A Body in Fukushima
A Body in Fukushima is the title of the extensive and expanding collaborative project between Eiko and photographer William Johnston. Johnston is a professor of Japanese history at Wesleyan University. Eiko and Johnston met in 2005 and, prior to this artistic collaboration, had co-taught courses at Wesleyan University on the atomic bombings and mountaintop removal mining. Eiko first invited William Johnston to collaborate on creating photograph works in Fukushima in 2014. It was at the time Eiko began conceiving her fist solo project, A Body in Places, which started with A Body in a Station at 30th Street Amtrak train station in Philadelphia. To make a strong contrast to this majestic and busy Philadelphia station, Eiko thought about going to Fukushima, where she had previously visited alone in 2011 soon after an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns hit the area.
In 2014, Eiko and Johnston made two extended visits to the irradiated areas surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, where all residents had been evacuated. They followed abandoned train lines to empty neighborhoods and damaged buildings. They returned to the area again in the 2016 and 2017 summer and found much of the places they had visited in 2014 have been radically changed. New sea walls were built, and many workers were brought in to clear houses and buildings and decontaminate the fields and roads. The only places that were left untouched by bulldozers were shrines and forests. Eiko danced in these places that remain highly irradiated, embodying bitter grief, anger, and remorse, sometimes in vulnerable gestures and at other times dancing fiercely. In 2019, they visited Fukushima for the fifth time. The photographs by Johnston capture Eiko’s movements and gestures as well as the evolving landscape over their five visits.
3/11 Fukushima Memorial at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 2019
Photo by Jake Price
The project has grown to include photo exhibitions, video installations, and film screenings. In 2017, Eiko created a seven and a half hour video for A Body in Places: Met Edition commissioned by Metropolitan Museum’s Live Arts. With projected images from the video, Eiko performed all day at the Met's three locations: the Cloisters, Met Breuer, and Met Fifth Avenue on November 5, 12, and 19. Since 2016, Eiko has also conceived, directed, and presented annual Fukushima memorials at St. Mark’s Church (2016), the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (2017 and 2019), and Wesleyan University (2018).
Eiko performing in front of a projection of Fukushima images at the Met Cloisters, 2017
Photo by Lev Radin
“By putting my body in these places, I thought of the generations of people who used to live there. Now desolate, only time and wind continue to move. ”
“By witnessing events and places, we actually change them and ourselves in ways that may not always be apparent but are important. Through photographing Eiko in these places in Fukushima, we are witnessing not only her and the places themselves, but the people whose lives crossed with those places. ”
The project’s first trip in 2014 was funded in part by the Japan Foundation through the Performing Arts JAPAN program, the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, and Wesleyan University.