Cultural responses to occupation in Japan
Subtitle: the performing body during and after the Cold War
By: Adam Broinowski
Series: War, culture and society
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2016
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9781780935966; 9781780935973; 9781780935874
Subjects: Politics and culture; HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century; Performing arts; History; HISTORY / Military / General
Description: "Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan examines how the performing arts, and the performing body specifically, have shaped and been shaped by the political and historical conditions experienced in Japan during the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. This study of original and secondary materials from the fields of theatre, dance, performance art, film and poetry, probes the interrelationship that exists between the body and the nation-state. Important artistic works, such as Ankoku Butoh (dance of darkness) and its subsequent re-interpretation by a leading political performance company Gekidan Kaitaisha (theatre of deconstruction), are analysed using ethnographic, historical and theoretical modes. This approach reveals the nuanced and prolonged effects of military, cultural and political occupation in Japan over a duration of dramatic change. Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan explores issues of discrimination, marginality, trauma, memory and the mediation of history in a ground-breaking work that will be of great significance to anyone interested in the symbiosis of culture and conflict"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:  Introduction; title: 1. Occupied Bodies: Aesthetic Responses in New Japan; title: 2. Ankoku Butoh in Socio-Historic Context; title: 3. Ankoku Butoh: (Not) A Dance of the Nation State; title: 4. Gekidan Kaitaisha: Growing the Seeds of Butoh; title: 5. Occupied Bodies in the 21st Century: Vivisection Vision-Animal Reflections; title: Conclusion.