As I continued reading Yoko Muronoi's “The Dancer Disappears,” I came across a conversation with an Italian journalist and researcher during Muronoi’s workshop in Rome. Searching the internet for this person, Maria Pia D'Orazi, I found an essay by her about Kasai Akira, one of the Butoh pioneers. In this essay, she mentioned Noguchi Hiroyuki's paper, 'The Idea of the Body in Japanese Culture and its Dismantlement'. I supposed she came to know of the paper through Muronoi. Surprisingly, the title of the paper was "Butoh Training and the Quantum Body". It made strange sense that she had put it that way.
Shintai Kyoiku Kenkyusho the successor to the Seitaiho Kenkyusho,was founded in 1988. Around the same time, the term 'Naikanho' emerged, and 'Kyakkanho' was conceived as its antithesis. Naikan literally means “see inside” and Kyakkan means “see objectively”. Initially, I thought this was rather blunt, but after practicing Doho for over 30 years, I believe the distinction between Naikan and Kyakkkan is valid.
Changing one's view of the body is not something that can be done overnight. Through practices, one tries to shift one's mindset from Cartesian-Newtonian classical physics to quantum mechanics, so to speak. The real world is based on the former premise, so even if one briefly experiences the latter, one quickly reverts to the former. This cycle repeats. For someone as half-hearted as me, it took a long timen until everything made sense. Once it did, I just thought, 'So that's what it was all about,' and I didn't feel any particular sense of accomplishment. I simply 'understood' the meaning of the practice I had been doing up until then.
Reading D'Orazi's paper, written in English, I find it fascinating to see the struggles she goes through to express bodily activity in a way that breaks away from the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm. I believe there is more to using quantum physics than analogy, but there is always the risk of it becoming too eccentric. This year, I plan to continue reading Karen Barad's "Meeting the Universe Halfway”
Reading D'Orazi's paper, written in English, I find it fascinating to see the struggles she goes through to express bodily activity in a way that breaks away from the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm. I believe there is more to using quantum physics than analogy, but there is always the risk of it becoming too eccentric. This year, I plan to continue reading Karen Barad's "Meeting the Universe Halfway”
