"In 1949, Tatsumi Hijikata saw Kazuo Ohno perform for the first time. He was moved and described Ohno-sensei's dance as geki yaku — like a powerful drug or deadly poison. Ohno-sensei was a dancer of powerful poison!" exclaims Takeshi Morishita of Keio University's Tatsumi Hijikata Archive.
"Hijikata was very young and Ohno-sensei was a big modern dancer, so Hijikata was moved to see him dance."
It turned out to be a fateful evening for dance, and soon the two men, despite their age difference, would in that most respectful of Japanese ways refer to one another as "sensei." Together they are credited as the founders of butoh (or as Hijikata originally referred to it, ankoku buyo — the dance of darkness); Ohno the yin and Hijikata the yang of the avant-garde art form.