Kamaitachi : photographs Eikoh Hosoe, performance Tatsumi Hijikata

Eikoh Hosoe's Kamaitachi, was first published in 1969 as a limited-edition photobook of one thousand copies. The photographs were originally produced as a singular collaboration between photographer and Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of Ankoku Butoh dance. In 1965 Hosoe and Hijikata visited a small farming village in Tohoku, northern Japan. Drawing in the villagers as performaners and using the rural landscape as a theatrical set for an improvisational performance, Hosoe photographed Hijikata's spontaneous interactions with the land and its inhabitants.