Performance Collectives in 1960s Japan: With a Focus on the “Ritual School”

This essay focuses on a set of artists’ collectives I call “ritual school.” The ritualist collectives distinguished themselves among numerous performance collectives that emerged throughout Japan from the late 1950s to the late 1960s by their antimodern styles, distinct mode of collectivism that transcended the narrow confines of “art” (bijutsu), and specific social strategies. Among the ritualists, Zero Jigen, which stood out in terms of their numerous performances and contingent styles, and other collectives such as Kokuin and factions of The Play, with other individuals, formed Expo ’70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group (EDG) in 1969. The EDG presented an alternative manner of art collectives in its open “joint-struggle” with other collectives and individuals, as well as in its collaboration with other cultural practitioners and political activists who shared the anarchic, antiinstitutional, and underground cultures in Tokyo and Kyoto in the late 1960s.