humanities

Article
Communication and Violence in the Poetics of Terayama Shūji:
From the Poetic to the Theatric
Shunsuke Okada 1, * and Jason M. Beckman 2

1 Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, Tate 2‑8‑7‑404,
Shiki 353‑0006, Saitama Prefecture, Japan
2 Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University, 521 Memorial Way Knight Building,
Stanford, CA 94305, USA; jason.beckman@stanford.edu
* Correspondence: syunsuke.okada1763@gmail.com

Abstract: This article will focus on the theory of poetics Terayama Shūji develops in Postwar Poetry:
The Absence of Ulysses (Sengoshi: yurishīzu no fuzai, 1965) and Language as Violence (Bōryoku toshite
no gengo, 1970). Postwar Poetry, his first theoretical writings on prose poetry, can be said to be a
book about the poetic communication and “discommunication”—a wasei‑eigo coinage of Tsurumi
Shunsuke’s that Terayama frequently invokes—that occurs in mass communication, stemming from
the conflict with print (katsuji). In this book, Terayama develops not autonomous “monologue”, but
a theory of the taiwa/dialogue of poetry. However, Language as Violence contains not only the taiwa
(dialogue) of his early poetics but the problem of bōryoku (violence) in his later theatrical works and
theory of theater, which becomes an important theme in his body of work. Comparing with Georges
Sorel’s Réflexions sur la violence that he cited, I would like to examine the description of the book’s
titualar violence. As I shed light on Terayama’s poetics and view of language, I will attempt to
establish a connection with his plays and theory of theater.

Keywords: modern Japanese literature; postwar poetry; print industry; mass communication;
experimental theatre

1. Introduction
Citation: Okada, Shunsuke, and
This essay will focus on the theory of poetics Terayama Shūji develops in Postwar
Jason M. Beckman. 2023.
Poetry: The Absence of Ulysses (Sengoshi: yurishīzu no fuzai, 1965) and Language as Violence
Communication and Violence in the
(Bōryoku toshite no gengo, 1970). As I shed light on Terayama’s poetics and view of language,
Poetics of Terayama Shūji: From the
Poetic to the Theatric. Humanities 12:
I will attempt to establish a connection with his plays and theory of theater. I will begin
74. https://doi.org/10.3390/
with an overview of how existing research has developed up to this point, spelling out the
h12040074
key questions and issues.
Existing research on Terayama’s poetics has centered on fixed form verse, which Kuji
Received: 13 January 2023
Kimiyo and Kosuge Makiko have positivistically investigated in the tanka and haiku of
Revised: 2 April 2023
his early adulthood, beginning in his high school years. Regarding his prose poems, I re‑
Accepted: 26 July 2023
fer to Horie Hidefumi, editor of Romii no yoben, who connects Terayama’s prose poetry to
Published: 31 July 2023
his photography in Terayama Shūji’s 1960s: An Indivisible Spirit (2020) and considers the
poetics laid out in Postwar Poems: The Absence of Ulysses, arguing that the terms “dialogue”
(taiwa) that appear in this work constitute an essential piece that can help us understand
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
all of Terayama’s activities (work). According to Horie, through the speech that he enacted
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. through books, things, and the written language during his 1960s “critique period”, Ter‑
This article is an open access article ayama founded Tenjō Sajiki and progressed toward more direct dialogue, transitioning to
distributed under the terms and his “dialogue period” in the 1970s, when he began his theater practice Horie, arguing that
conditions of the Creative Commons the basis for this transition was his “dialogical spirit”.
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// Horie defines Terayama’s concept of dialogue as follows: “the free use of one’s own
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ heart through all possible means, and express it oneself, adapting to the place one is in. This
4.0/). act of expression brings about a transformation in oneself (artwork is created as a product

Humanities 2023, 12, 74. https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040074 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities

Humanities 2023, 12, 74 2 of 19

of this collision)”, pointing out the influence of literary critic Yamamoto Kenkichi’s essay
“The art of dhialōgu (dialogue)”.1
However, as of yet, little critical attention has been given to the development of Ter‑
ayama’s poetics in the wake of Postwar Poetry, or indeed to Terayama’s poetics in their
own right—the sole exception being an essay by Ogura Hitoshi, “When the world sleeps,
words awaken: The “words” of poet Terayama Shūji” (Hitoshi 2014), which investigates
Terayama’s perspective on language but offers only a piecemeal analysis, and it is diffi‑
cult to say that it genealogically theorizes his poetics. This is because while Postwar Poems,
a representative work of Terayama’s poetics, may share commonalities with Language as
Violence, there is an “epistemological break” (Althusser) between them. Further, regard‑
ing the connection between contemporary poetry and theater, Ogura inspects the “form
debate” (yōshiki ronsō) of Ryūichi Hanajiri and Shimaoka Akira, and Terayama’s verse dra‑
mas (shigeki) as entry points into Terayama’s theatrical work, but does not touch on the
contemporaneous meaning of shigeki as a genre, nor on its poetics.
As an exception, Hida Kozue’s “Terayama Shūji and radio drama: poetry and theater,
the possibilities of words” (Kozue 2011) references Terayama’s verse dramas in an outline
of his radio drama (broadcast verse drama) activities. Though I will not go into extensive
detail here, a literary historical perspective, shigeki, from the 1950s until the end of the 1960s,
was a movement in which poets wrote plays (dialogue) that aimed to surpass the poetic
drama that existed in shingeki at the time. The first play that Terayama wrote, Wasureta
ryōbun (Forgotten domain, a one‑act play), was staged at Okuma Hall on 26 May 1956,
at the 8th Midori no Shisai (Green Poetry Festival), put on by Waseda Shijinkai (Waseda
Poets’ Association). The text of Wasureta ryōbun was collected alongside the verse dramas
of Tanikawa Shuntarō, Ōoka Makoto, and Ibaragi Noriko in the Kai Verse Drama Collected
Works (Kishida et al. 1957).
Higuchi Yoshizumi, in “‘Poetic image’, street poetry, street theater: From ‘poem’ to
‘play’—50 years since the formation of Tenjō Sajiki,” identifies the repeated appearance of
genre‑transcending word and image units. Higuchi calls these units shizō (poetic images),
an archetypal poetry that traverses genres:
The story emerges when images are set in continuous motion in unidirectional
time. Terayama attempted to step from poetry into the world of scriptwriting
and radio drama and conceive of time in “poetic image”, but he was not able
to create continuity in his images and kept them fractured. In these fractured
“poetic images” fused together, Terayama aimed not at creating story, but play.
(Yoshizumi 2017, p. 150)
Thus, Higuchi detects a fusion of poetic image and play in Terayama’s radio drama
and verse drama, and theorizes that from this fusion, Terayama leapt into play not when
he merely imbued his poetry with image, but when he gave them temporal persistence.
When he was a young man exploring the dynamism of reality and fiction, aiming to
find expression [kotobazukai], the measure of introducing time summoned the play into
the poem. His plays from that point soon developed into street theater that dramatized
the structures of society and history themselves. Nevertheless, before considering these
“experiments” by Terayama as theatrical experiments, we must first confirm that that they
were experiments with word and image. We now are in a place where we can recreate these
experiments with new media technology, where we can see the development toward play
and story inherent in his poetry (Yoshizumi 2017, p. 151).
Certainly, as Higuchi notes, it is important to consider the transition from the rela‑
tionship between poem and image to play, but in thinking about Terayama’s transition
from poetry to theater, it is necessary to address the fundamental question of what, in the
first place, poetry was to Terayama, and carefully examine the changes in his poetry and
poetics.
Considering the above, in this article, I will trace Terayama’s poetics after he began
writing his prose poem poetics, through his farewell to haiku in the essay
“Carné—(declaration of my severing of relations with haiku)” (December 1956), and his
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 3 of 19

afterword to the poetry collection To die in the country (July 1965) in which he states that
“tanka is a lonely literary form”, distancing himself from monologic fixed‑form poetry
(while acknowledging the importance of “loneliness”), while focusing especially upon the
striking emergence of a connection between communication and media, and with attention
to the violence (bōryoku) that therein emerges.

2. Communication and Mass Communication in Postwar Poetry

As is well known, Terayama made his striking debut at “Chekhov Festival”, which
was announced in Tanka kenkyū, but afterwards, he vigorously dared in his expressive activ‑
ities to traverse genres by writing radio dramas, movie scripts, and plays, and by producing
prose poetry and verse dramas. In 1967, he founded the experimental theater workshop
Tenjō Sajiki, marking the culmination of his turn toward theatrical activities. Terayama
wrote Postwar Poetry precisely in this transition period from poetry to theater.
Postwar Poetry, Terayama’s first work of poetics, was published by Kinokuniya Shin‑
sho in 1965. It was not a magazine serial printed in book form; rather, it was fashioned as
a complete book from start to finish. The book is comprised of five parts: chapter 1: “The
action in postwar poetry”; chapter 2: “Disillusionment as the subject of postwar poetry”;
chapter 3: “The homing organizational structure of poetry circles”; chapter 4: “The starv‑
ing children of parents who write poetry”; and chapter 5: “Considerations for catching a
whale in the study”, with a section at the end titled “Afterword for the people who read
this book in place of a poetry collection”, which collects all of the poems that Terayama
cites so that they can be read as a collection of poems.
In Postwar Poetry, Terayama considers the brightness of Tanikawa Shuntarō (“Good
morning poem”), described within Ōoka Makoto’s theory of poetic history Libertine Geneal‑
ogy (Makoto 1969) as a “festival of sensitivity”, and the colloquial expression of the poetry
of Langston Hughes, translated by Kijima Hajime, as a reaction against the pessimistic,
dark poetry of Arechi poet Ayukawa Nobuo. “Good morning poem” takes an austere
stance against selfish impositions and incestuous collusion (a critique of poetry circles’ soci‑
ety magazines and fan magazines, and the journal Kyoku); even as the poet faces the reader
with “emptiness that accompanies communication” and “discommunication”—a wasei‑
eigo coinage of Tsurumi Shunsuke’s that Terayama frequently invokes—there is simulta‑
neously an insistence that the poet must take on a positive, “good morning” attitude. “Dis‑
communication” comes from Tsurumi’s “Two philosophers: The case of Dewey and the
case of Kan Sueharu.”2 Tsurumi explains: “Communication has two different characters,
communication and discommunication, and should be understood as ‘Communication–
discommunication.’ An analysis of communication that does not at once include an analy‑
sis of the parts of that communication by which meaning is not conveyed is not complete”
(Shunsuke 1991, p. 258), criticizing Dewey’s optimistic view of communication; however,
the vantage point of this dual‑charactered communication is also distinctive of Terayama
Shūji.
When I look at a happy dōjinzasshi3 , I come up against the dreadfully simple
question of “for whom should I be writing?” So, if it is for “self‑help” or merely
for a modest camaraderie among artists (sentimental community), what is the
point of printing it and distributing it to so many people? […] Is it necessary
to proclaim it so? What I call “the problem of the other in dōjinzasshi” is an ex‑
tremely important subject. Figuratively speaking, we inhabit the deserted island
of “modernity”. We chose to be here and so it came to be. And it is our duty to
report that there are humans here, alive, alone, to the people across the ocean.4
From here, Terayama develops not autonomous “monologue”, but a theory of the
taiwa/dialogue of poetry. As he holds onto an admiration for the rugged flesh (“the poet’s
character”) of troubadours like Ulysses, we can see through his notion of “re‑presentation”5
that he is vexed by the inability of print text to make present (Terayama writes that poems
in print “stand for”, but as he cites the “general semantics” popularized in S. I. Hayakawa’s
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 4 of 19

Language in Thought and Action [1949], it is evident that he was captivated by the “map” as
opposed to the “site”).
Postwar Poetry is distinctive not because it theorizes a literary appraisal of poetry;
rather, it theorizes poetry from the perspective of its transmission and communication to
the reader. It is at once more of a poetics approach, but also contains an aspect of mass
communication and media theory. Particularly striking is the fact that Terayama points
out the merits and demerits of the invention of Gutenburg’s printing press as he cites the
words of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, known for opening City Lights, which published Alan
Ginsburg’s Howl:
The printing press standardized “words”, was useful for the development of
knowledge, and before long gave birth to “big communication.”6
Printing technologies “enabled words, which played an essential role in emotional
transmission, to travel further, to reach more people”, but on the other hand, also con‑
tributed to the “standardization of ‘words’” that accompanied hyōjungo. The “big com‑
munication” of publishing strips away the nuance of words that are meant to convey the
“delicate emotions” that exist within people, and the result is the danger that “everything
ends up cast in a lead mold of the same size”, Terayama surmises, searching the possibil‑
ities of direct poetry and the vocal quality (nikuseisei) of words. This orientation toward
printed text and voice comes through via Orality and Literacy (1982), in which Walter J. Ong
identifies the harmful influences of print technologies:
Print encourages a sense of closure, a sense that what is found in a text has been
finalized, has reached a state of completion. This sense affects literary creations
and it affects analytic philosophical or scientific work. Before print, writing itself
encouraged some sense of noetic closure. By isolating thought on a written sur‑
face, detached from any interlocutor, making utterance in this sense autonomous
and indifferent to attack, writing presents utterance and thought as uninvolved
with all else, somehow self‑contained, complete. Print in the same way situates
utterance and thought on a surface disengaged from everything else, but it also
goes farther in suggesting self‑containment. […] The printed text is supposed to
represent the words of an author in definitive or ‘final’ form. For print is com‑
fortable only with finality. Once a letterpress form is closed, locked up, or a
photolithographic plate is made, and the sheet printed, the text does not accom‑
modate changes (erasures, insertions) so readily as do written texts. By contrast,
manuscripts, with their glosses or marginal comments (which often got worked
into the text in subsequent copies) were in dialogue with the world outside their
own borders. They remained closer to the give‑and‑take of oral expression. The
readers of manuscripts are less closed off from the author, less absent, than are
the readers of those writing for print. (Ong 1982, pp. 129–30)
As is stated in the quotation above, text produced by printing is not only disconnected
from dialogue (taiwa); it also creates a sense of being closed off. Terayama was already
critically aware of this closed‑off quality (heisasei), and the question of how to surmount it
is the most prominent theme of Postwar Poetry.
Terayama describes two types of classifications of dialogues in Postwar Poetry: “inter‑
nal dialogues”, collisions with the self, and “external dialogues”, collisions with the other.
In Horie’s analysis of Terayama, “dialogue” does not start and end with simple talking; it
is a way of being that actively incorporates questions and provocations with another.
Considering the intentionality of dialogue that exists in language, I would like to draw
attention to the way Terayama’s view of language responds to the thinking of Mikhail
Bakhtin, who similarly evaluates the dialogic aspect of language and literature; however,
what I will highlight is Bakhtin’s critique of poetic language as monologic, and the theory
that emerges within “Discourse in the Novel” (1934–1935)7 and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Po‑
etics (1929) that in the novels of Dostoevsky, for the first time written language becomes
polyphonic, a quality that leads Bakhtin to see the novel as the superior literary form.
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 5 of 19

Bakhtin, who believes that “every word is directed toward an answer,”8 offers the
following critique of poetry: “In genres that are poetic in the narrow sense, the natural
dialogization of the word is not put to artistic use, the word is sufficient unto itself and
does not presume alien utterances beyond its own boundaries. Poetic style is by conven‑
tion suspended from any mutual interaction with alien discourse, any allusion to alien
discourse.”9 As Bakhtin continues, he furthers develops the idea of poetic language as a
monologic, and not dialogic, form:
To take responsibility for the language of the work as a whole at all of its points
as its language, to assume a full solidarity with each of the work’s aspects, tones,
nuances—such is the fundamental prerequisite for poetic style. […] The poet
is not able to oppose his own poetic consciousness, his own intentions to the
language that he uses, for he is completely within it and therefore cannot turn it
into an object to be perceived, reflected upon or related to. Language is present
to him only from inside, in the work it does to effect its intention, and not from
outside, in its objective specificity and boundedness.10
In his commentary for the Japanese edition, translator Itō Ichirō distills Bakhtin’s
thinking on the monologic nature of poetic language; thus:
Bakhtin captures the unitary and monologic nature of poetic language as an em‑
bodiment of a centripetal force of language and centralizing thought. These
are things that primarily manifest in a formulaic genre that is self‑sufficiently
bounded. In contrast, Bakhtin finds the embodiment of centrifugal force of lan‑
guage and decentralizing thought in the genre of the novel.11
Bakhtin, who identifies poetry as a bounded form, according to Itō explains the
difference between both sides as “the fundamental difference between novelistic
discourse and poetic language is that the linguistic consciousness that sustains
the novel possesses a pluralistic coexistence of languages capable of destroying
solipsism from within.”12
In Incomplete Polyphony: Bakhtin and the Russian Avant‑Garde (1990), translator and
Bakhtin scholar Kuwano Takashi offers the following insight by contrasting two represen‑
tative “philosophers of dialogue,” Martin Buber13 and Bakhtin:
for example, in Buber’s case, God, who is “the eternal Thou”, is indispensable,
and many dialogues tend to “unity” and “harmony,” while Bakhtin “dialogue”
can also mean dispute, conflict, ‘decentralization,’ the negation of the identity of
all things. In other words, stable identity is not confirmed through this dialogue
as dispute; rather, it guides the way to circumstances of co‑creation, the rediscov‑
ery of the other within the self. Only then can meaning be created between the
other and the self. (Takashi 1990, p. 13)
Further, Kuwano explains how we might understand the weight Bakhtin places on
difference over agreement:
Bakhtin’s dialogue does not ultimately aim for consensus, but rather the accep‑
tance of difference [sai], and celebration of difference, the deliberate exchange of
dispute, conflict. That difference exists is essential; only when there is mutual
difference—only when an “other” exists—or to be more precise, only when dif‑
ference and difference come into dialogue can meaning [imi] come to be. […]
When two side agree, that is, when the dialogue is over, it is almost as though ev‑
erything dies. Only within boundless dialogue, only when difference and contra‑
diction are carried on can the character [jinkaku] of a meaningful existence [yūimina
sonzai] continue to be. The dialogic philosophy I ought to follow is oriented to‑
ward this endeavor of actively finding meaning in contradiction. (Takashi 1990,
pp. 13–14)
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 6 of 19

There is, however, a likeness to Terayama in the respect that this philosophy is not
relativistic, seeing the mere existence of difference as sufficient, but instead finds value in
the encounter between differences.
Whereas Bakhtin criticizes poetry as monologic, Terayama specifically seeks out di‑
alogue in the expressive mode of the poem. Following Postwar Poetry, his epic poem
Rikōjun14 was serialized in the magazine Gendaishi. In an essay titled “column for Rikōjun”
collected in Minna wo okorasero: To offend everyone! (Shūji 1966a), Terayama explains “before
I started writing, I had painted a grand image in my mind of an epic like Homer’s Odyssey.
But once I actually started to write, what came out was all of this sadness and gloom. […]
At first I thought it would be ‘more of an interesting epic than a novel,’ but in that regard
the work was a failure.” (Shūji 1966a, p. 196). Though he himself called it a failure, in the
sense that he “downgraded” the lofty form of the epic poem by representing the life of a
minority figure (the titular Rikōjun, a youth born to a North Korean father and who ends
up killing his own mother), this “failure” was at least to a degree by design. Yet, his later
novel, Aa, kōya: Ah, Wilderness, (Shūji 1966b), is comparatively the more polyphonic text.
Terayama’s intention to seek out otherness and dialogue in poetry is apparent in the
fourth chapter of Postwar Poetry, “Parents who write and their children who die starving”.
To begin with, the title of the chapter is in response to a quip from Sartre in an interview
published in Le Monde: “The writer must stand on the side of the two billion starving in
the world today, even if means he must abandon literature to do so.”15 . Having titled an
included chapter title that suggests it may answer this question, Terayama writes about
German author Erich Kästner’s Doktor Erich Kästners Lyrische Hausapotheke: Doctor Erich
Kästner’s Lyrical Medicine Chest (Kästner 1936). About this poetry collection, written on the
concept on healing the heart through poetry, Terayama sets up the question “Is poetry
useful?” (shi wa yaku ni tatsu ka) and writes:
While Kästner knows that essentially poetry is not something that is useful, he
uses terms like “lyrical medicine.” Thus, whatever medicine (poem) one takes
out from the chest, what is written there is not something that was meant for
treatment, but rather something filled with Kästner’s own sentimentality and
contradictions.16
Poems are written to be useful to the person who wrote them, and they exist
in order to step into a new world through the experience of writing. Yet, even
if there are no “useful poems”, there is such thing as “a heart that makes use
of poetry”. This is ultimately a problem for the receiver, something of a social
principle meant to pull a function out from behind the poetry.17
We can discern from these descriptions the sense that Terayama opposed viewing po‑
etry as a tool; however, they also suggest that he was conscious of questions of readers’
attitudes of reception (active involvement) and how much language approaches the exis‑
tence of the reader.
In Postwar Poetry, Terayama’s awareness of the reader’s involvement in the poem is
also made apparent by his inclusion of pop song lyrics as poetry (vexing as it may be that
it would not be possible without the mediating agent of the singer between the songwriter
and the listener). Terayama’s view of language, as we have observed it thus far, emerges
amid the backdrop of his publishing a succession of well‑known works—Seishun no meigen
(Shūji 1968) and its revised edition, Poketto ni meigen o (Shūji 1977), Otoko no shishū (Shūji
1966c), Tabi no shishū (Shūji 1973), and Nihon dōyōshū: “Aoi me no ningyō” kara “Karajishi
botan” made (Shūji 1972)—a view of language that attaches importance to the cathartic ele‑
ment of poetry, the language of poetry closing in on existence.
In this way, as Terayama enacted a dialogue with poets of his time through writing his
poetics, his poetics intrinsically also contained a critical awareness of media and mass com‑
munication and questions of language and the other (the reader). At the same time, there
is also a simplicity to Postwar Poetry, likening the back‑and‑forth of dialogue and commu‑
nication to a game of catch. In the following section, I will examine how the issues at the
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 7 of 19

heart of Postwar Poetry are taken up more radically as Terayama explores the possibilities
of language in Language as Violence.

3. Language as Violence
3.1. In Relation to Sorel’s Reflections on Violence
From 1968–1969, the years that followed experimental theater company Tenjo Sajiki’s
founding, “Language as Violence” was serialized in Gendaishi Techō. It was published by
Shichōsha in 1970 as Language as Violence: Toward poetics at the speed of 100 kph, and then later
reprinted in July 1983. The only previous research conducted about this work consists of
playwright Shimizu Kunio’s rather critical review in Gendaishi Techō, “Beyond smashed
and shattered plates: Terayama Shūji’s Language as Violence”, and Furuhashi Nobuyoshi’s
review of the book in Kokubungaku: Research on interpretation and teaching materials. No
other pieces of research can be found that focus solely on this work.
In Anglophone research, Steven C. Ridgely notes that Terayama was influenced by
Georges Sorel’s theory of violence (Ridgely 2010). While deciphering the boxing novel Aa,
kōya (Ah, wilderness), he states that the communication of violence is represented here. He
pointed out that graffiti was incorporated into this novel and Terayama’s 1971 film Sho o
suteyo machi edeyō (Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets) because Terayama was aim‑
ing for direct words rather than printed characters and evaluated the authors anonymity.
Certainly, the openness of graffiti was discussed in the five chapters of Language as Violence.
However, it is also important to consider the change from previous poetics and Terayama’s
definition of violence, and how its function leads to subsequent theatrical activities.
Whereas the poetics of Postwar Poetry take up the actual conditions of poets contem‑
porary to Terayama and critique (speak to) them, Language as Violence is unique in the way
that it voraciously incorporates experimental film and performance, the experimental na‑
ture of jazz and methodologies of organizational structure—the actualities of media other
than poetry. As such, without restricting himself to poetry as the sole form of expression,
the poetics of Language as Violence expand in scope to encompass a diverse range of expres‑
sive mediums.
Before drilling down into the contents of each chapter and detailing the transforma‑
tions in Terayama’s poetics, I would first like to examine the description of the book’s titular
violence. The beginning of the foreword to Language as Violence touches on a boxing mag‑
azine featuring All‑Japan Featherweight Champion Baby Gustillo on the cover, invoking
an image of violence, which Terayama describes “the metaphysics of violence”.
As I often flipped through the pages of this magazine, I started to wonder whether
I could begin to think about the metaphysics of violence. Because even if it is
something underpinned by creative hatred, unmistakably it is considered to be
a unique social phenomenon written into history. Of course, the violence I refer
to here is not in the vein of Savinkov’s political assassination or Takakura Ken’s
Abashiri revenge; nor am I interested at present in what Sorel calls violence—or
general strikes. It is instead how much the possibilities of language, and indeed
the violence that mediates it, awakens the nature of people. Language can be a
murder weapon. But is language no more than an instrument (dōgu)? Or can lan‑
guage as a thing (mono), through the process of being redefined into an concept
(koto), turn from a murder weapon into violence?18
In Réflexions sur la violence, Sorel posits two classifications of violence: violence,
which is directed upward, and force, which is directed from above to below—in
other words, authority. To put language in those terms, it feels as though print
text is authority and spoken language is violence.19
These descriptions are a clear continuation of Terayama’s critique of printed text from
Postwar Poetry, but this is the first time that he cites Georges Sorel’s Réflexions sur la violence.
Sorel separates power into two categories: in opposition to “force” (authority, legal
force), which comes down from above, what Sorel calls “violence” is not physical, but in
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 8 of 19

reality “myth” used as a means to exert actual influence, the “organizing of images” (imēji
no soshikika) as a strategy.
the object of force is to impose a certain social order in which the minority gov‑
erns, while violence tends to the destruction of that order. The bourgeoisie have
used force since the beginning of modern times, while the proletariat now reacts
against the middle class and against the State by violence.20
a distinction should be drawn between the force that aims at authority, endeav‑
ouring to bring about an automatic obedience, and the violence that would smash
that authority.21
Réflexions sur la violence was received favorably by camps on both extremes of the
political left and right.22 If carefully read, it is clear that Sorel’s ideas about seizing authority
are opposed to fascism, but it is said that the “abuse” of his ideas stems from his concept
of the “sublime”, which will be subsequently discussed.
From the point of view of intellectual history, in Benjamin’s “Questions” (Imamura
1995), Imamura Hitoshi inspects the influence that Sorel’s theory of violence took from
Bergson’s “affective life” and the effect that it had on Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”.
It is said that Benjamin takes up the mantle from Sorel’s opposition of force versus
violence as he contrasts the “mythic violence” that establishes the law and produces au‑
thority with the “divine violence” of justice that extinguishes the violence of nation and of
the law. Benjamin, however, overcomes the issue of the sublime, that proved to be a weak
point for Sorel, in building his theory of Gewalt that overcomes the law.
Imamura argues that Sorel’s notion of the sublime intended to reconstruct the celibate,
a diligent production‑oriented ethos of capitalism, while this time charging proletariats
and manufacturers as its executors. For that reason, Sorel places an emphasis on trans‑
forming the soul and humanity’s interiority, which inadvertently affirms the devotion and
self‑sacrifice of soldiers and the morale (here, not “moral” but rather something closer to
“morale”) that accompanies the fanatic passions in conditions of combat. Without going
into a long digression regarding Imamura’s analysis of Benjamin, I will note that Imamura
observes in his awareness of a need to “overcome the law” and to ward off nationalism
that Benjamin was able to avoid the dangers entrenched in Sorel’s thinking.
Further, according to Imamura’s commentary in the Japanese translation of Sorel’s
Réflexions sur la violence, “Sorel’s greatest quality lies in his coupling of the class struggle
and morale,” summarizing it as follows:
A basic tenet of morale is fervent passion; the class struggle too must be guided by
intense emotion. The fervent passion needed for the general strike, the soldier‑
like discipline that fights the class struggle, for Sorel, was equivalent to the heroic
deeds of a Homeric hero in epic poetry. It is precisely the morale of the struggle
(encompassing both passion and discipline) that ignites this kind of life that Sore‑
lian violence signifies. Sorel’s concept of violence has nothing to do with ordinary
violence—the power of brute force and weapons; his “violence” would be better
described as “intense strength of spirit”. The stirring up of human passions, in‑
tense excitement that is almost one with heroic action, the élan vital of risking
death in order to realize a goal, the excavation of morale from the traditions of
heroic acts handed down by the people, and the spiritual activity and uplifting
of life that refines it and, in essence, gives birth to myths in the epic sense—this
is “violence.” Self‑regulation is required for the practitioners of soldier’s actions
and class struggle, but that self‑regulation itself is another form of morale, and is
also violence in the sense that it requires an investment of fervent spirit. (Sorel
2007, p. 287)
It is quite interesting that Imamura reaches for the image of Homer and epic poetry to
explain Sorel’s concept of “violence”. The “metaphysical violence” that Terayama envis‑
ages also employs this type of “intense strength of spirit” in the pursuit of the possibilities
of language and attempt to appeal to people. Yet, in contrast to how Sorel aimed at the
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 9 of 19

revolution of morals and the human spirit through the general strike and pursued the sub‑
lime morale that could lead to the salvation of society, Terayama did not necessarily pursue
the sublime of the epic poem. To the contrary, many of the debut performances of the ex‑
perimental theater workshop Tenjō Sajiki, beginning with Aomori‑ken no semushi otoko (The
hunchback of Aomori, 1967), which catabolizes elements of the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex
and the traditional naniwabushi, features the degradation of the sublime (Bakhtin) (Yōko
2018). In this respect, Terayama sees through Sorel’s shortcoming and applies resistance
against it, theorizing a violence of language from the aspect of communication. Regarding
print materials as a form of top‑down transmission (typeface), he poses “violent” poetry
as a different manner of being for language. To return to Language as Violence, Terayama
expresses a clear prescription for how he views the attitude of the poet:
In print is somewhat of a nuance of “something that is bestowed”, and there is
only a unilateral angle in such a perspective. Indeed, as McLuhan and others
have observed, print is pregnant with the possibility that “as a uniform char‑
acter expands, it prompts the homogenization of diverse territories and is ulti‑
mately linked to nationalism”. This possibility is precisely what language af‑
fords, through the image of the power of print. I cannot believe that poets hold
authority, but in the case that a poet becomes famous, that fame is clearly owed to
the power of the printing press to rapidly disseminate information. We all share
a media context in which the fact of fame itself is a form of authority, and for pre‑
cisely that reason, we do not enjoy the same freedom with regard to language
as the troubadours in the era before handwritten manuscripts. That uniformity
assigns class hierarchy to language and further limits the status of speech.
Borrowing for the moment the term “defense of violence”, I believe that the
poet is free to resist this fate for language through the use of language itself.
This is a calling out to the very soul of humanity, buried under the ashes to
“speak, through violence what will stir up the ashes and let the blaze surge forth”
(Georges Sorel, “Letter to Daniel Halévy”). The conditions for violence exist only
in spoken language.23
Terayama identifies the oppositional stance of language to resist the authority of print
as the poet’s freedom. Still, on the other hand, the poet is naturally placed in a role that
is oriented towards a reader (receiver), and in an effort to update the debate surrounding
the dialogue in Postwar Poetry, I will discuss a wide range of Terayama’s writings about
the relationship between poetry and “the reader”.
Poetry is an experience. There is no difference between poetry and, for instance,
smoking a cigarette, chatting, the ding of the cash register when it clacks open,
thickly layering Jockey Club Pomade on your head. If the sleeping words aren’t
awakened, poetry will not begin. Poetry lies within even in the words written in
books, but must wait for the planned adventure of the reader who flips, impromptu,
through the pages, before poetry can it become. Any poem that is left inside of a
closed book is dead. Poetry cannot be; it can, at any point, become. Isn’t that true,
Homer? The poet installs words inside of books, and has no choice but to wait
for a reader to pass by and receive them, turning them into poetry.24
Terayama regularly employs the logic that poetry does not “exist” but rather “be‑
comes”25 and employs it as well in the context of ie [the home] and engeki [performance]
in Gendai no seishunron kazokutachi/kedamonotachi (A theory of contemporary youth: Fam‑
ilies, beasties, 1963, later retitled Iede no susume [In praise of running away from home]).
A piece titled “Modern street poetry” [machi no gendaishi] in Postwar Poetry contains a mo‑
ment in which Terayama states “poetry is not something that ‘is,’ but rather something
that ‘becomes.’ Any word, in the state of having ‘become’ poetry, can shake the hearts of
people even more than one of A. Rimbaud’s turns of phrase,”26 but this verbiage is all the
more pronounced in Language as Violence. What is called “poetry” is realized not only in
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 10 of 19

the poet’s (writer’s) self‑righteous value system, but a phenomenon born out of the poet’s
relationship with the reader (receiver).
Poetry that is conceived of from the first and completed as writing, outside of the
field that establishes “the poem as a relationship,” can contain the writer–reader
relationship only within the poet.27
We can understand the above as a critique of the self‑containment internal to the poet.
This critique also poses what should be considered a prototype of the “fashioning of an‑
other world” that is often mentioned within drama theory. Still, it is interesting that in
proposing the idea of “poetry as a relationship”, Terayama is greatly influenced by other
media and artworks. For instance, immediately following this passage, Terayama men‑
tions Andy Warhol’s experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966). The “split screen” film is ex‑
perimental in its use of two separate screens, onto which different images are projected;
however, the two entirely unrelated videos’ audio streams are decided based upon the
projectionist’s whims on the day of the screening. For that reason, this artwork cannot
be evaluated based upon its degree of completion; what instead occurs is that “the film
comes to be” through “the physiology of the film and the engineer and the conditions for
the audience.”28 As Terayama continues, “it’s really become a superstition to say that it
all comes down to a film’s production value,”29 and Terayama regards a film’s conditions
as not independently determined through the film itself but rather as something that is
established through its relationality with the audience.
However, through taking the composite nature of film as sōgōgeijutsu [Gesamtkunst‑
werk, or a “total work of art”] and giving it a partialized existence, I am intrigued
by precisely the “film‑like incident” that comes to be between the screen and the
audience. For Andy Warhol, film was already not mono [thing], but koto [event].
[…] transforming American art that was no more than mono into koto, in its at‑
tempt to play an explosive role in America’s material civilization, I discovered
the role of the image as violence.30
Affirming the event (koto) that becomes (naru) rather than the thing (mono) that is (aru),
is the negation of the independent nature of poetry. Then, what becomes necessary to
break through everydayness that regards things that are as self‑evident, is the violence on
the part of the reader, evident in the following:
Reading while running—that is to say, in the reader’s engagement with the poem,
it is possible for this to be a violent approach.31
Terayama, believing that “a poem cannot just be the ‘private property’ of its writer;
a poem can only come to be through the shared experience of it,”32 conceives of “a poem
read while running”. Terayama continues that “the issue at the heart of ‘a poem read while
running’ is not one of the reader as a substructure; it is rather an idea for the purpose of re‑
moving the class structure from the poetic space shared by poet and reader.”33 Extending
the freedom of the action of reading, Terayama envisages a way to remove the class struc‑
ture from the unilateral communication (authority) between the writer and the reader who
receives the communication.
“There, after a violent harmony exists between them, is it not nostalgia for epic poems,
in their original sense, that emerges as a subject after the damage?”34 Within the collision
between the writer, or in fact the poem, and the reader, value exists in the experience that
is acquired as a result. Regarding how the poem is symbolically delivered to the reader,
Terayama offers the following, tracing through the history before the invention of print:
The problem is, rather, a “theory of readership”. Thinking about how poetry
comes to be by means of the reader, I naturally feel a pang of nostalgia for the
age of improvising poets [sokkyō shijin].35
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 11 of 19

Though Terayama writes that a relationality with the reader is born out of the recogni‑
tion that “there is no independence in modern poetry,”36 it is not something that is limited
to poetry. It seems he proposes that all manner of art is born within relationality.
Poetry cannot stand on its own.37 Coltrane’s jazz, Tinguely’s sculpture, Kenneth
Anger’s films too cannot stand on their own. Art cannot be stand on its own—
only humans can. The wish for “another world” to exist independently within
a single book is, in a manner of speaking, the fantasy of a poet. Words demand
flesh, books hold the opportunity of a tacit agreement with the eyes. A poem be‑
comes independent not within language, but within the experience that bridges
where the poet ends and where the reader begins.38
The poet can speak himself (jibun wo kataru), using every means at our disposal
today. As a lifelong friend to words, he can even give them character. But the
“means” (shudan) he chooses cannot stand on their own. And when poets, in spite
of this, attempt to make poetry walk the path of independence—this is where we
can say that the ruin of modern poetry began.39
In this way, whereas Postwar Poetry takes the poet as its subject, we see how Language
as Violence adopts a reception theory‑type perspective of the poem through its relationship
to the reader. In the ensuing section, I will examine Terayama’s relational thinking about
“violence” and “action” in the context of the modern poetry of his time.

3.2. The Violence (Bōryoku) and Action (Kōi) of Modern Poetry in Terayama’s Time
Soeda Kaoru, in “Literature as action: The “poetic radicalism” of the 60s, summarizes
the state of poetry and poetics over the ten‑year period between 1965 and 1974, proposing
that it was an era “in which it was an association was theorized that to do literature was
equal to taking ‘action’,” (Kaoru 2005) citing Amazawa Taijirō as a poet representative of
this idea.40
Amazawa was perhaps strongly influenced by Maurice Blanchot, who wrote that “all
language is violence,”41 writing in “Gengo hyōgen wo koete ‘kaku koto’ no bōryoku e”
(Transcending linguistic expression, toward the violence of “writing”, 1969) that “In the
establishment of writing, expressions in our world are poetry, already transcending ex‑
pression, and begin to exist as resolute violence” (Amazawa 1970), which Soeda analyzes
as follows:
This type of expression is symbolic in two respects. It calls into question the
essence of not “what is written” [kakareta mono] but rather the act of “writing”
[kaku koto], and at the same time contains the unique ethical perspective that the
act of “writing” [kaku] necessarily must transcend “what is written”, or in other
words, expression (text). These two points more or less express, quite characteris‑
tically, one end of the current of thought that appeared in our country’s contem‑
porary poetry scene from the 1960s.42
Further, Soeda theorizes three reasons behind the actual violence among the poets
of this era. The first is that the global influence of existential ideology made it possible
for expression to incite of real action. As the second, Soeda points to stylistics (buntairon)
that evaluate the actional quality of the novel style through the act of writing, rejecting the
value Etō Jun places on real emotion (jikkan), detached from shishōsetsu‑like action in Sakka
wa kōdō suru (Jun 1959). The third is the publication of Yoshimoto Takaaki’s Gengo ni totte
bi to wa nanika (Takaaki 1965).
However, as Soeda critiques Amazawa’s poetics, he cites Amazawa as an “artist who
bore the mark of the [60s] era, an expressionist putting his entire existence into his expres‑
sion,” seeing in Amazawa the limits and the “beginning of the virtual end of ‘literature as
action’ [kōi toshite no bungaku],” and outlining the problematics of Amazawa’s approach as
follows:
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 12 of 19

for the violence of writing is not merely a kind of violent expression within the
topos of language; in Amazawa, it is also accompanied by a radical expression of
thought, clearly entrenched in the extension of political Gewalt. To put it another
way, here all of the thought expressed was only something of a nature that, by
alienating the experiential basis of writing from itself, attempts to ensure only
the live sense of the act of writing. For me, the leap in logic reflects something
exceedingly dangerous beyond selection.43
Soeda stated that the concept of “the violence of writing” holds at its root how
Amazawa actually positioned himself in the midst of the Tōdai (the University of Tokyo)
student struggle, and it is as though, in fact, it sharply resonated with the foundation of his
poetic works, or rather, his “work acts”[sakuhin kōi].44 As he points out, the problem with
this “work action theory” is that in the vast amount of “non‑work action” that follows after
the “work action” has ended, it becomes impossible to find any evidence of the expression.
This theory naturally could not be created without an anti‑quotidian space: the real stage
of the university struggle.45
As Soeda states, Amazawa was criticized by Sugaya Kikuo, Kitagawa Tōru, and the
other members of Kyōku. Terayama’s violence, in contrast to that of Amazawa, was not
limited to the “work act”, an action that occurs on the part of the author; rather, Terayama
conceived of poetry comprised of interaction (sōgo kōi). It is due to the versatility of this
conception of poetry that led him increasingly toward theatrical work.

4. From “the Poetic” toward “the Theatric”

Henceforth, I would like to examine the ideas of co‑creation and collective creation
that Terayama develops in chapter two “Shūdan ni yoru shi” (Poetry by Collective) and
chapter three “Kijutsu sarenai shi” (Unwritten Poetry) of Language as Violence. In these
chapters, Terayama writes of his “idea of ‘a single poem’ assembled by a group”.
For reading den huntsmen, who are set in their thinking that poetic thought must
maintain dialogue with the interiority and stand opposed to the logic of a group,
dialogue already exists in two different dimensions—“dialogue with the inte‑
rior” and “dialogue with the exterior”—and it would be an incredibly reckless
enterprise to attempt to grasp their simultaneity within the soul. So, for film,
as a group artform, even if it leaves the impression that it is underpinned by
the distant, large pieces of devotion contributed by single individuals, it doesn’t
quite work that way for a poem. The conventional wisdom is that a single poem
does not allow for the intervention of group logic—the division of the labor of
language and totality of subject, as it were.46
We can recognize in this chapter, which makes reference to bebop jazz (improvisa‑
tional performance) and beat generation poetry, Terayama’s strong interest in collective
creation and improvisation, but as is evident in his suspicion toward the uniqueness and
signature‑like quality of individual authorship, we can also see his disavowal of poetry’s
independence:
“Poetry by collective” has many different circuits. They are overflowing with
passages. To capture another in words and write a poem, in other words, should
make the reader aware of the definitive answer to the question “What can be done
in a poem?”47
From the above, we can discern that at this point in time, Terayama valued language
born amid involvement with the other and his “hope that the ‘closed in’ thinking of poetry
will bring out an ‘open’ world,” more so than the completeness of the work born of a single
author.
I, however, would also like to call attention the following passage by Nakai Masakazu:
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 13 of 19

In an airplane movie, there is a cut of an engineer hammering—clang claaaang—

on the enormous body of a China Clipper. He calls out helloooooo and listens,
waiting for the echo. His friendly expression is unforgettable. It was as if a hu‑
man body had become giant, and he was listening for the sound of blood coursing
through it. In this very desire to find a part of himself within the machine rest
the hope of the modern human, to impel humankind to even higher heights.
Collective artwork stands on both legs of such a human, atop the emotion the
flows through humanity’s depths. (Masakazu 1981, p. 190)
By today’s standards, this short treatise, in which Nakai describes that “one of the
joys of collective art is that, while individuals work devotedly on their own, it neverthe‑
less gives the feeling of a similar species of inquisitiveness, as though are participating in a
large, distant part of something greater,”48 is relatively optimistic toward mechanized civ‑
ilization. Still, even prior to this essay Nakai turned his attention toward collective art in
criticism and film beginning with “Iinkai no ronri” (Masakazu 1936), becoming the thinker
most commonly known to have reconceptualized the ideas from the perspective of media
and communication. Terayama read the collective artwork theory of the previous genera‑
tion widely and is thought to have used it in formulating his own concept of collectivity.
In a previous study, Horie Hidefumi cites the 1975 conversation between Terayama
and Matsuda Osamu, “Kayō/meikyūsekai no kanōsei,” emphasizing that Terayama was
against the “collective monologue” of song (Shūji and Osamu 1975), but it is on the other
hand his attention to this kind of collectivity and community that was necessary in his
transition to theatrical work. In reality, at the end of chapter two, Terayama writes of
renku (wordplay in which authors alternate writing lines of poetry in a seven‑five format)
that the completeness of the poetry notwithstanding, we cannot overlook the possibilities
discovered in the process that brings forth one’s own words (poetry) through the medium
of the words of another.
Regarding renku and communication, Horikiri Minoru has remarked that “renku are
made jointly by members of a group [za], a form of synlogue [shinrōgu] (harmony).49 Speak‑
ers and listeners change places. Yet, it is not communication by direct mutual exchange,
like a game of catch; rather, the position of communication flows indeterminately, like a
volleyball being passed around a circle” (Minoru 2002, p. 12). Further, Hirosue Tamotsu
has pointed out the following regarding the coincidence and dialogue‑like quality of renku:
in the association formed between the previous line and the next, is coincidence.
For the person who adds a line, the previous line is a coincidence, something
that cannot be predicted until that moment. And renku is the act of seizing this
coincidence as active possibility. Through being mediated by the image of an
unforeseeable other, latent possibilities materialize. It resembles the liberatory
relationship of being freed from subjective monologue through the form of dia‑
logue. Only, when making use the image of the other and transforming it into a
new image of one’s own, it is not an act of subordinating oneself to the other, but
finding a passage to the other. Here, a relationship is forged between tensions of
discontinuity and continuity that breaks through typical association. (Tamotsu
1993, p. 198)
It is important to note that in the above, within the dialogue‑like creation of renku
is something close to the creation process (collective creation) that occurred in the work
of Tenjo Sajiki (I will also note, to link this to the previous section, that Bakhtin scholar
Kuwano Takashi contributed commentary for the end of Hirosue’s book, praising Hiro‑
sue’s theorization of dialogic creation).
In the third chapter of Language as Violence, “Unwritten Poetry”, Terayama uses per‑
formance as a reference point in exploring the possibilities of collective poetic creation. He
touches on a poetry reading, “The young American poets” (Wakai amerikajin no shijintachi),
held in Robert Rauschenberg’s loft on 25 May 1968. Billed as “poetic expression through
mixed media” by “poets who refuse the ‘Gutenberg galaxy’”, the event featured objects
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 14 of 19

described as “poem object” placed into buckets and randomly scattered around the room:
old beat‑up shoes, baseball caps, socks, commuter pass holders. It is said in these objects,
Terayama embraced the image of the “missing person.” Though there is nothing truly new
in this event, it is interesting that in the act of creating an image from that which is absent,
participants become poets.
Subsequently, Terayama describes the poetry as co‑creation that occurred in the per‑
formances that centered around the members of Anna Halprin’s Dancers’ Workshop. Al‑
though this workshop closely approximates the “unwritten poetry” Terayama himself had
long conceptualized, Terayama critiques Halprin’s “co‑creation” on the grounds that “in
the end, rather than giving rise to unwritten poetry as such, it only gives off the feeling
that it produces ‘an opportunity for unwritten poetry.’ This is one approach to theater.”50
I have continued to write of “poetry that speaks”, a special characteristic of un‑
written poetry that gives temporality to words, but the fluidity of this time some‑
times requires ascertaining the intervals between co‑creation. This is exactly
what I have posited only as an issue in the case of Anna Halprin, but might ex‑
tend it to poetry, as a temporal issue. […] As long as poetry continues to “speak”,
there exists the possibility that it will give rise to new myths. Because all manner
of thought, in the end, is dramaturgy.51
Terayama practiced this type of “poetry that speaks” (hanashikakeru shi) with the plays
of Tenjo Sajiki during the same period that he was writing this theory of poetics. In Sho o
suteyo machi e deyō (Throw out the books, let’s hit the town, which debuted August 1968),
Terayama put amateurs on stage and had them recite poetry; this format was designed to
put into practice the idea of raw voice as violence. Poems such as “Iede haitein”, “Tōhoku
haitein”, “Domori haitein”, and “Misutoruko no kōrasu” were read in a diverse range
of voices. According to the notes of Terayama Shūji no Gikyoku 3 (Shūji 1984), the poetry
reading scene was based on a poetry collection by high schoolers, Haiteen shishū, which
was later recorded in the work of criticism Sho o suteyo machi e deyō (Shūji 1967). How‑
ever, Terayama believed that the format of the play was overly formal, and specified that
the performance should change each time, like an “annual event.” Moriyasu Toshihisa,
in “The media‑crossing of Sho o suteyo machi e deyō: Citation and collage”, discusses from
various angles the media border‑crossing practice of “Sho o suteyo machi e deyō”, which
refers to a play, film, and book (Toshihisa 2017). The play of citation and collage config‑
ured by the “complex linguistic aspect” observed by Moriyasu is evident; however, the
communication of poetry described herein responds to the “spiritual rally (assembly of
souls)” that surfaces in chapter three of Language as Violence, that is, the mutual sympathy
and co‑creation between souls that occur via poetic communication.
During resisting the standardization of language, the actors attempted a multi‑voiced
and mutually creative play to make a “spiritual rally”. For example, it’s evidence can also
be found in the unperformed play, “Hair” (Japanese version) (Terayama 1971), written
by Terayama and the rock musical “Our Age Comes Riding on a Circus Elephant” (Jidai wa
sākasu no zō ni notte) (Eigahyōron 1969).
In chapter four, “Language Engineering”, in contrast to poetry as an event (‘koto’
toshite no shi), Terayama theorizes the materiality of words, stemming from a critique of Ni‑
ikuni Seiichi’s concrete poetry (gutaishi), and invokes H.D. Lasswell’s Power and Personality
(1948) as he seeks a method for escaping the fixed form and instrumentalization of words.
Terayama’s opposition to that which restricts language is visible as he states, “When lan‑
guage as authority begins to invade the hearts of lonely people, what it takes to stand up
against it is precisely the scheme of conceptualizing ‘language as violence’”52
Finally, chapter five, “Graffitiology”, focuses on graffiti, an écriture for which “the
writer is not visible.” Citing graffiti from the Latin Quarter in Paris during the May Rev‑
olution of 1968—L’imagination prend le pouvoir (“Imagination takes power!”)—Terayama
finds potential in “imagination”, but also alludes to the anonymity of the capitalist and
imperialist authorities, stating that “at the same time, authority is also trying to steal back
imagination”. In recent years, Hideto Tsuboi has been discussing the idea of treating the
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 15 of 19

street as an open book, which is set forth in Shuji Terayama’s theory of poetry, in relation
to “1968” symbolized by the student movement. Of course, he points out that the actual‑
ity of the practice of guerrilla‑style graffiti is fraught with difficulty in the modern era of
sanitized streets. However, as Tsuboi points out, this kind of street thought is not only a
practice of objecting to authority but also significantly connected to the essential aspects of
Terayama’s activities that seek activism and subjectivity, as embodied in the phrase “Throw
Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets.” (Hideto 2021).
As seen in the above, poetry, a form of écriture that in Postwar Poetry brings forth
dialogue, in Language as Violence, travels farther beyond the text and turns into something
that is discovered in the streets and born of collectives (theatrical work). Also evident is
Terayama’s interest in the substructures of media and invisible ideologies (apparatus) that
exist in the production of words.
These transformations during the 1970s, in which Tenjo Sajiki was active, are linked
with a magical power that transcends dialogue and chance encounters (violence). Of course,
for Terayama, poetry and theater were never completely separated things, but indivisible
through and through. In regarding poetry as a site of “collective creation” that goes be‑
yond a medium that merely conveys meaning however, Terayama observes a large change
in poetry.
This change in Terayama’s view of theater is probably related to two currents of con‑
temporary avant‑garde art. The first is the rise of conceptual art represented by Marcel
Duchamp. In Japan, the activities of overseas avant‑garde artists were actively introduced,
such as John Cage’s performance and Robert Rauschenberg’s visit to Japan as art director
for Merce Cunningham at the Sōgetsu Kaikan (Kagayake 2002). It goes without saying that
Terayama, who was associated with the Sōgetsu culture, greedily assimilated these.
The second is the influence of ‘performance’ in avant‑garde theater and the art as
action that was established in the course of the revival of actor. So far, we have seen
that Terayama aimed to create poetry in groups, but this kind of orientation toward col‑
lectivism was found in contemporary avant‑garde theater movements by Julian Beck and
Judith Marina—most notably in “Paradise Now” (1968) by The Living Theater. According
to Tadashi Uchino, the purpose of this theatre company was to involve the audience in
the performance process and to make them participate (Tadashi 2005, pp. 74–118). Many
of the avant‑garde theater companies of this era, including The Living Theater, advocated
a “revolution in theater” as a resistance to Broadway’s conscientious theater, which was
dominated by “poetic realism”, and created theater that was not a reproduction of the play
through the democratic process of collective creation.
It seems that Terayama changed his theory of poetry in a way that was supported by
the trend of the contemporary avant‑garde movement.

5. Conclusions
The above analysis has focused on Terayama Shūji’s Language as Violence, considering
not only the dialogue (taiwa) of his early poetics but the problem of violence (bōryoku) in
his later theatrical works and theory of theater, which becomes an important theme in
his body of work. Postwar Poetry, his first theoretical writings on prose poetry, can be
said to be a book about the poetic communication/discommunication that occurs in mass
communication, stemming from the conflict with print (katsuji).
From the context of the poetics of his contemporaries, on the end opposite Amazawa’s
theory of poetic action, significant among the theories from the latter half of the 1960s, is Iri‑
sawa Yasuo’s declaration that “poetry is not expression” and Shi no kōzō ni tsuite no oboegaki:
boku no “shisaku nyūmon” (Yasuo 1968), as well as Sugaya Kikuo’s Shiteki rizumu: onsūritsu
ni kansuru nōto (Kikuo 1975). The move towards increasing attention to construction over
the expressive content of poetry is evident in the works of this era. Terayama’s Postwar Po‑
etry, in that sense, does not stop only at what the poetry expresses, differentiating between
“closed poetry” and “open poetry” based on whether or not their communication is inten‑
tional. This kind of evaluation axis not only critiques the obstructions of the champ littéraire
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 16 of 19

(Bordieu) but is a vital perspective even from a contemporary standpoint—in which people
live on the “deserted island” of modern society and our shared condition is lost—because
it does not silo literature and communication. It is in his awareness of such issues, in his
embrace of embracing diverse media experimentation, and in the way he himself practiced
poetry across numerous mediums that we find Terayama’s unique qualities.53
Subsequently, Language as Violence further develops the debate over dialogue and com‑
munication, working out a new concept of a poetry of violence that differs from author‑
itarian print. Oriented toward directness and dialogue, improvisation, and the creation
of semi‑worlds, and approaching the conceptual, momentary nature of collective creation,
we can see in these aspects Terayama’s transition from the poetic to the theatric.
Although within the relationship between writer and reader Terayama conceptual‑
ized the occurrence of “poetry as phenomenon”, he would carry over this line of thinking
into the theater; for instance, in the “imaginative snare”—the dramaturgy—that organized
the chance encounters of Meiro to shikai (Labyrinth and Dead Sea), and in the “semi‑world cre‑
ation” of Zōki kōkan josetsu (Introduction to organ trading). Regarding violence, philosopher
Imamura Hitoshi, in “Terayama’s theater and violence” (Imamura 1983) and “The violence of
theater: The man who anticipated modern thought” (Imamura 1993), identifies the possibilities
and violence held by the encounter that is at the core of Terayama’s drama, but there is yet
room to investigate the connection of this idea to his poetics.
A discussion of Terayama’s communication in genres other than poetry and play can
be found in Daisuke Akiyoshi’s study. He analyzed the communication of physical vi‑
olence that appears in this boxing novel, Aa, kōya (Ah, wilderness), which was written at
the same time as Postwar Poetry (Akiyoshi 2014). He discussed it in relation to the urban
space called Shinjuku East Exit (a place that embraces “outsiders”), which has an extremely
symbolic meaning. However, for Akiyoshi, as urban land readjustment progressed in the
1970s and street dramas at Tenjo Sajiki became the subject of police investigation, commu‑
nication as an “act” changed to “violence” that simply conveys “pain”. He pointed out
the possibility and the limits of violence in the mass consumer society. Certainly, it is true
that Terayama’s plays since the 1970s have been staged mainly in Europe, and “Jashumon”
(1971) where the actors touched the audience, was on the one hand highly regarded as
the practice of Antonin Artaud’s dramaturgy, while it was accused of being violent on the
other. Apart from the communication of physical violence, it should also be noted that the
effects of magic developed from Marcel Mauss’s “A General Theory of Magic” and Artaud’s
“The Theatre and Its Double” have become the core of Terayama’s theater activities instead
of Sorel’s “metaphysical violence” (Shūji 1976, p. 24).
I will reserve analysis of Terayama’s early essay “Kōi to sono hokori = chimata no
gendaishi to Action‑Poem no mondai” (Action and the pride of it, contemporary poetry of
the streets and the problem of the action poem) and critical evaluations of the imagination
and violence of the experimental theater company Tenjo Sajiki as topics for a future article.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, S.O.; methodology, S.O.; software, S.O.; validation, S.O.;
formal analysis, S.O.; investigation, S.O.; resources, S.O.; data curation, S.O.; writing—original draft
preparation, S.O. and J.M.B.; writing—review and editing, S.O. and J.M.B. All authors have read and
agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: Data is contained within this article.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 17 of 19

Notes
1 See (Kenkichi 1955, p. 127). This essay is the second section of “18 chapter about Haikai” (Haikai ni tsuite no 18 syō).
2 First appearing under the title of “Communication” in A study of Dewey: Critique of the American style of thinking, compiled by the
Shisō no Kagaku (Philosophy of Thought) Research Society, it was later republished with a different title in Tsurumi Shunsuke
Anthology 2: Predecessors and collected in numerous other books.
3 Translator’s note: dōjinzasshi are community‑based magazines and journals produced by literary circles.
4 See (Shūji 1965), Postwar Poetry, p. 108.
5 Translator’s note: “Re‑presentation” is rendered hyōjō = dairi in the original Japanese.
6 Terayama, Postwar Poetry, p. 6.
7 See (Bakhtin 1996), English Translations Cited from (Bakhtin 1981).
8 “Discourse in the Novel”, p. 280.
9 “Discourse in the Novel”, p. 285.
10 “Discourse in the Novel”, p. 286.
11 Shōsetsu no Kotoba, p. 375.
12 Shōsetsu no Kotoba, p. 374.
13 The “transparent communication” to which Rosseau aspired and the “discourse” of Habermas that aimed at consensus and
agreement may also be applicable here, though Kuwano does not raise either of these concepts. Starobinski (1957), Sakuta
(1980), and Okumura (2002) discuss the communication that Rousseau idealized.
14 Translator’s note: The work’s original title is 『李庚順』, presented without a reading gloss.
15 See (Buin 1965), The original text cites the Japanese translation (Sartre 1966).
16 Postwar Poetry, p. 160.
17 Postwar Poetry, p. 164.
18 (Shūji 1983), Language as Violence, p. 8.
19 Terayama, Language as Violence, p. 9.
20 See (Sorel 1999, pp. 165–66), The original text cites the Japanese translation, (Sorel 2007, pp. 53–54).
21 Reflections on Violence, p. 170. Bōryokuron (ge), p. 60.
22 According to Sorel’s Japanese translator, philosopher Imamura Hitoshi, Sorel became misunderstood as the “father of fascism”
because the work was favorably received by the left, beginning with Antonio Gramsci, socialist, revolutionary communist and
anarchists, and nationalists, terrorists, and fascists in the mode of Mussolini on the right.
23 Language as Violence, pp. 9–10.
24 Language as Violence, p. 23.
25 This is reminiscent of Maruyama Masao’s binary opposition of dearu koto [that which is] and suru koto [that which is done] in
Nihon no shisō (Masao 1961).
26 Postwar Poetry, p. 16.
27 Language as Violence, p. 26.
28 Language as Violence, p. 29.
29 See note 28 above.
30 Language as Violence, pp. 29–30.
31 Language as Violence, p. 31.
32 Language as Violence, p. 36.
33 See note 32 above.
34 Language as Violence, p. 37
35 Language as Violence, p. 38.
36 Language as Violence, p. 40.
37 Translator’s note: The phrase Terayama repeatedly invokes in the original is jiritsu suru. I have alternatively opted for variations
of “be independent” and “stand on its own”, depending on which linguistically fits best in each context.
38 Language as Violence, p. 45.
39 Language as Violence, p. 46.
40 Born in 1936, Amazawa was of the same generation as Terayama, a relatively younger generation than Tanikawa and Ōoka.
According to Watanabe Takenobu’s A Moveable Feast: Toward Kyōku, and from Kyōku (Takenobu 2010), in 1954, during his Aomori
High School days, Amazawa became a part of the coterie that launched Gyorui no Bara (later renamed Aoi Kaigara), which called
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 18 of 19

for submissions from elite young writers nationwide. In 1955, he was invited by Terayama to participate in NOAH, but declined,
citing his studies for retaking his university exams as the reason.
41 See (Blanchot 1969), The original cites the Japanese translation, (Blanchot 2016).
42 Soeda, p. 203.
43 Soeda, pp. 206–7.
44 Soeda, p. 207.
45 Soeda, p. 208.
46 Language as Violence, p. 52.
47 Language as Violence, p. 102.
48 Nakai, p. 190.
49 Translator’s note: Synlogue is the coinage of cultural anthropologist Kawada Junzo, affixing the prefix syn‑ (“with” or “together”)
to ‑logue (“discourse”) as an oppositional term to the concept of polylogue, similar to the opposition of monologue and dialogue.
50 Language as Violence, p. 114.
51 Language as Violence, pp. 123–24.
52 Language as Violence, p. 147.
53 Horie Hidefumi adds McLuhan’s schema of classifying low definition, low‑participation media as “cool” and high definition as
“hot” to his discussion of Terayama’s “dialogue” and “monologue”. There are problems with this approach because there are
no clear criteria in these two dichotomies, but it is clear both were fascinated by participatory media. (Hidefumi 2020, p. 320).

References
Akiyoshi, Daisuke. 2014. Shuji Terayama’s Novel, Aa, kōya (Ah, wilderness): On Communication in the Mass Consumer Society of the 1960s.
Tokyo: Showa Bungaku Kenkyu.
Amazawa, Taijirō. 1970. Sakuhin Kōiron wo Motomete. Tokyo: Tabata Shoten, p. 62.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Translated by Caryl Emerson, and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas
Press.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1996. Shōsetsu no Kotoba [Discourse in the Novel]. Translated by Itō Ichirō. Tokyo: Heibonsha, pp. 259–422.
Blanchot, Maurice. 1969. L’Entretien Infini (The Infinite Conversation). Paris: Gallimard.
Blanchot, Maurice. 2016. Ooinaru kyozetsu. In Owarinaki Taiwa Ichi: Fukusūsei no Kotoba (Ekurichuru no Kotoba). Translated by Yuasa
Hirō, Ueda Kazuhiko, and Gohara Kai. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō.
Buin, Yves, ed. 1965. Que peut la littérature? Paris: 10/18–Union Générale d’Éditions.
Eigahyōron. 1969. Tokyo: Eigahyōronsha.
Hidefumi, Horie. 2020. Terayama Shūji no senkyūhyakurokujū nendai: Fukabun no seishin. In Terayama Shūji’s 1960s: Indivisible
Spirit. Tokyo: Hakusuisha.
Hideto, Tsuboi. 2021. “Rojo no siso: Terayama Shūji to ‘1968’,” Taikō bunka shi: Reisenki Nihon no hyōgen to undō (Countercultural Histories:
Expression and Activism in Cold War Japan). Edited by Unoda Shōya and Tsuboi Hideto. Ōsaka: Ōsaka University Press.
Hitoshi, Ogura. 2014. Sekai ga nemuru to kotoba ga me wo somasu: Shijin Terayama Shūji no ‘kotoba’. In Aichi Shukutoku University
Graduate School of Creativity and Culture Bulletin. Aichi: Aichi Shukutoku University.
Imamura, Hitoshi. 1983. “Terayama engeki to bōryoku” (Terayama’s theater and violence). In Shintai wo yomu: Terayama Shūji taidan‑
shū. Tokyo: Kokubunsha.
Imamura, Hitoshi. 1993. “Engeki ni okeru bōryokusei: Gendaishisō wo sakidori shita otoko” (The violence of theater: The man who
anticipated modern thought). In Terayama Shūji no sekai. Edited by Fūba no kai. Tokyo: Jōkyō Shuppan.
Imamura, Hitoshi. 1995. Benjamin’s “Questions”: Historical Philosophy of “Awareness”. Tokyo: Kōdansha.
Jun, Etō. 1959. Sakka wa kōdō suru (Authors act). Tokyo: Kōdansha.
Kagayake 60 Nendai Sōgetsu Art Center no zen Kiroku. 2002. Tokyo: Sōgetsu art center no kiroku kankō iinkai.
Kaoru, Soeda. 2005. Kōi toshite no bungaku: Rokujūnendai ‘shiteki radikarizumu’. In Gendaishi techō tokushūhan: Sengo rokujūnen ‘shi
to hihyō’ sōtenbō. Tokyo: Shichōsha.
Kästner, Erich. 1936. Doktor Erich Kästners Lyrische Hausapotheke (Doctor Erich Kästner’s Lyrical Medicine Chest). Zürich: Atrium.
Kenkichi, Yamamoto. 1955. Haiku no Sekai (The World of Haiku). Tokyo: Shinchosha.
Kikuo, Sugaya. 1975. Shiteki rizumu: Onsūritsu ni kansuru nōto, Poetic rhythm: Notes on syllabic meter. Tokyo: Daiwa Shobō.
Kishida, Eriko, Tomotake Tatsu, Kawasaki Hiroshi, Ōoka Makoto, Terayama Shūji, Mizuo Hiroshi, Tanikawa Shuntarō, and Ibaragi
Noriko. 1957. Kai Shigeki Sakuhinshū. Tokyo: Matoba Shobō.
Kozue, Hida. 2011. Terayama Shūji to rajio dorama: Shi to geki, kotoba no kanōsei. Fudai Hikakubungaku 4: 67–78.
Makoto, Ōoka. 1969. Libertine Genealogy (Tōji no kakei nihongendaishi no ayumi). Tokyo: Shichōsha.
Masakazu, Nakai. 1936. “Iinkai no ronri” (The logic of committees). Sekai Bunka (World Culture). In Bi to shūdan no ronri: The Logic
of Beauty and Collective. Edited by Osamu Kuno. Tokyo: Chuokoronsha.
Humanities 2023, 12, 74 19 of 19

Masakazu, Nakai. 1981. “Shūdanteki sōzō” [Collective creation]. In Nakai Masakazu Zenshū Dainikan: Tenkanki no Bigakuteki Kadai.
Nakai Masakazu Complete Works, Volume 2: Aesthetic Issues at a Turning Point. Tokyo: Bijutsushuppansha.
Masao, Maruyama. 1961. Nihon no shisō. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Minoru, Horikiri. 2002. Hyōgen toshite no haikai: Bashō, Buson [Haikai as Communication: Bashō and Buson]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Okumura, Takashi. 2002. Shakaisei wo hagitorareta chiten: ‘Mubaikaisei no yume’ wo meguru nōto. Shakaigakuhyōron. Tokyo: Nihon‑
shakaigakkai.
Ong, Walter. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Routledge.
Ridgely, Steven C. 2010. Japanese Counterculture: The Antiestablishment Art of Terayama Shūji. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Sakuta, Keiichi. 1980. Jean‑Jacques Rousseau: Simin to kojin (Citizen and Individual). Kyoto: Jibunshoin.
Sartre, Jean‑Paul. 1966. Bungaku wa nani ga dekiruka. Translated by Hirai Hiroyuki. Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha.
Shunsuke, Tsurumi. 1991. Tsurumi Shunsuke Shū 2: Senkōsha‑Tachi. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō.
Shūji, Terayama. 1965. Sengoshi: Yurishīzu no Fuzai [Postwar Poetry: The Absence of Ulysses]. Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten.
Shūji, Terayama. 1966a. Minna wo Okorasero. Tokyo: Shinshokan.
Shūji, Terayama. 1966b. Aa, kōya: Ah, Wilderness. Tokyo: Gendaihyoronsha.
Shūji, Terayama. 1966c. Otoko no shishū. Tokyo: Sekkasha.
Shūji, Terayama. 1967. Sho o suteyo machi e deyō. Tokyo: Haga Shoten.
Shūji, Terayama. 1968. Seishun no meigen Kokoro no sabishiihi no tameni. Tokyo: Daiwa Shobō.
Shūji, Terayama. 1972. Nihon dōyōshū: “Aoi me no ningyō” kara “Karajishi botan” made. Tokyo: Kobunsha.
Shūji, Terayama. 1973. Tabi no shishū. Tokyo: Kobunsha.
Shūji, Terayama. 1976. Meiro to Shikai. Tokyo: Hakusuisha.
Shūji, Terayama. 1977. Poketto ni meigen o. Tokyo: Kadokawa Syoten.
Shūji, Terayama. 1983. Bōryoku toshite no gengo: Shiron made jisoku 100 kiro [Language as Violence: Toward Poetics at 100 kph]. Tokyo:
Shichōsha.
Shūji, Terayama. 1984. The plays of Terayama Shūji 3[Terayama Shūji no Gikyoku 3]. Tokyo: Hakusuisha.
Shūji, Terayama, and Matsuda Osamu. 1975. Shūji Kayō/meikyūsekai no kanōsei” [The Possibilities of the World of Ballads and Mazes].
Kokubungaku: kaishaku to kyōzai no kenkyū.
Sorel, Georges. 1999. Reflections on Violence. Edited by Jeremy Jennings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 165–66.
Sorel, Georges. 2007. Bōryokuron (ge) [Reflections on Violence]. Translated by Imamura Hitoshi, and Tsukahara Fumi. Tokyo: Iwanami
Bunko.
Starobinski, Jean. 1957. Jean‑Jacques Rousseau: La transparence et l’obstacle. Paris: Plon.
Tadashi, Uchino. 2005. Chi no Gekijō, Engeki no Chi. Edited by Okamuro Minako. Tokyo: Perikansha.
Takaaki, Yoshimoto. 1965. Gengo ni totte bi to wa nanika (What is beauty, to language?). Tokyo: Keisōshobou.
Takashi, Kuwano. 1990. Mikan no Porifonī: Bafuchin to Roshia no Avantgyarudo. Tokyo: Miraisha.
Takenobu, Watanabe. 2010. A Moveable Feast: Toward Kyōku, and from Kyōku. Tokyo: Shichōsha.
Tamotsu, Hirosue. 1993. Bashō: Haikai no seishin to hōhō [Bashō: The Spirit and Method of Haikai]. Tokyo: Heibonsha.
Terayama, Shūji. 1971. Chika Sōzōryoku. Tokyo: Kōdansha.
Toshihisa, Moriyasu. 2017. Machi wo suteyo machi e deyō no media ōdan: Inyō to corāju” [The Media‑Crossing of Sho o suteyo Machi e
deyō: Citation and Collage], Terayama Shūji: Barokku no daisekai gekijō [Terayama Shūji: The Great World Stage of the Baroque]. Tokyo:
Kokusho Kankōkai.
Yasuo, Irisawa. 1968. Shi no kōzō ni tsuite no oboegaki: Boku no “shisaku nyūmon”: Memo on the Construction of Poetry: My “Introduction to
Poetry Writing”. Tokyo: Shichōsha.
Yoshizumi, Higuchi. 2017. ‘Shizō,’ shigaishi, shigaigeki: ‘Shi’ kara ‘geki’ e—Tenjō Sajiki kessei gojūnen. Gendaishi Techō 60: 150.
Yōko, Kubo. 2018. Terayama Shūji Naniwabushi ni yoru hitomaku: Aomorio no semushi otoko ‘shukusai’ to hahaoyazō wo megutte [On the
‘Festive’ Quality and Maternal Image in Terayama Shūji’s One Act Play in Naniwabushi Style: The Hunchback of Aomori] Kokubun.
Tokyo: Ochanomizu Joshidaigaku Kokugokokubungakukai.

Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual au‑
thor(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to
people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.