Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan: The Performing Body During and After the Cold War (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781780935966)

Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan examines how the performing arts, and the performing body specifically, have shaped and been shaped by the political and historical conditions experienced in Japan during the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. This study of original and secondary materials from the fields of theatre, dance, performance art, film and poetry, probes the interrelationship that exists between the body and the nation-state. Important artistic works, such as Ankoku Butoh (dance of darkness) and its subsequent re-interpretation by a leading political performance company Gekidan Kaitaisha (theatre of deconstruction), are analysed using ethnographic, historical and theoretical modes. This approach reveals the nuanced and prolonged effects of military, cultural and political occupation in Japan over a duration of dramatic change.

Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan explores issues of discrimination, marginality, trauma, memory and the mediation of history in a ground-breaking work that will be of great significance to anyone interested in the symbiosis of culture and conflict.

Author: Adam Broinowski
ISBN-10: 178093596X
ISBN-13: 9781780935966
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Language: English
Published: 01/14/2016
Pages: 280
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.69d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2016