“What Is War” isn’t your typical dance performance—it’s a visceral excavation of memory, grief, and inherited trauma. In their haunting new collaboration, Japanese artist Eiko Otake and Chinese choreographer Wen Hui step onto the Brooklyn Academy of Music stage not just as dancers, but as living archives of World War II’s unresolved wounds .
Two Women, Two Nations, One Shared History of Pain
Born in Japan in 1952 and China in 1960 respectively, Otake and Hui never lived through the war themselves—but its echoes shaped their families’ lives in devastating ways. In a poignant video prologue to the hourlong piece, Hui asks simply, “What is the war?”—not as a philosophical musing, but as a daughter seeking answers her grandmother never got to give.
Her grandmother died in 1941 during a Japanese aerial bombing of Kunming. Otake’s father, meanwhile, survived by faking tuberculosis to avoid conscription. And in a late-life confession, Otake’s mother revealed she witnessed the 1945 U.S. firebombing of Tokyo—holding her grandfather’s hand as their home burned and 100,000 lives vanished in a single night.
Comfort Stations and Unspoken Shame
Projected behind the performers is footage of the two women visiting a former “comfort station” in Nanjing—a site where the Imperial Japanese Army systematically enslaved Chinese and Korean women for sexual exploitation. The camera lingers on cracked walls and empty rooms, while Otake and Hui move slowly, almost reverently, as if absorbing the silence of those who never spoke.
Their physical language speaks louder than words: Otake claws at her skin, collapses inward, stretches her arms like pleading branches. Hui leans forward with the weight of generations on her shoulders. These gestures aren’t choreographed for beauty—they’re raw, involuntary responses to history’s ghosts.
The Limits of Language in “What Is War”
Despite its emotional power, the performance stumbles in its spoken segments. Both artists deliver monologues in English—a language neither fully commands. The result, as noted by critics, is that their words sometimes feel flat or hesitant, undermining the intensity of their stories .
Yet this linguistic fragility may be unintentionally revealing. After all, how can any language fully convey the scale of wartime loss? Perhaps the struggle to articulate is itself part of the message.
Key Moments from “What Is War”
| Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Premiere | October 21, 2025, at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) |
| Duration | Approx. 60 minutes |
| Core Theme | Intergenerational trauma from WWII in China and Japan |
| Notable Imagery | Visit to Nanjing “comfort station,” Tokyo firebombing memory, Kunming bombing legacy |
| Artistic Style | Slow, somatic movement; minimal staging; documentary-style video projection |
Why This Performance Matters Now
In an era of rising nationalism and historical revisionism in both East Asia and the U.S., “What Is War” refuses to let the past be sanitized. Otake and Hui don’t offer solutions or reconciliation—they simply bear witness. And in doing so, they challenge audiences to ask not just “What is war?” but “Whose pain do we remember—and whose do we forget?”
As one attendee remarked after the show: “It wasn’t entertainment. It was an act of remembrance.”
