An Empty Room
Imagining Butoh and the Social Body in Crisis
Michael Sakamoto(Author)
Wesleyan University Press
Published on 3. May 2022
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-8195-8064-1 (ISBN)
Description
An Empty Room is a transformative journey through butoh, an avant-garde form of performance art that originated in Japan in the late 1950's and is now a global phenomenon. This is the first book about butoh authored by a scholar-practitioner who combines personal experience with ethnographic and historical accounts alongside over twenty photos. Author Michael Sakamoto traverses butoh dance history from its roots in post-World War II Japan to its diaspora in the West in the 1970s and 1980s. An Empty Room delves into the archive of butoh dance, gathering testimony from multiple generations of artists active in Japan, the US, and Europe. The book also creatively highlights seminal visual and written texts, especially Hosoe Eikoh's photo essay, "Kamaitachi," and Hijikata Tatsumi's early essays. Sakamoto ultimately fashions an original view of what butoh has been, is and, more importantly, can be through the lens of literary criticism, photo studies, folklore, political theory, and his experience performing, photographing, teaching, and lecturing in 15 countries worldwide.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
22 b&w photos
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
576 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8195-8064-1 (9780819580641)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
05/2022
Wesleyan University Press
€19.49
Available for download
Person
MICHAEL SAKAMOTO (Amherst, MA) is an internationally recognized butoh and dance theater artist and Performing Arts Curator and Director of the Asian and Asian American Arts and Culture Program at the UMass Fine Arts Center.