Behind the Scenes of Women in the Underground: In the Breath of Anti-Establishment in 1971

Behind the Scenes of Women in the Underground: In the Breath of Anti-Establishment in 1971

The underground theater that flourished in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo in the early 1970s was a product of a rare era in which politics and art intersected head-on. As the Security Treaty struggle ended in defeat, university blockades and the collapse of the All-Campus Joint Struggle deepened the sense of frustration among young people, theater was redefined as an outlet for cultural explosions. At the forefront of this movement was the Black Tent Theater Company, along with the Situation Theater (Red Tent) and the Waseda Little Theater.

The Black Tent's stage performances actively introduced unusual techniques such as screaming, improvisation, and nudity. The objective was clear. To destroy the system of everyday life itself, and to break down oppression and deception through the most raw medium of expression, the body. However, this approach was especially hard on the female actors, who had to "stand naked on stage every day. One actress said, "By standing naked on stage day after day, the boundaries within me began to disappear. "I forgot about the cold and the shame, and I lost track of who my body belonged to. It was a liberation of the self and at the same time a loss of self.

Men talk about ideas, but we are on stage with our bodies"-this was a symbolic line of the gender imbalance in the theatrical world at that time. Male directors spoke of ideals, while women were expected to embody these ideals with their bodies. Physical exertion was considered "expression," and at times it was accompanied by coercion and violence in the direction of the production. Nevertheless, the women continued to take pride in their role as "expressionists" and continued to perform on stage.

Life in the black tents was more like the collective life of workers than that of artists. For them, living in buses, eating natto (fermented soybeans) and white rice, and sleeping in small beds were the norm. One former member recalls a night when he cried after being yelled at by the director, and then they all sat around a pot and laughed together, and the warmth of community and pain through theater are intermingled in his voice.

In the early 1970s, Japan was still on the eve of the emergence of feminism as a social movement, and women's voices were often restricted in the theater world. However, what the women experienced backstage at the Black Tent was a site where they were confronted daily with the question of whether their bodies were objects of exploitation or means of liberation. For this reason, the words and attitudes of these women are not merely a part of the performing arts, but also offer profound suggestions for considering contemporary gender issues and the ethics of expression.

These testimonies are more than a record of theater; they are a record of women's struggle for self-expression. What will they say through their bodies? For whom do they stand? These women were searching for the answers to these questions every night on the stage, carving them into their flesh and blood.