1 - Second Wave, Creation after Dissolution
In Japan the art activities between the 60s and the early 70s are signifikant in the history of modern art.  Of course, Wo can see the political campaigns and students movements as a background, but perhaps it is not till those days that they really recognized westernized and modernized their arts f rom the objective viewpoint, criticized them, searched for their future direction and asserted themselves.  As a result they made alternative movements which generated a new art tendency : experimental expression activities, underground and a small theater.
In those days, however, the artist's fundamental object was to dissolve the established authority.  That is, as it were, high wave against the steep rock cliff of establislied fine arts, dancing and drama. It is between the 80s and the 90s that this kind of wave, as an alternative movement, once ebbing, dashed forward again The performance activities are significant as an element which supported the second new wave.   Different from the first wave whose object was dissolution of the establislied authority, the second wave aimed at new creation after the dissolution. ihe word,   ”performance”  itself was accepted internationally.  At any rate in Japan “performance” can be interpretted as the concept for creation after the dissolution, through the alternative movements ,which are characterized by doubts about modernization and dissolution of establislied authority.

2  - Performance as a Paradigm
The word  “performance”  has a lot of contents.  This means not only theater or music performance but also the quality of a car or a computer.  We use the word in so diverse meanings that we sometimes must seek for the meaning just from the context.  In this essay, of course, the meaning of the word is confined to modern performance, but it is difficult to define it exactly.  Performance artists have their own thoughts or feelings each, so it would be better to try to grasp the wholeness or essence of performance from their various individual viewpoints.  But if asked to explain it tersely, I shall answer, “it is the experimental expression through physical movements or activities” and moreover add, “it is research for the new expression or new spirituality or new concept for expression.”
If you bear in mind happenings, which give so much influence on modern art, you can easily understaind what the performance is.  As few people regard happenings as one genre, so it is difficult to regard performance as one genre, though there is some difference between them, of course.  Performance has penetrated into our world in the ways common with happenings : inclusion of various genres, reconsideration of the fundamental way of expression, and new conceptualization of the works.  In this sense performance has played some roles of a paradigm of expression activities.

3  - Reality and Dualism of a Body
One of the important roles that performance plays as a paradigm is the way we look at reality.  In Japan those who are engaged in performing arts such as dancing and theater are willing to take into consideration the key concept of performance when they try to reconsider the way of expression or enlarge their art structure.  In the field of performing art, traditionally they have led the audience into fantasy, taking into focus what they want the audience to see, hiding what they don’t want
them to see.  Controlling and paraphrazing the performance, they have led the audience into the world they expect them to enter.  Then the expressers emphasize how they are looked at, neglecting how they really are.  Ihe audience are, mostly kept in everyday life and some of them are ,willing to be led into the fantastic world, but others want to feel reality about what the performers really are as well as what they show.   Ihe latter sense of reality is closely related with the conceptual structure of performance.  The expressers, who keep the sense of reality, are strongly conscious of the dualism of a body.  To the expressers a body is the one which they use in everyday life, but as the other aspect it is the objectivised material to express.   The two aspects are inseparable.  To them , not the superficial reality which they gouge out, should be emphasized.  This must be related with the way in which we expose the reality which is hidden in the complex phenomena of our modern age.
In this way in performance they try to liberate their physical aspects to others, involving their environment, unlike ordinary theaters which try to be isolated from the outer world and present their material in one direction, controlling sound and light.   Performance dose not present the world which is prepared to express in advance, but presents its own world improvisatorially.  Both the audience and the performers pass between the real environment and the fantastic world.
In this way in Japan performance is characterized by improvisatorial process of produktion, conscious about a body putting itself  between the real environment and the fantastic world.  We are willing to collaborate with others because it leads to the liberation of our body to others.

What I have mentioned above is, as it were, a merit of performance, but we know inert improvisation is in danger of producing nothing.  The performance art, which makes a conceptual approach, sometimes makes us, as if indicating its defects.  Therefore, our performance should have concept open to others, not in opposition to the performance art but including it.