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Tokyo during the 1960s was in a state of uproar, full of protests, riots, and insurrection. Tatsumi Hijikata - the initiator of the ´Butoh´ performance art and the seminal figure in Japan´s experimental arts culture of the 1960s - created his most famous works in the context of that turmoil. Central to Hijikata´s vital 1960s work are his many films, from experimental projects undertaken in collaboration with artists, to horror and sex films made for Japan´s ailing studios, to his participation in the corporate, state-power spectacle of the Osaka World Expo ´70.

Based on original interviews with Hijikata´s collaborators as well as new research, Film´s Ghosts illuminates Hijikata´s world-renowned, spectral ´Dance of Utter Darkness´, Butoh, and explores Hijikata´s films directly against the backdrop of 1960s urban culture in Tokyo, with the rise of its screen-constellated mega-towers, its fierce protests and riot-police battles, its ascendant security-guard and surveillance industries, and its experimentations in art, sex and terrorism.

An essential book for readers engaged with film and performance, urban cultures and architecture, and Japan´s experimental art and its histories.

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11 - 56 Conjuring Hijikata´s Ghosts in Film: Human Sacrifice and Wargames (Stephen Barber)57 - 98 Motion Photography: Kamaitachi (Stephen Barber)99 - 136 Tokyo´s Transmutation, Hijikata´s Dance (Stephen Barber)137 - 172 Horrors, Deaths, Revolutions (Stephen Barber)173 - 234 1970: Hijikata at Osaka´s World Expo (Stephen Barber)235 - 240 Film and the Dying Dance (Stephen Barber)

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Barber, Stephen
Stephen Barber ist Autor von 25 Büchern, darunter sieben Romane. Kürzlich erschienen: White Noise Ballrooms und Film´s Ghosts. Tatsumi Hijikata´s Butoh and the Transmutation of 1960s Japan. Seine Bücher wurden vielfach ausgezeichnet und in diverse Sprachen übersetzt. The Independent newspaper (London) nannte ihn ¯den gefährlichsten Mann Europas®.

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