In his research into the history of pre- and post-Second World War Japan, Adam Broinowski weaves together ‘histories of the flesh’ (p. 114), situating the aesthetic performing body in relation to its sociopolitical context. This acts as context for considering Japanese ankoko butoh dance and its legacy in the work of Gekidan Kaitaisha, a performance company formed in Tokyo in 1985 by actor–director Shimizu Shinjin and performer–choreographer Hino Hiruko. There is emphasis on what it means to be ‘under occupation’, particularly in the Japanese context, and how social bodies have been reflected or refracted in the aesthetic bodies of butoh and Gekidan Kaitaisha. Japanese practitioners are considered in relation to their avant-garde peers in both Japan and Europe, including the Dadaists, Antonin Artaud and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Chapters 1 and 2 lay out the historical foundations for post-war Japanese society. Broinowski includes a discussion of how film and photographic imagery of the atomic bomb and its victims (hibakusha) appeared in the propaganda of the US and Japanese governments, and in the work of artists and protest groups. The research is detailed and the arguments are convincing, giving voice to many perspectives that consider how hibakusha imagery, used in art and in political propaganda, offers potential to incite, to frighten or to heal.

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on ankoku butoh in the broader context of Japanese society. The butoh body is considered in relation to ideas such as the ‘social grotesque’ (p. 80), the ‘subaltern’ (pp. 92, 96) and ‘blackness’ as linked to the American civil rights movement (pp. 86–8). There is discussion of the Shinto and Buddhist sources detectable in butoh and of how Japanese aesthetic concepts such as wabi sabi inform our understanding of butoh. Wabi sabi is usefully and succinctly defined as ‘asymmetrical imperfection, process over ends, contentment within limits, and ascetic wealth’ (p. 76). Chapter 4 makes a particular contribution to knowledge and understanding of butoh processes and values. The use of imagistic language in the butoh-fu (notation) of founder Hijikata Tatsumi, described by the author as a process of ‘image induction’ (p. 104), has been the subject of a number of previous publications, but Broinowski's discussion is particularly useful, adding new detail and depth. It benefits from his combined experience of performance practice and scholarly research (pp. 104–16).

Chapter 5 discusses how butoh pushed against the normative forces at work in Japan, from the occupying US culture and from tensions within Japan itself over what it meant to be Japanese. ‘To ignore the politicised consciousness in the artistic process of butoh is not only ahistorical but also misses the importance of such questions to human creativity as a mode of participating in society’ (pp. 117–18). Many studies of butoh have briefly referenced the relation between the atomic bomb and butoh aesthetics, but this discussion is more complete and nuanced.

Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the legacy of butoh in the work of Gekidan Kaitaisha, who refer to their work as ‘butoh-sei (derived from butoh principles)’ (p. 191), and whose founder, Hino Hiruko, was a student of Hijikata Tatsumi, founder of butoh. Gekidan Kaitaisha make more direct reference to global events such as the Gulf War, 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ than the earlier butoh artists did. The discussion benefits enormously from Broinowski's embodied experience, having trained and performed with the company, as this informs his historical research.

Including ‘butoh’ in the title would have helped bring the book to the attention of performance practitioners and researchers, as well as historians in Japanese studies or war and conflict studies. The aim of the work is ambitious in attempting to ‘formulate a translocal condition of being “under occupation” beyond fixed concepts of race, identity and national culture to form new lines and planes of collaborative relations’ (p. 192). Each reader will determine whether that ambition was fulfilled, but it has produced a thorough examination of how the body can be ‘occupied’ and also how it can be radical, or ‘a conduit of history and memory’ (p. 191) or a ‘locus of power and identity through which oppressed minorities [might] … speak’ (p. 190). Thorough, incisive and engaging, this book highlights the way body-based artistic works reflect, refract and relate to their sociopolitical context.