Butoh Memorandums 2014 by Itto Morita
(updated. July 19th,2014)
The status quo of Noguchi Taiso gymnastics (again)
I have received email asking for information about the exercises of Noguchi Taiso. There are two basic questions:
1) where can we learn Noguchi Taiso in Japan?, and 2) are there any videos available about Noguchi Taiso.
Ms. Misao Hatori, described below in the section "The status quo of Noguchi Taiso gymnastics (1)", has run a website Noguchi Taisou Official Webpage. Although it is a Japanese website, there is a "WEB LESSON" site where you can see some of basic movements of Noguchi Taiso.
But, my impressions about those videos are not so good because it seems very difficult to catch the essence of Noguchi Taiso just by watching them although the site honestly shows those Noguchi Taiso exercises. Why not?
Dancers are trained well, and can copy any movements shown as a sample. I think it would be very easy for most dancers to imitate those movements in the videos, and that most dancers might lose interests in Noguchi Taiso. If you belonged to this category, I would think you might have failed to grasp the essence of Noguchi Taiso.
The quality of movement is another important factor in Noguchi Taiso rather than replicating the physical movements precisely. I have utilized Noguchi Taiso exercises in my Butoh training and also for workshop participants for years, and have found that Western dancers with modern dance techniques often fail to catch this most important point of Noguchi Taiso mainly because they are visually oriented performers who are unconsciously driven by how they look like by others (or coreographers) around.
In butoh dance, as "being moved" can be an essential description of butoh movements sometimes (not all the time due to the pieces of butoh performance), the very intension to replicate the movements and shapes may interfere with "authentic butoh".
Technically speaking, you have to keep a normal breathing in order to perceive the weight of the body (or parts of the body) precisely so as to find that those weights should create the movements and shapes. However, most dancers tend to stop breathing while moving. If you hold you breath while moving, you tend to lose the ability to perceive those body (parts) weights.
Once you noticed this point, as we have witnessed in our butoh workshops, the quality of movement changes drastically, slower and more vulnerable to many factors there such as the weight of ,say, elbow, jaw, wrist, and breathing pattern, the angle of limbs, and etc. They often look like meditating when they are in this type of state of consciousness.
We believe Butoh creation begins with this change through those exercises of Noguchi Taiso.
By the way, in Tokyo, the group of Misao Hatori has run Noguchi Taiso lessons on Saturday and Sunday at Asahi Culture Center in Shinjuku: INFORMATION (visitors/trials are allowed). Good luck !
(Itto Morita: July 19th, 2014)
* The quality of movement is a very important point of view in Noguchi Taiso, and also in Butoh. Although well trained dancers might be able to replicate even the quality of movement based on ther experiences in body/dance training, we think that the "Butoh Tai" or "Butoh body/attitude" should be nurtured first.
- A Note on Butoh Body (2000) by T.Kasai/M.Itto
Mainly because, even novice students of butoh sometimes show authentic appeals of butoh in their unskilled performance. The quality of movement consists of two factors: 1)the directions of physical energy in movements as seen in Noguchi Taiso, 2)the directions of mind or such a wish/desire as to reach out for something, or to squeeze yourself into a crevice,and etc.
A wish/desire would be accompanied with body movements connected to it, or vice versa: A body-mind relationship.
The Noguchi Taiso videos mentioned above don't seem to be good enough to learn these factors without sufficient explanations, and maybe without actual experiences.
*It is often said "there is no techniques in Butoh": It is half true but half wrong. We have many training techniques such as Noguchi Taiso that allow us to enter "Butoh tai" or "Butoh body/attitude", and have trained ourselves for years. And, we must remember Hijikata ever created several thousands movement patterns concerning his "Butoh Fu" or Butoh notation.
However, in an authentic phase of Butoh performance, as there is no intellectual self kept in place , all you do is to entrust whole your existence to, so to speak, "Gods", including God of gravity by Noguchi. No technical maneuver possible in front of them.
(updated, 5th Aug., 2014 by Itto)
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Butoh Memorandums 2013 by Itto Morita
(Feb.2; updated. Feb.4,2013)
The status quo of Noguchi Taiso gymnastics (1)
Recently, I got email asking for information about Noguchi Taiso or Michizo Noguchi's physical exercise or Noguchi's gymnastics.
I searched websites written in English, and found several descriptions about it. But, they are not sufficient to understand Noguchi Taiso well. (Some use the word "Noguchi Taisou" that spells the Japanese letters exactly, others use "Noguchi Taiso".)
* There was another Noguchi, Haruchika Noguchi (1911-1976), who was famous about his body therapy and massage called "Noguchi Seitai" and "Katsugen Undou". Please don't be confused.
Michizo Noguchi (1914-1998) used to be a high school teacher, teaching gymnastics before the second World War. He was desperate in the ashes of defeat, devastated by the aftermath of the war, and nearly committed suicide... But, something happened to him. He discovered the fact that he had his own body with its own weight, a tangible reality, and he was somehow alive. He started exploring thoroughly his tangible body and how to move it, and created a new approach to the body called Noguchi taiso by discarding the idea of anatomical skeletal body.
Noguchi taiso, meaning Noguchi's way of gymnastics or his physical exercises, became gradually known to people through his teaching at polytechnics and others in Tokyo. Especially young actors and dancers got interested in his ideas about the body and his unique physical exercises. In 1970s-1980s, young butoh dancers and students happened to learn Noguchi taiso and started using it for their butoh training. Sankaijuku, lead by Ushio Amagatsu, was one of them. Noguchi later worked for Tokyo Art University as a professor, and his approach became well known among drama directors and other related people who were keen about how to move or use the body effectively.
When I was in U.K. in 2009, I received the copy of a Master thesis about the life of Michizo Noguchi written by Katsura Kobayashi (unpublished Japanese paper of Tsukuba University.). She studied Noguchi's life and how Noguchi taiso was born and developed.
*Her shortened Japanese paper is available at ["The development of NOGUCHI-TAISO]Michizo Noguchifs exploration of gymnastics" (PDF)
There are a couple of figures describing Noguchi's life trajectory in terms of Noguchi taiso.
- Cited from its short English abstract:
A chronological history of the pursuits of Noguchi was created based on confirmed information from documents concerning Michizo Noguchi and Noguchi gymnastics.
This thesis has been divided into the following five sections:
1) The Life of Michizo Noguchi
2) Noguchifs Relationship with Techniques of the Body
3) Learning from Objects
4) An Exploration of Words
5) Noguchifs Pursuit of Gymnastics and the Change in His Perception of Gymnastics
At that time, I was trying to translate parts of Noguchi's books for my butoh students in London, and was collecting information about him and Noguchi taiso. Misao Hatori, one of Noguchi's disciples, replied to my inquiry about the possibilities of English translation in Japan, and her answer was not assuring.
* Hatori's Japanese book is "Introduction to Noguchi taiso" (Noguchi taisou nyuumon), Iwanami, 2003 (ISBN4-00-700057-3). It is easy to read (160 pages) and good for understanding Noguchi's basic ideas about the body and body movements. Photographs are helpful for beginners.
Hatori had been working with Noguchi as an assistant for 20 years, and started "Nogchi taiso no kai" (Noguchi taiso party/gathering) after Noguchi died. I read her book, and saw DVD where Noguchi and Hatori performed together showing some basic movements of Noguchi taiso. He had a talk in DVD with Yourou Takeshi, one of the most famous brain scientists in Japan.
* DVD with Japanese explanations was published by Shunju-sha in 2004. ISBN-10: 4393970187.
Noguchi's first book was printed in 1972, "Man as a primordial life form" (Gensho seimeitai to shiteno ningen) Mikasa shobo publishing company, and was reprinted and published by a bigger firm, Iwanami Shoten, in 1996 (ISBN-10: 4002602575). I read repeatedly his three major books about Noguchi taiso below.
- Noguchi, Michizo "Gensho Seimeitai to shiteno Ningen" (Man as a primordial form of life) Mikasa Shobou, Tokyo, 1972
- Noguchi, Michizo "Karada ni kiku" (Obey the body) Hakujusha, Tokyo, 1977
- Noguchi, Michizo "Omosa ni kiku" (Obey the weight) Hakujusha, Tokyo, 1978
It seemed that there were difficult situations about the copyright, etc., and Hatori could not answer clearly in 2009, 10 years after his death. But, there was another stumbling block to English translation. Especially, for his later books published in 1977, 1978. Noguchi used a variety of onomatopope or onomatopoeia in his book.
* His first book is easy to read for general readers as it is with few onomatopes.
One of the students in London School of Speech and Drama taught me that onomatope includes mimetic expressions, and there are not many in English: bowwow, cuckoo, ding-dong are examples of ordinary onomatope. However, in Japanese language, we have a number of mimetic expression, a developed type of onomatope: "Kururi" expresses a situation as an adverb where something light turns only once; "Gururi" shows that something heavy turns only once; "Kuru kuru" means that something light is turning faster; and "Guru guru" shows that a heavy thing is turning a bit slowly. Furthermore, Noguchi preferred Chinese characters, composing Japanese language, and studied and used in his books their primordial forms in the ancient China and their relationship with body postures and movements.
One of Japanese dance therapists, Yukari Sakiyama (Mukogawa Women's University), board member of JADTA (Japan Dance Therapy Association), recently read a paper at ADTA (American Dance Therapy Association) about Japanese onomatopes and body movements for dance therapy. To her surprise, few participants of the annual conference of ADTA knew the very word, onomatope or mimetic expression, and she had a very hard time to explain what onomatope is before showing her experimental studies about the onomatopes and mimetic words in Japanese and their relationships with body movements. (to be continued)
(Feb.4. Updated Feb.7,2013)
The status quo of Noguchi Taiso gymnastics (2)
I learned Noguchi taiso for the first time when I attended an intensive Butoh workshop run by Semimaru, one of the original Sankaijuku members, 25 years ago. He showed us how to do several Noguchi taiso exercises and movements, but he did not emphasize much about the origin. All we heard was that they learned Noguchi taiso when Noguchi taught at a polytechnic or elsewhere in Tokyo, etc.
Because the contents of Semimaru's Butoh workshop were very much influenced by Noguchi taiso, one of participants asked him whether Noguchi taiso was the most important element in Butoh. Semimaru replied to him, saying "No". He utilized the elements of Noguchi taiso a lot, but he rather emphasized that "omoi" (thought, sentiment, etc. that is held in the mind) is most important for Butoh.
I visited Noguchi taiso class several times in Tokyo. But, I was not so much impressed by the movements they were doing. (I saw Noguchi a couple of times, but did not have a direct contact with him). Maybe, It was because I had experienced most of them from one of the distinguished Butoh dancers of Sankaijuku, who had showed us his high competence of controlling his body-mind whether it is Noguchi taiso or not. I had been moved by Noguchi's revolutionary ideas about the body and body movements, but I think that I was much more attracted at that time by the state of the body-mind, or of the embodied mind or of the body that reflects the unconscious.
When I was checking Butoh video materials of 1980s, the boss of Sankaijuku, Ushio Amagatsu, explained about his butoh lessons and how to use the body when performing butoh. Almost all of his explanations seemed to be related to the ideas of Noguchi taiso, but he never mentioned to the name of Noguchi. I had a strange feeling about it. Several years after that, I found that Noguchi taiso people, his disciples or students, tried to save and preserve the original forms or ways to do Noguchi taiso. But, Butoh dancers are eager to find out his/her own way to perform Butoh: Noguchi taiso is very important, but it remains only a part of Butoh practices for Butoh performance.
* Noguchi himself said, late in life, that everybody should do or create his/her own taiso.
Butoh is not a physical exercise or gymnastics. It is one of performing arts, and you need to explore and deepen your own body-mind for performance. If Butoh performance is confined in the physical gymnastics, it would be self-destructive as a Butoh dancer. Then, where should we place Noguchi taiso in Butoh ? What element of Noguchi taiso is most important ?
Noguchi taiso elements for Butoh dance
In 1999's paper "A Butoh Dance Method for Psychosomatic Exploration", I wrote about Noguchi taiso for Butoh dance training. (available at [butoh papers] )
It has been one of major English descriptions to me on Noguchi taiso for Butoh training. The followings are some extracted points from it:
1) Significance of the weight of the body: "Listen to the god of weight".
Muscles are the ears for listening to the words of God -Gravity.
2) "Noguchi taiso does not restrict movement patterns, nor give a name to the movement according to the bodily shape, nor determine the purpose or aim of the movements in advance".
3) Arm relaxation lesson and body-untying lesson for relaxation is very important in terms of Noguchi taiso..
4) Nenyoro (body-untying) lesson is also significant to learn that the body is not a muscle-skeletal hard entity but a kind of a water bag in which bones, muscles, and viscera are all floating.
* The word "ne-nyoro" comes from a mimetic expression "nyoro nyoro" describing the snakey movement of a snake. "Ne" means "lying" in this word.
I and Mika Takeuchi, my partner of Butoh GooSayTen, created several new exercises based on the ideas of Noguchi taiso. The arm-standing exercise is one of them, and was found very effective to induce the body-mind relaxation not only in Butoh training but also in psychosomatic approach at mental clinics.
* Check my presentation at [ ECArTE conference ]
We thought that the arm-standing exercise should be regarded to be one of Noguchi taiso exercise, but soon realized that this exercise aims not only at the body but also at both of the body and mind, including a different state of body-mind, or an altered state of consciousness. Noguchi taiso is a body approach; Butoh dance is a performing art using the body and the unconscious mind; Our Butoh dance method has been developing based on them, and proceeding to a psychosomatic approach by integrating the body approach, performing art, and the body-mind psychotherapeutic approach. (Both of us became a certified dance therapist of Japan Dance Therapy Association, but it is really subsidiary as Butoh dancers.)
I had not written a lot about Noguchi taiso for many years because there are many other significant things occurring around the theme of the body-mind, such as mirror neuron, systems approach, system perturbation or decoupling of the body system and the mind system, etc.
But, I am now looking back to Noguchi taiso and am writing again about it especially for Butoh dance and for people who are eager to learn more about it. One thing should be added here: I am reluctant to use the name Noguchi taiso these days, because most of our exercises are not original ones, but developed for Butoh dance.
The followings are some of our important points in Butoh lesson, that are influenced by the ideas of Michizo Noguchi;
a) Passive or resultant movements should be induced in Butoh, and we should be aware of them.
b) Our intention or plan to move is only a starting point of movement, and what actually happens may be something different from what we thought, and it is the right track for Butoh.
c) In these situations, we are thrown away from a cradle of self-satisfaction to an uneasy situation as a stranger in terms of the state of the body-mind.
d) We need to struggle seriously to survive in these situations as Tatsumi Hijikata said that Butoh is like a dead man keeping standing desperately.
e) And, the ne-nyoro (body-untying) lesson in Noguchi taiso would be one of the good starting points for authentic Butoh of passiveness.
d) Agonies that are arising from the gap between our intentions and passiveness (or one's own fate) lies in the core of the authentic Butoh.
I believe that the nenyoro exercise in Noguchi taiso, for example, allows us to enter another aspect of the body-mind. And, it has been a good entrance to the authentic Butoh.
* As to Noguchi's "Man as a primordial form of life" 1972, I am making a summary of the table of contents with brief explanations. It will take some time before uploading.
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Butoh Memorandums 2011 by Itto Morita
(updated. Oct.29, 2011)
Authentic Butoh choreography
We started this website to explain our ideas about
"authentic Butoh choreography".
Total relaxation and free-falling in Butoh
Michizo Noguchi pointed out the importance of muscle relaxtion and the awareness of the body relaxtion in his "Noguchi taiso" or Noguchi gymnastics. "If you move your body in the most efficient way, half of the all muscles of the body should be relaxed all the time". This means total switching of muscle tensiton between the antagonistic muscles such as flexor and extensor. I already wrote about Noguchi taiso [here] , which was employed by Japanese Butoh dancers in 1970s-1980s as the basic exercises for Butoh. Although Noguchi taiso influenced Butoh a lot, Noguchi's several books have not yet been translated into English. I asked Misao Hatori, one of his successors, in 2009 about the possibility of English translation, but no good news has not yet arrived.
One of the most famous exercises in Noguchi taiso is "Nenyoro": The exercise allows us to experience that "the human body is a leather bag filled with water in which the bones, muscles, viscera, brain, etc. are all floating". Noguchi rejected the anatomical understanding of our body, showing that the human body is not a muscle-skeletal hard system but rather a soft and flexible thing in Nenyoro lesson. You are lying on the comfortable floor without unnecessary muscle tension, and your partner gives you gentle shaking by holding your wrist or ankle, etc. Your body conveys waves from your wrist, for example, to your shoulder and up to your head or down to your chest, stomach, etc. These resultant movements are very much different from ordinary muscle movements as 1) there is no muscle tensiton, 2) these movements are passive.
Butoh can be totally different from other dance styles because Butoh movements are not always created by intentional and active muscle tension. Can you imagine any other dances that does not require intentional and active muscle tension ? Noguchi also pointed out concerning this unintentional passive movements that muslces should work as sensors rather than physical effectors once a bodily movement occurs.
Butoh includes these Noguchi's ideas and exercises, and your ordinary understanding of dance and movements should be put aside or in the parentheses for a while as phenomenological reduction. Free-falling of a part of body, arm, leg, head, jaw, the upper body, etc. then becomes a good exercise for Butoh.
(Itto Morita: Oct.29, 2011)
Pain and distortions in Butoh
Most dancers seem to suffer from low-back pain or intervertebral disk herniation in the most severe case. But, if you can keep each vertebra flat or avoid uneven placement of vertebras, there occurs no pain. One of the biggest causes for pain is the intention to dance by following the given choreography and selective inattention to the over-arched vertebral column. I think "body-learning" or learning one's own body is necessary in this point. But, here arise some sociological issues : You should not obey your choreographer. I strongly believe that essential Butoh dictates you not to follow any other instructions except gravity or body-mind awareness. Noguchi employed a phrase "god of gravity" in order to explain this. It could be political turnover or religious conversion in dance.
Distortion of a part of the body sometimes gives rise to pain, and the pain dictates your movements by nullify the ongoing bodily distortion. There was an intention first for distortion, but the resultant pain cancells it, and unpredicted bodily reactions occur. This is an authentic process of body-mind reactions, and the starting point for authentic Butoh choreography.
Pain is always physical and mental, and other emotions too. In Butoh, we usually don't try to "express" emotions intentionally. Because, emotions are something given to you physically and mentally, and all you do is to experience them in the passive way. I again believe that authentic Butoh should follow this process as much as possible, and authentic Butoh choreography should produce itself as in the process of autopoiesis.
Both "Total relaxation and free-falling" and "Pain and distortions" in Butoh show that "expressing something by bodily movements" or "dancing in the predetermined way" does not construct authentic Butoh. Butoh has been iconoclatic or a Copernican revolution in dance in this respect.
(Itto Morita: Oct. 29, 2011)
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