It would be more accurate to say that more than the dramatic form itself, I have been stimulated by exposure to the writings of its major founder, Zeami. And rather than influencing the forms of my performances or my concepts concerning them, the writings of Zeami have provided opportunities to ponder on the existence of the self that originated these forms and ideas, and on my roots in the land called Japan.

The question regarding my cultural roots can be answered to a certain extent by my personal genealogy and background information on the traditions I have grown up with, but I was also inspired to examine the cultural roots that have unconsciously become part of my bloodline and tradition.

I am always exploring the countless riddles surrounding my being. For example, I ask myself why there is a being here staging a performance. Or, why the body acts so much against my will, reacting and making unexpected gestures. Or why I give you the impression of a performance through my physical being and apparatus.

However, it may be more accurate to say that the riddles are in the history that envelops my being, for the physicality that I thought I had constructed in my own consciousness is almost always arrested at some point by a force I cannot avoid. On the stage of my performances, history unconsciously appears from out of an obscure beyond and holds me in its grasp.

In a slow movement, in the condensed present, in an unthinking gesture when I reach out for something, in my method of arranging some objects or in some temporal arrangement, there is something I cannot avoid sensing. Not distinct enough for another person to notice, it gives me nonetheless a feeling that I can only call Japanese.

This mysterious sensation I felt from time to time stimulated my interest in noh and in Zeami, the founder of the dramatic form as we know it today.

In preparation for a performance, I usually collect materials in the form of countless fragments of memory. I take each of these fragments, whether they are words or materials, and analyze them in my own way. Some I research historically. Then, I give them a random arrangement as if shuffling a deck of cards.

My arrangement is simplicity itself, for my sole principle is to only present various materials including my physical being. The greatest reason for my randomness is that there is no escaping the freedom of interpretation by the willful gaze known as the audience, no escaping the myth of sight. Therefore, I exist only as a reference to various phenomenon including many previous or existing works of art, and my body is at the same time a phenomenon embodying those references.

The problem, however, is that my intentions and conceptual schemes are often betrayed. Almost as if there were some strange life form living inside me, something gives my body unexpected commands during a performance. It feels as subtle as the kind of sense you would need to search out some virtually imperceptible space by touch, but it causes impromptu accelerations and decelerations to movements I am making based on certain preconceived ideas, or split-second changes to the direction of my gaze. Or, it sometimes commands a formalized kind of movement to the senses at my fingertips.

There are other times when this strange force changes minutely the distance between object A and object B. Or, in a program composed of conceptualized movements, it will suddenly betray all movement up to that point with a completely different action. What is most interesting to me is the occasional moment when I have the clear sensation of another "me" watching me, quite as if I were in the audience watching myself perform. There are times when the "I" in the audience sends invisible directions to the performing "I".

Almost none of these can be satisfactorily explained in any rational way. Such phenomenon are usually called extemporizations, but what interests me concerning them is the part that takes place within me, in the mind but unconsciously.

I would like to know how and why these invisible extempore movements come into being. They exist as phenomena in relation to space, to the audience, to my own physical and mental condition and to the program, but it is clear that they are not simply or solely phenomena. I sometimes feel as if it could only be the direct physical effect of hot or cold air, or a sensation of dense or thin space, or the discovery of details hidden between spaces.

And yet, there is a force at work that surpasses all such analyses. Where can this subconscious extemporizing impulse come from? I have suggested above that my existence is an accumulation of numerous reproductions of culture. Conceptually, the accumulation can be explained firstly as the culmination of many years of study, but it also grows out of the experiences of childhood and even influences such as the landscape and customs surrounding the unconscious self in one's early years.

I explored my personal cultural accumulations in a performance titled "Genes." I also remember it being fulfilled or supplemented to some extent by my wish to go to a desert . And I have begun to understand what kind of position I am in and what kinds of landscapes I have been looking at through the allegories of my mother and great grandfather.

However, none of the scenes that I have seen has ever been used as a reference in any specific way in a performance. On the contrary, I have hypothesized that accumulating specific signs could lead one to universal signs. If one accepts that exploring individual phenomena leads to an understanding of the general, and that this induction is applicable as one facet of modern semiotics, my intention has been to depict human life through the signs of performance or of modernity.

The works and the records of activities by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Allan Kaprow, Joseph Beuys and Vito Acconci, for example, are significant as signs in that the works and their history overlap superbly with the consciousness of the modern age.

However, on the other hand, it appears to me that there is a certain aspect in which the cognitive progression of modern society and the creativity of the individual do not complement each other. It is unmistakable that whatever leads the viewer to surpassing strength or clarity of vision is profoundly related to the creative force of the individual.

It is unclear to me whether it is this force that is responsible for improvisation, the thing that clings to concepts like moss, or whether it is a unique creation that makes it possible to grasp improvisation. Perhaps subconscious improvisation is something like this force which leaves only vectors showing where it has gone.

Of course, it goes without saying that these creative spurts spring up naturally in each instance within the performance. In this sense, there is even a danger of robbing oneself of transcendency by trying to comprehend every subtle flutter of emotion in a work.

When I try to think what lies in the midst of these theories, on a kind of middle ground between the semiotic or conceptual viewpoint and a kind of naturalist desire which produces subconscious improvisation, I have to conclude that the physical being is shaped and controlled by what I shall call the landscape of history.

Perhaps, by setting up the hypothesis of a historical landscape, I can set about exploring the true character of this mysterious force that moves within me, by allowing my hypothesis to stir my creativity. My interest in Zeami grew out of this curiosity regarding the state of my being on a subconscious level. It was a journey into traditional art as well as a search for a separate part of my roots.