Nikutai, Kokutai, and Performance as Protest

This seminar explores how histories and theories of embodiment can frame our understanding of early postwar history, particularly the period 1945-6. It interrogates the idea that this was a period of transition of ideas about the body, from all bodies being governed by the Japanese government to a period of freedom and liberation, as espoused by many male intellectuals of that period. By looking to women intellectuals, such as early butoh dancers Motofuji Akiko and Nakajima Natsu, we see that there are many limitations to using the ‘wartime/postwar’ framing for 20th century Japan: that whilst there were certainly changes to censorship which led to bolder explorations of sexuality, these were combined with continuing policing of bodies by both the Japanese state and the US, and that these realities were different depending on ones’ positionality. This lecture unpacks the nuances of this period of supposedly stark transition through the lens of women dancers, exploring ideas about embodiment, gender, and how movement or performance were a means to create new ways of living in early postwar Japan.

Speaker: Dr Alice Baldock. Alice's research interests include 20th century Japanese history, gender in postwar Japan and the transnational circulation of ideas around ‘the body’. Alice's doctoral research at Wolfson College, Oxford, focused on the intellectual views of a group of dancers in the mid-20th century regarding the body (especially nikutai, or flesh body) and movement. In this research she also showed how dancers to reframe post-war Japanese society in a way that allowed them to live more authentically in a world that was becoming increasingly codified and consumerist. Her current research involves tracing the and the transnational circulation and reception of this body of knowledge, to see how and why these ideas about the body - that involved a complete eradication of hierarchies of gender, ability, and class, became so popular in Japan and then across the world.

The sixth seminar:

Tuesday 16th June 2026, 5–6:30pm, Vivien Stewart Room

Speaker:

Dr Alice Baldock

Title:

Is kokutai dead? Nikutai, kokutai, and performance as protest

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