The exhibition, "Surrealism of the Body Butoh dancer Tatsumi Hijikata" (Taro Okamoto Kawasaki City Museum), held from last year to this year reawoke an aspect of the inexhaustible manifoldness of one dancer to present day. The polyhedron, "Tatsumi Hijikata," is an abundant text for the body still evoking unknown readings. I am very confident about this. While I looked at this dancer's appearance as shown in the exposed panels of the pictures of those like Eiko Hosoe and the words that of Hijikata, although my body had nothing to do with dance, I could not prevent it from beginning to move automatically and restlessly. This event made me realize the present reality of Hijikata. In those days (1960s-1970s), the same feeling must have created an enthusiastic vortex. Hijikata involved not only dancers but others such as art critics, poets, and novelists who stimulated each other; Hijikata converged the various problems appearing on the single point of body movement (dance), and tried to explode them on stage through the body.

It was a daring adventure. "Tatsumi Hijikata" is, therefore, the text of the adventure and the documentation of its successes and failures. His challenge, which sometimes brought him to seal his own dance in the extreme point, still maintains the possibility of expressing strong power because of its earnest attitude toward dance. This is why it never shall be read in casual retrospect nor with secondary sources. Then what should we read from it? What are we allowed to read?

Incidentally, there is a Butoh dancer named Ko Murobushi. He had mainly performed in France until he returned to Japan several years ago; Beautiful Blue Sky, Hijikata described this man as "a kind of discovery of new Butoh or, in worn-out words, the roots." The shock of his impromptu sole performance four years ago, titled Edge, ended up in giving him various nicknames such "alien" and "extraterrestrial creature from Kiseiju [Japanese animation, Parasite Beast]." I found these names to be precise, and yet, at the same time, such naming seemed a desperate result due to the cramp of language caused by the speed in delay, collapsing movement hidden in tenaciousness, and serious wits. At the end of last year for the "Hijikata Memorial" event under the title of Beautiful Blue Sky, with three young dancers (Yukio Suzuki, Sadayuki Hayashi, and Daiji Meguro) and four brass boards, the man danced.

The dance of the four looked like "attempts to read the texts by ambition readers." That is to say, it looked like an homage and a critique: the brass board was to early Butoh, which peaked with Rebellion of the Body in 1968, and the group dance with young dancers in 27 Nights for the Four Seasons in 1972 begain later Butoh, suggesting a sign of "stylization."

Murobushi, in his solo shows, often brightens his body with silver powder. His brightened/lit body appeared in the performance now swept by a more complicated, diffused reflection with the brass board as a dangerous partner. Shaking it, flinging it, and at last falling down on it, the men tried to get as close as they could to this foreign object that was impossible to assimilate with. They seemed to be attempting to become an influential board shaken by everything else or trying to return to the original form of everything. Then, how had the body been contrived then? Murobushi's view included a criticism of the later Hijikata's tendency. The three young dancers were not trained to be like Murobushi. Rather, they wandered fluttering like butterflies or touched each other's nipples; their bodies began to evoke ecstasy and the body seemed to focus on a certain looseness and ambiguity. Here, the sexual sensuality steered not towards rigidity but towards looseness. Instead of adopting complete control like later Hijikata, nearly "half-baked" bodies were exposed. A trial that seemed to refuse refinement and completion did not clearly reach its aim, so it did not succeed satisfactorily. Yet, it did not mean that avoiding persisting in one movement-which was observed in the trial'is the essential idea of Butoh presently. It would enable Butoh to become infuriated as a polyhedron depending on the way of the solutions. Because of this point, I want to hope for great progress from now on.

What can we and what can we not hope for from Butoh (or dance)? Murobushi's struggle for the answer to how to read "Tatsumi Hijikata" continues. As long as Murobushi continues, Butoh will keep shining as a mystery that induces new readings.