Butoh (sometimes written buto, is a contemporary Japanese dance movement, initially called Ankoku Butoh or Dance of Utter Darkness, by its originators, Tatsumi Hijikata and Ohno Kazuo.

It is generally agreed that the first butoh piece was the 1959 performance of Hijikata's, Kinjiki, (Forbidden Colours), based on the novel of the same name by Yukio Mishima. The piece explored the taboo of homosexuality and ended with the smothering of a live chicken between the legs of Yoshito Ohno (Ohno Kazuo's son) and Hijikata chasing Yoshito off the stage in darkness. This piece caused its outraged audience to ban Hijikata and his colloborators from the festival where Kinjiki premiered, and established Hijikata as an iconoclast.

In the post-war polictial climate artists such as Hijikata were concerned with the growing influx of American culture in Japan. The 1959 Japan Mutual Defense Treaty, a document that allowed the continuance of American military presence in Japan, caused a swell of protest through university, café, street life and artwork. Butoh was conceived on this tide of protest.

Inspired by the works of writers such as Mishima, Lautrémont , Artaud, Genet and de Sade, Hijikata delved into worlds of the grotesque, darkness, decay and the transformation of the body into other materials such as spirits and animals in a process called "becoming". He was a wild man with language, creating butoh-fu (fu means "word" in Japanese), poetic and surreal scores to help the dancer transform into other materials.