Customer Reviews

Hijikata: Revolt of the Body

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Barber's essay on Tatsumi Hijikata and his "ankoku butoh" does a fine job of situating this singularly intense artist within a larger milieu of social upheaval and literal devastation. Along the way, he unearths some shocking insights about that milieu (like the fact that some cultural outliers in wartime Japan actually *welcomed* the Allied bombing of their cities as an annihilation of the old social order and a chance to create anew) and wisely makes no attempts to retrospectively portray Hijikata as being more renowned at the time than he really was. Those who know little about the cultural origins of Butoh's more extreme exponents will be caught right up to speed here; though the text can be plowed through in a day's reading it manages to a set up a satisfyingly complete set of links between Hijikata and a greater 20th century avant-garde exploring madness and criminality (e.g. Genet, Artaud.)

However, as is their wont, the people at Creation Books manage to cheapen the text with pointless proclamations of their stereotypical "extreme" aesthetic. I say "Creation" because Solar Books is merely another imprint run by the same parties responsible for the more renowned Creation flagship (and this book was previously published as a Creation title.) The similarity in "quality" between the two imprints is easily noticeable: cheap paper, lazy placement of photographs and hastily completed design work whose main distinguishing feature is the childish, unnecessary placement of would-be "shocking" icons. What, exactly, do menacingly hooked swastikas have to do with Hijikata's work, and why are they at the heading of each chapter in this book?

All in all, Barber has done his job here, it's a shame that he had to sell this to a publisher who has no idea how to aesthetically frame the work. Here is hoping that future efforts of this type will find more reputable outlets for printing and distribution.