Performativity and Event in 1960s Japan City, Body, Memory

Taking performance as a key word, this book explores important Japanese artists and art works in the 1960s in relation to the formation of postwar Japan. In response to the social upheavals of the 1960s, Eckersall shows how art interacted with society in unique and transformational ways. He includes case studies of rarely discussed artists and performances by Zero Jigen, Ichiyanagi Toshi, Iimura Takahiko and the contemporary group Port B, as well as dynamic cultural events such as the 1964 Olympic Games, mass protests and the 1970 Osaka Expo.

A unique aspect of Eckersall's study is his interdisciplinary approach, which draws on Japanese writing on the 1960s in tandem with performance theory. By interweaving arguments about the critical role of performance as an artistic medium and as a social dramaturgy, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary Japanese society and culture, cultural historians and people interested in theatre and performance studies.

Peter Eckersall teaches Theatre Studies in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. Recent publications include Kawamura Takeshi's Nippon Wars and Other Plays and Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific: Regional Modernities in the Global Era (with Denise Varney, Barbara Hatley and Chris Hudson). He is a specialist of contemporary performance and a dramaturgy.

Table of Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Zero Jigen's pre-expressive utopian body: ritual theory and urban transformation
2. Butoh cine dance and the remediated sixties
3. Singing Yokoo Tadanori: Ichiyanagi Toshi, The City and the Aesthetics of Listening
4. Performing Revolution at Shinjuku Plaza
5. The Osaka Exposition: Bodies and the impossible Utopia
6. Memory and city: Port B and the Tokyo Olympics
Closing: Transforming everydayness
Notes
Bibliography