of them probably said, “I don't want to do eurythmy myself”.
I had a wide range of students who came to learn eurythmy, and I taught a lot to parents and children in kindergartens. I am very good at teaching children eurythmy. I have been to Sapporo, Sendai, Niigata, Tokyo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, and many other places in Japan. There, eurythmy spread little by little. There must be a considerable population of eurythmy people, just not on the surface of the water. However, it seems to be spreading not through stage or artistic activities, but through a kind of social activity connection, such as dancing at public facilities or practicing together to become friends.
Although the population of eurythmy has increased, I don't think it has had any impact on the dance world. But for my part, I wanted people to experience another new classical world through eurythmy. Until then, there were only three types of dance in Japan: classical ballet, modern dance, and butoh. I wanted to show that there was another new classical power in the form of eurythmy.
Although learning eurythmy does not necessarily mean that you can perform on stage with it, I neally wanted people to know the power which exists in the body through a new form. I went from place to place preaching that there is a world where the old and the new are united. It was as if I was giving the gospel. That is still the same part of the world today, though.
At the time when I went to Germany, I felt that it would be difficult to face the opposites of butoh and eurythmy at the same time, and that I had to decide between the two, so I thought that eurythmy alone would be enough. However, after returning to Japan, this feeling gradually weakened, and I began to have an easy feeling that I could have both avant-garde butoh and new classical eurythmy in my mind. And now I have the sense that I am looking back at the past again and creating works that reflect what I see from these two opposites.
In 1987, I performed in “The Sick Dancing Princess,” a memorial performance for Tatsumi Hijikata. I danced eurhythmy alongside eminent butoh dancers.
In Germany, I made a break with butoh and was away from performing for the next 14 years. It was nine years after my return to Japan that I returned to the stage again, and one of the reasons for my return was the death of Mr. Hijikata.
Mr. Hijikata passed away the year after I returned to Japan. At the time I was teaching eurythmy here and there, traveling all over the country. I was teaching at the Asahi Culture Center in Kobe when I received a call saying, “Hijikata is in critical condition, please come home immediately”. Someone must have said, “Call Kasai”. In the end, however, I could not make it to the funeral and attended the wake. I had kept my distance from the butoh world ever since I returned to Japan, so I had no contact with butoh people all. There, I saw people of butoh world for the first time in many years.
Mr. Hijikata passed away in 1986 at the age of 57. The following year, his wife, Motofuji Hanako, contacted me and asked me to attend a memorial performance for Hijikata. But I had only been doing eurythmy ever since I returned to Japan, so I declined, saying, “Absolutely impossible”. But Mrs. Motofuji would not budge, saying, “You can do whatever you want to do”. I told her, “The only thing I can do now is eurythmy,” and she said, “That's fine”.
I then met fierce opposition from Mr. Hijikata's direct disciples, who said, “We absolutely cannot have Kasai as a member”. I again declined, saying, “If you don't like it so much, I won't go.” This time, Mrs. Motofuji said, “You absolutely have to go,” and things became somewhat of a mess. In the end, Mrs. Motofuji pushed me into participating.
The title of the memorial performance is “The Sick Dancing Princess”. The venue was the Ginza Saison Theater. At Mrs. Motofuji's urging, Mr. Akaji Maro, Mr. Mitsutaka Ishii, Mr. Min Tanaka, Ms. Yoko Ashikawa, and Mr. Kazuo Ohno gathered to take the stage each day. I danced in eurhythmy Schubert's string quartet “Death and the Maiden,” Tatsumi Hijikata's text “The Sick Dancing Princess” and the Gospel of John. Because such a thing had entered the midst of the self-assured butoh dancers, the dance world was in an uproar, asking, “What in the world is eurythmy?” Most people's reaction was, “How can that incomprehensible thing with its thin, fluttering costumes be called a dance?”
For me, that was my first public performance after returning to Japan. Until then, I had danced eurythmy in various places, but that was only within the world of eurythmy. The memorial performance for Tatsumi Hijikata was a stage for leading butoh dancers and people in the dance world. So my being dragged to the memorial performance of Tatsumi Hijikata had many influences, both good and bad.
Mr. Hijikata danced only one solo performance before his death, “Mutiny of the Body” in October 1968, which is generally considered to be his best work. After that, Mr. Hijikata quit creating works that he himself danced and began producing various butoh dancers. His last work was also not for his own, but a produced work.
The “Butoh Penitentiary Collection” in 1985 attracted particular attention, and he held a large gathering of butoh artists such as Mr. Akaji Maro, Mr. Min Tanaka, Mr. Kazuo Ohno, and others. This triggered a kind of butoh boom, and the butoh population in Japan increased dramatically. Next, Mr. Hijikata came up with the “Tohoku Kabuki Project”. This was held in a series from the first to the fourth, with four pieces presented in the year before his death.
I know Mr. Hijikata very well, but he was never a person who could afford overwork and did not engage in unreasonable activities. Although he appeared to be a physical man, he was not that physically strong. However, at that time, he presented four works a year, which was unusual for him, and he also began traveling around Japan, telling stories about words and the body here and there. Perhaps Mr. Hijikata felt his own mortality somewhere along the way.
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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