I apologise for blog hogging, but I assume everyone else is very busy. Since I am on a holiday, of sorts, my mind has been busy gathering ideas etc for the collaboration.
Whilst thinking about the theme of japonisme I started looking at the final hari kiri or seppuka scene from Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Because I have been thinking about the emptiness of the signs of gender/sexuality/race, and their stylisations and how they can be temporarily occupied by the subject, the final scene of Butterfly's death - due to her Western 'husband's' absence and the loss of her child - I began to see enormous parallels between the stripping away of one costume for another (one character to reveal the 'true' character in the hikinuki), and the ceremonial death of a character/subject - their disemboweling.
The final scene of the opera is always very dramatic, and the directors use many different ways to symbolise her death, different ways of showing the blood pouring out of her. The relationship between the hikinuki and the bloody death are very closely related here, ESPECIALLY the stage hands removing the cloths:
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