Performance studies in Japan

Uchino Tadashi

Takahashi Yuichiro

pp. 89-105

in: Jon McKenzie, Heike Roms, CJW-L Wee (eds), Contesting performance, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

Japan is often cited as one of the places where performance art originated (Carlson, 2004; Goldberg, 2001). Despite the fact that such performance from the mid-1950s onwards — beginning with the Gutai group exhibitions and Hijikata Tatsumi's Butoh — has been documented by scholars and critics in Japan and abroad, there still has not been sufficient momentum in Japan itself for the study of performance to gain the status of an independent discipline. Within academia, performance has often been regarded with suspicion, and no performance studies departments have yet been established. Even the few theatre studies departments and programs in existence remain marginalized — and theatre scholarship itself is largely confined to dealing with literary texts.