Tatsumi Hijikata

Tatsumi Hijikata (土方 巽, Hijikata Tatsumi, born Kunio Motofuji Yoneyama) was born on March 9, 1928, in Akita Prefecture, Japan, in a rural, rice-farming region of Tohoku. The tenth of eleven children, he grew up amidst the sounds of cicadas, horse hooves, and a turbulent home environment marked by his father’s alcoholism. His early life in this stark, northern landscape profoundly shaped the raw, visceral aesthetic of his later work. Moving to Tokyo permanently in 1952 at age 24, Hijikata initially supported himself through various jobs, including blue-collar work, while immersing himself in the city’s avant-garde scene. He claimed to have survived as a petty criminal through burglary and robbery, though such accounts may reflect his tendency to mythologize his life.

Inspired by French writers like Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud, and Georges Bataille, as well as visual artists such as Egon Schiele and Hans Bellmer, Hijikata adopted the pseudonym “Hijikata,” meaning “genêt” (French for broom plant) in Japanese, as a nod to Genet. In the late 1950s, he founded Ankoku Butoh (“dance of darkness”), a radical dance form that rejected both traditional Japanese dance and Western classical ballet, embodying a “convulsion of existence” through surrealist, grotesque, and taboo-breaking performances. His first Butoh piece, Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors, 1959), based on Yukio Mishima’s novel, shocked audiences with its exploration of homosexuality and a provocative scene involving a live chicken, cementing his reputation as an iconoclast.

Hijikata’s work was deeply anti-establishment, drawing from his fascination with death, criminality, and the abject. Collaborations with figures like photographer Eikoh Hosoe (Kamaitachi, 1969), writer Yukio Mishima, and filmmaker Donald Richie enriched his interdisciplinary approach, blending dance with visual art, film, and urban architecture. From the 1960s to mid-1970s, he performed publicly, creating seminal works like Hijikata Tatsumi and Japanese People: Revolt of the Body (1968) and Twenty-seven Nights for Four Seasons (1972). After 1976, he largely withdrew to Asbestos Hall, his Tokyo studio, focusing on writing, teaching, and choreographing for students like Kazuo Ohno and Toko Ashikawa. Hijikata planned a public return but died abruptly of liver failure on January 21, 1986, at age 57. His archive, including films and scrapbooks, is preserved at Keio University, and his influence endures globally among choreographers, artists, and filmmakers.