Mitsutoshi Hanaga - The Butoh - 1983

The Butoh

Mitsutoshi Hanaga
Gendai Shokan/1983/Japanese/260*185*13

The Butoh / The Butoh” is a collection of photographs by Japanese photographer Mitsutoshi Hanaga. Mitsutoshi Hanaga was an avant-garde photographer active since the postwar 60s. Inspired by his professor's theory that “beauty is found in the grotesque,” Hanegata became a freelance photographer in the early 1960s, documenting contemporary art, butoh, underground theater, small theater movements, events, ceremonies, university struggles, pollution accusations, and other “Japanese gestures”. In recent years, he has been working in the field of photography. In recent years, “Mitsutoshi Hanaga 1000,” a collection of works selected from his vast archive, was released and became a topic of conversation. This book was published in 1983 by Gendai Shokan, which has published numerous collections of subcultural works. It is a rare collection of performance scenes by leading Japanese avant-garde artists such as Tatsumi Hijikata, Min Tanaka, Akaji Maro, and Akira Kasai. The book contains numerous illustrations that symbolize Japanese culture, documenting the avant-garde activities of artists who operated behind the scenes of turbulent postwar Japan.