Hijikata tatsumi biography examples

Japanese choreographer (1928–1986)

Tatsumi Hijikata (土方 巽, Hijikata Tatsumi, March 9, 1928 – January 21, 1986) was a Japanese choreographer, and the founder of a genre of dance performance art called Butoh.^[1] By the late 1960s, he had begun to develop this dance form, which is highly choreographed with stylized gestures drawn from his childhood memories of his northern Japan home.^[2] It is this style which is most often associated with Butoh by Westerners.

Life and Butoh

Tatsumi Hijikata was born Kunio Yoneyama on March 9, 1928 in Akita prefecture in northern Japan, the tenth in a family of eleven children.^[3] After having shuttled back and forth between Tokyo and his hometown from 1947, he moved to Tokyo permanently in 1952.

He claims to have initially survived as a petty criminal through acts of burglary and robbery, but since he was known to embellish details of his life, it is not clear how much his account can be trus