Navel and A-Bomb/ Heso to genbaku (Eikoh Hosoe + Tatsumi Hijikata) 1960

Navel and A-Bomb (Heso to genbaku) short film directed by Eikoh Hosoe and Tatsumi Hijikata. In Hosoe Eikoh’s film Navel and A-Bomb, featuring Hijikata Tatsumi and his choreography, the (Japanese) body is connected to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the utter destruction of Japan. Navel and A-Bomb (1960) figures the ’birth’ of a new Japanese identity in the wake of the atomic catastrophe, the subsequent defeat and occupation of Japan. Hosoe met Hijikata the year prior to Navel and A-Bomb. In 1959 Hijikata choreographed and performed Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors), based on the homosexual imagery found in Yukio Mishima’s novel of the same name published in 1951.