Tatsumi Hijikata – the godfather of Butoh!
Photo by Hiroshi Yamazaki
Tatsumi Hijikata (1928 – 1986) was a Japanese dance choreographer, dancer and actor and the co-founder of Butoh. By the late 1960s, he had begun to develop this dance form, which is highly choreographed with stylized gestures drawn from his childhood memories of his northern Japan home. Steven Barber believes that ” Hijikata is the supreme figure in the second half of Japan’s twentieth century experimental culture, and the most seminal and inspirational figure of that previous century for innovative artists, choreographers, film-makers, musicians and writers working in contemporary Japan.”
