CJS Noon Lecture Series | Reeking of Mud: Japanese Counter-Culture in the 1960s and '70s

The 1960s and '70s were a time of rebellion and counterculture in Japan, as was true in the US. I will highlight some of the specifically Japanese aspects: the underground dance and theater, the student politics, the protests against the Vietnam War, the radical cinema. In many ways, the counterculture was a rediscovery of Japanese traditions. After a century of Westernization and a rather fossilized high classical culture, artists were going back to the erotic and often dark roots of pre-modern popular culture, hence the title: Reeking of Mud.

Ian Buruma studied Chinese at Leyden University, and cinema at Nihon University College of Arts, in Tokyo. He lived in Japan from 1974 to 1980. He worked in Tokyo as a photographer, filmmaker, and journalist. He has worked as a writer and editor in Hong Kong, London and New York, and contributed to many papers and magazines, including the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker. His latest book is a memoir, entitled "A Tokyo Romance".

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This event is cosponsored by the Institute for the Humanities.