In 1967, Nicolas Bouvier and Constantin Fernandez produced Hijikata's Egg for Swiss Television. The black-and-white documentary portrays the Japanese choreographer, dancer, and mime Tatsumi Hijikata (1928–1986), who, together with Kazuo Ohno (1906–2010), founded the butō dance movement. The film features photographs taken by Bouvier during his travels in Japan, accompanied by the writer's own commentary.
Hijikata—born Kunio Motofuji Yoneyama—grew up in a rural village in northern Japan before settling in Tokyo. Following the end of the American occupation in 1952, he discovered the writings of Jean Genet and admired them so deeply that he adopted "Hijikata" as his stage name—a word that, in Japanese, refers to the broom shrub (genêt in French), echoing Genet's surname. He later met the dancer Kazuo Ohno, who became one of the movement's most celebrated performers and choreographers.
While in Tokyo, Nicolas Bouvier attended Hijikata's experimental performances. Archaic and radically modern both at once, they left a profound impression on him. Like William Klein, Bouvier also photographed the expressive movements of Kazuo Ohno, whose performances embodied the silent experience of what Hijikata called the "dark body." Today, these photographs have become important historical documents, preserving the memory of an artistic avant-garde that broke decisively with the traditions of Noh and Kabuki—forms of theatre that seemed unable to express or confront the crisis of Japanese identity in the mid-twentieth century.
Hijikata adapted texts by Yukio Mishima without shying away from the writer's provocative vision, and he frequently incorporated live animals into his performances.
Butō invites both performer and audience into a process of introspection, drawing on memory while demanding complete openness to the present moment. Its distinctive language is marked by extreme slowness, minimalist poetic imagery, and bodies that are sometimes covered in earth.
It is easy to understand why Nicolas Bouvier was so deeply moved by this "dance of darkness," whose expressive power transcends language and speaks in universal terms.