‘Body (of) Knowledge: Women, the Body, and Dance in Postwar Japan‘, Journal of Asian Studies (2022) 81 (2): 365–379
This study examines the revolution of ideas surrounding the body in 1950s Japan from the perspective of two women dancers, Noh dancer Tsumura Kimiko (1902–74) and butoh dancer Motofuji Akiko (1928–2003). By contrasting one mid-twentieth-century view—that the postwar era offered a chance to “liberate” individual bodies—with the backdrop of continued control over bodies exercised by large institutions, I first show that this perceived rupture was not as stark as it initially appears. Moreover, I show how Tsumura and Motofuji rejected popular ideas about the body’s purpose to forge their own. This allowed them to critique and confront the issues that popular views presented, particularly for disabled or gendered bodies. These issues involved increasing urbanization and the treatment of bodies based upon their desirability. This article argues that Tsumura’s and Motofuji’s conceptions of “body” challenged gender norms and presented new ideas about how to live.
‘Selling Bodies in the Age of the Flesh: Bodies, Dance, and Postwar Japan‘, in C. Phipps (ed), Histories of Sex Work Around the World (Routledge, 2024)
This chapter will explore the way in which sex and sexuality were sold in 1950s and 1960s Japan. In this period, artists and scholars became fixated on the work nikutai, meaning “flesh body”, with connotations of carnality and sensuality that became visibly part of popular culture. At the same time, sexuality was utilised in new ways by many groups: sex workers, particularly the pan pan, sex workers whose customers were primarily American GIs stationed in Japan for the Occupation; strip tease artists who were allowed to perform for the first time; dancers who worked in cabaret shows to fund other, less profitable endeavours. This chapter will explore the agency of those historical actors and the conditions surrounding the “age of the flesh” that allowed sex and sexuality to be sold in so many variations.
Foreword to Vangeline, Cradling Empty Space (New York Butoh Institute, 2020)
Iris 