Shuji Terayama: No bird exists that can fly higher than the imagination

Shuji Terayama was an avant-garde Japanese movie writer-director and a leading figure in the boundary-challenging cultural ferment of his times.

Shuji Terayama (1935-1983) is known outside Japan mainly as the writer-director of Fellini-esque films such as Death in the Country and Farewell to the Ark. In his own country, it was his poetry that thrust him into the national consciousness at the age of eighteen. His experimental theatre troupe, formed in 1967, cemented his status as a leading figure in the boundary-challenging cultural ferment of the time.

Despite all the genre-hopping and media-mixing, Terayama’s pre-occupations remained consistent and deeply personal. The themes that recur in the surreal potpourri of his films appear in the writings that make up this volume, treated in a more reflective way and often with a salting of self-deprecating humour.

Peter Tasker`s translation of Japanese Dream, essays by Terayama, has been published as a boxed set, and include a facsimile of the original Japanese book and large-scale reproductions of the accompanying photographs by Japanese masters Daido Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira. During the event, Tasker will read from the essays, and discuss the life and work of Shuji Terayama.

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