Beyond the Picture Frame: When the Strip Became Art in the 1970s

Beyond the Picture Frame: When the Strip Became Art in the 1970s

In the 1970s, there was one performance that secretly became the talk of the town in a corner of Tokyo. It was called a "frame show," and it was an attempt to transcend the conventional boundaries of the strip and enter the realms of theater and art. In this experiment, a theater company called Tokyo Hollies set up a frame like a picture frame on the stage to limit the audience's gaze, making the show look like a work of art rather than a mere strip show. The naked body was required to be sublimated into a single artistic expression, while still existing there in its rawest form. The show had a new connotation that differed from the traditional sensual spectacle.

Behind the birth of this frame show was a major change in Japanese society at the time: the 1970s was a time when theater, literature, film, and the culture of manners and customs intersected and influenced each other. The rise of underground theater was one example of this, with the "Situation Theater" led by Juro Karo and Shuji Terayama's "The Ceiling Plank," among many others, attempting to break the boundaries of conventional theater space. Their plays were often associated with freak shows and strip theaters, and they devised ways to "direct the gaze" of the audience. The frame shows may have been another experiment in vision and space that emerged from this trend.

On the other hand, the tightening of pornography regulations, including the "lining of the four-and-a-half-tatami-mat fusuma" incident in 1969, was not unrelated to this movement. Amid mounting pressure to crack down on extreme sexual expression, frame shows could be a way to circumvent these regulations by dressing up as "art. In addition, amid the diversification of urban entertainment brought about by rapid economic growth, the strip theater was shifting from being a mere place to undress to an era in which "stage directions" were demanded. The frame show may have been one answer to this cultural wave.

Many people were influenced by or sympathized with the frame shows. Juro Karo blurred the boundary between theater and everyday life with his "Situation Theater," incorporating a freak show-like space as a theatrical venue. Shuji Terayama's works also contain many experiments in the manipulation of the gaze and space. Nagisa Oshima's 1976 film "Ai no Corrida" was an attempt to sublimate actual sexual acts as art by incorporating them into the filmic medium of cinema. The frame show was also an attempt to make the raw expression of stripping an art form through visual restrictions. Striptease star Emma Sugimoto created a highly theatrical performance based on the concept of "stripping without taking off one's clothes," and theaters such as the Asakusa Rockza incorporated singing and theatrical performances to explore new forms of entertainment that were more than mere naked spectacles.

However, the frame shows did not flourish for long, as in the 1980s the strip theater itself began to decline due to stricter regulations in the adult entertainment industry and the rise of no-pants cafes and new forms of entertainment. Even attempts at frame shows eventually faded away quietly. Nevertheless, the spirit of the show remained in the productions of some nightclubs and small theaters, and has been secretly inherited as a form of show that is conscious of the control of the gaze.

The frame show was not a mere striptease. Rather, it was a challenge born of the experimental culture of the 1970s. Juro Karo, Shuji Terayama, Nagisa Oshima, Emma Sugimoto, and countless nameless performers searched for the "boundary between sex and art. Their attempts, which unfolded on the other side of the frame, proved that stripping is not merely an object to be consumed, but can also be a form of theatrical and visual expression. The curtain falls and the stage beyond the picture frame is silent, but the memory of the event remains quietly in a corner of the era.