Installation view of Ryo Kusumoto
“Renjishi"
This work presents a story about the ambiguity and difficulty of loving and being loved, and about the resilience required to forge one’s own path. Likening the life of a Japanese buyo dancer to the famous Kabuki play “Renjishi,” Ryo Kusumoto illuminates the inner world of an artist who has had to overcome repeated struggles in her life.
Fumiko Yamato, the protagonist of Kusumoto’s story, belongs to the avant-garde of a generation of dancers that bloomed in postwar Japan. Still today, in her late 70s, Yamato continues to dance. Her journey is different from that of other dancers in Japan. She has given up everything to pursue her path: her life as an ordinary woman, her place in a prestigious dance group, and even her life on the stage.
The play “Renjishi” is based on an old Chinese legend: A lion tests the strength of its adolescent cub by throwing it down a ravine and observing anxiously if it has the strength to climb back up. The tale be-came popular in Japan, where it flourished as part of a unique cultural environment and was adopted into Noh and Kabuki plays and into Japanese dance.
During his research, Kusumoto came upon one particular photograph. It shows Yamato as a child, her entire body consumed by a hole eaten into the photograph by bugs—a poetic expression of Yamato’s starving for affection at the time.
White the father, crimson the cub.
We hope you enjoy this affectionate and precious single-act play, created through various photographic techniques such as duplication, collage, reproduction and association.
