The Phantom that Bloomed on a Temporary Stage: Encounters between Underground Theater and Street Performing Arts in the Urban Space of the 1980s (1980s)

The Phantom that Bloomed on a Temporary Stage: Encounters between Underground Theater and Street Performing Arts in the Urban Space of the 1980s (1980s)

In the 1980s, Tokyo was in the midst of the end of its rapid economic growth and the eve of the bubble economy, and cultural fault lines were being exposed here and there. In this context, the underground theater promoted by Shuji Terayama and Juro Karo, and the street performance that had carried the tradition from Edo (old Tokyo), coincidentally began to intersect in the margins of the city.
Rejecting the institutional space of the theater and throwing their bodies out into the streets and squares, underground theater was a site of urban rebellion that dismantled narratives of nation and family. Meanwhile, street performances, which had been subjected to oblivion in the postwar era, attracted renewed attention with the revival of fairs and festivals, and simple technical arts such as monkey shows, picture-story shows, and juggling sometimes turned into avant-garde productions.
The points of contact appeared around the small theater culture of Kichijoji, Koenji, and Shimokitazawa, or in the spaces of street festivals. The improvisation of expression, the proximity to the audience, and the feast of nonverbal bodies. These elements ignited the sensibilities of the young people, imbued with a sense of physicality and contemporaneity that could not be obtained through institutionalized theater.
The poetic language of the underground and the classical repetition of street performance. At the nexus of these two elements was the desire of those who live in urban anonymity and the essence of the performing arts as a device to laugh at the absence of politics. This interplay, which breathed in the crevices of the city at a time when society was being besieged by institutions and violence, was also a cultural experiment that posed the question of what expression is and what it means to see.
Thus, underground theater and street performance formed a crossroads of memory and the body in the urban space of the 1980s. They were not just art. They resonated with the emotions of the times, weaving another urban story behind the empty prosperity.