Tamah L. Nakamura

Keywords
Butoh, Ecopsychology, Hijikata Tatsumi, dance group

The founder of the ‘butoh’ genre, Hijikata Tatsumi emerged in post-war Japan, an irreverent and challenging choreographer and intellect. In this article, a field researcher’s active relationship with a Butoh dance group illustrates dance therapy from a specifically ‘butoh’ perspective. The field notes express links to ecopsychology by the integral relationship between family, community and the earth. The notes detail the expression of the dancer’s unconscious and subconscious. In conclusion, the researcher evaluated the ‘butoh’ genre as pivotal to self analysis for this sample. (pp 10-14)

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Keywords
Butoh, role analysis, women’s repression, social structure, Japanese dance genre

This article addresses the cross-cultural comparisons of studying in the West and teaching in Japan. The key development in the discussion was that social roles become individualised, internalised and expressed in movement. By offering multiple methods from the Japanese ‘Butoh’ dance genre to engage in role analysis, the text is able to display how the changes in the structure of society are internalised within the body. Despite the emphasis on chronology, the article draws conclusions on women’s position in society and allows extension of theoretical discussions within the field of dance exploration into sexual repression. (pp 22-24)

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