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Japanese Counterculture: The Antiestablishment Art of Terayama Shuji
Terayama Shuji (1935-1983) was an avant-garde Japanese poet, dramatist, film director, and photographer known for his highly provocative work. In this inventive and revealing work, Steven Ridgely examines Terayama's life and art to show that a conventional notion of him does not do full justice to the meaning and importance of his wide-ranging, often playful body of work.
Ridgely places Terayama at the center of Japanese and global counterculture and finds in his work a larger story about the history of postwar Japanese art and culture. He sees Terayama as reflecting the most significant events of his young poets seizing control of haiku and tanka in the 1950s, radio drama experimenting with form and content after the cultural shift to television around 1960, young assistant directors given free rein in the New Wave as cinema combated television, underground theatre in the politicized late 1960s, and experimental short film through the 1970s after both the studio system and art house cinema had collapsed.
Featuring close readings of Terayama's art, Ridgely demonstrates how across his oeuvre there are patterns that sidestep existing power structures, never offering direct opposition but nevertheless making the opposition plain. And, he claims, there is always in Terayama's work a broad call for seeking out or creating pockets of fiction-where we are made aware that things are not what they seem-and to use otherness in those spaces to take a clearer view of reality.
Ridgely places Terayama at the center of Japanese and global counterculture and finds in his work a larger story about the history of postwar Japanese art and culture. He sees Terayama as reflecting the most significant events of his young poets seizing control of haiku and tanka in the 1950s, radio drama experimenting with form and content after the cultural shift to television around 1960, young assistant directors given free rein in the New Wave as cinema combated television, underground theatre in the politicized late 1960s, and experimental short film through the 1970s after both the studio system and art house cinema had collapsed.
Featuring close readings of Terayama's art, Ridgely demonstrates how across his oeuvre there are patterns that sidestep existing power structures, never offering direct opposition but nevertheless making the opposition plain. And, he claims, there is always in Terayama's work a broad call for seeking out or creating pockets of fiction-where we are made aware that things are not what they seem-and to use otherness in those spaces to take a clearer view of reality.
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 26, 2016
This isn't without things I disagree with (who can avoid disagreeing over a figure as enigmatic as Terayama?), but overall is a lovely treatment of a number of his most preeminent obsessions and interests. The first chapter studying his tanka will stick out more than all the others here to me, but the study of Pastoral: To Die in the Country was also incredibly fascinating and, intentionally or not, almost seems to argue that it is Terayama's magnum opus above everything else. I would not argue.
October 27, 2019
Frustrating, while it's of course very important to emphasise the environment in which Terayama created, Ridgely seems to spend more time talking about counterculture and merely uses him as a reference point to hang certain things from. There's analysis but only Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets gets significant attention with To Die in the Country getting more focus on the translation of the original poetry's translation to film a decade later. I'd also be tempted to argue Ridgley over analyses, I think what makes Terayama so excellent is that it's entirely possible to experience his movies and at least some of their themes on an almost base or surface level, that they'd work just as much as if they were mined for deepest meaning.
It also spends much too long on Terayama's pre-film work and actively avoids talk of any of his features other than the two previously mentioned and has no real significant biographical context outside of childhood, other than clearing up how he died (kidney disease treatment leading to liver failure).
However we're treated to many excerpts from Teryama's poetry (which is fantastic) as well as many interview fragments which are, obviously, invaluable. I'm definitely glad to see that this is a book that does exist because Terayama is a divine inspiration to me, but this first book on him I've had access to has been sadly unfulfilling.
It also spends much too long on Terayama's pre-film work and actively avoids talk of any of his features other than the two previously mentioned and has no real significant biographical context outside of childhood, other than clearing up how he died (kidney disease treatment leading to liver failure).
However we're treated to many excerpts from Teryama's poetry (which is fantastic) as well as many interview fragments which are, obviously, invaluable. I'm definitely glad to see that this is a book that does exist because Terayama is a divine inspiration to me, but this first book on him I've had access to has been sadly unfulfilling.
August 31, 2020
This is the only book about Shūji Terayama in the English language. With all its flaws (which are not many), it is still a great starting point for someone who wants to discover one of the most interesting artists of the last century.
May 2, 2024
Read this alongside the interview/prose collection "Pier Paolo Pasolini - In Persona" which is not on goodreads. It was definitley interesting to read two completely different examples of non-fiction literature so close to one another.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews