Otake then leaned against the rear wall, arms up, fingers splayed before turning and bending backwards, the pair viscerally acting out a kind of memory play: beautiful, frightening, ominous, as their distinctive, yet universal, stories unfolded. With their heavily accented English, it wasn’t always clear what they were saying, which was actually okay, as their bodies not only held these shameful tales, but revealed them. 

The pair, even during the simple act of hand-holding, with melancholy faces of the Comfort Women projected onto the side wall, ballast-like, was a study in resilience. Then, with Hui offstage, Otake, in an unexpected moment (or not—as Butoh, the dance of darkness known to resist fixity, has also been branded as exposing the bare body), shed her black dress, her thin, near waif-like countenance a picture of vulnerability. 

Inching forward, she seemed to be revealing her soul, her heart, her mind in what was not, however, a stroll down memory lane, but more a memento mori, simultaneously cementing her being in the past while offering solace in the present, her face both ancient and new, a visage that held the entire universe within its creased skin. 

The scene, also featuring Duncan Woodbury’s unobtrusive but effective sound design—at times a kind of white noise accentuated by the dripping of water—then changed rather abruptly: Hui scurried into the space, moving spasmodically as if an escapee from a mental asylum, the hard memories of the past hurtling her to the floor. Fighting an unseen enemy, Hui could also have been channeling the circle of life, and with Otaki now behind the mirror as if a sorceress, the sounds of slapping feet were counterpoint to the duo being buffeted by their inner storms, inner wars.

Clinging to each other, whether standing, hunched over or spoon-like, making use of their elbows and clenched fists as fleshly weapons, or contorting their bodies as if unstrung marionettes, they continued with the tapestry of their horrific narrative, with Otake intoning about the bombs that were dropped on March 6, 1945, when “100,000 were killed, more people than in any single attack in human history.”