The all-star butoh companies have abdicated their garish crowns. Kyoto-based Byakko-sha, known for anarchic performances sporting outrageous costumes, have hung up their dildoes to dry. Tokyo's Rabelaisian Dairakudakan have been on hold while their leader, Yul Brynner look-alike Maro Akaji, lends his moody intensity to straight theater. And the much-mourned Lady Butoh herself, Yoko Ashikawa, has sold out her group Hakutobo to irregular performances under an uninspired director. Even Barae, young princess of visual slash and burn, called a performing moratorium last autumn.

What is more, evangelists Min Tanaka and Kazuo Ohno are coming to the end of their natural cycle. Last August, the pioneering Tanaka improvised his last outdoor solo at Hakushu Festival, dragging an old farm pail tied to his foot as he inched away from us down a lane in horrific temperatures. Afterwards, still covered with grime and gravel, Tanaka--now getting on for 60--slugged a Suntory in his greenhouse of carnivorous plants. "I'm too old to be on my back in the mud any more," he said.

But Tanaka is a young sprite compared to 90-year-old Ohno, who completed his repertoire in Japan in December with the piece Watashi no Okaasan (My Mother) at Yokohama. "It was my dream to dance all my pieces in my hometown," he said. "Now I can join my mother in the great spirit world."

"A decade ago butoh was the most radical thing happening in the performing arts anywhere," says Seattle-based lecturer Joan Laage. "Now we're talking sensitive introspection." And butoh was radical: it traced the body back to primitive movement stripped of imagery, it understood immobility in context with motion, and it rejected ageism and glamorization. The only flourishing group remaining is Sankaijuku. Aesthetically flawless and immaculately trained, they are far too mindful of their own dignity to pull faces or show us a spotty bum.

Butoh was built on goose bumps, mostly by Ankoku Butoh (Dance of Darkness) founder Tatsumi Hijikata. He formalized the style with his band of nightclub-hardened radicals as Tokyo was frantically laying concrete for the 1964 Olympics. Ankoku Butoh sprang from a heady mix of entertaining decadence, sexual creativity, fascinating real or simulated violence--and an abhorrence of the politeness you get at flower-arranging classes. And it got full media attention at the time of the student protests.

But it's time to lay the myth of butoh as political protest to rest. There are no new companies springing up to critique endemic government corruption or the new confusions of Japan's international role. Of course, 20 years is a normal life cycle for companies which started performing in the mid-1970s. "But the vision's gone," says Barae. "Nobody's getting lit by the same ideas."

Whatever the ideas, butoh's energy has dissipated, and the trend is for solo performances. What's lacking is the schlock-attack tactics of the '70s and '80s--today, even Yukio Waguri, Hijikata's heir apparent, takes his beautifully sculpted body entirely too seriously for the kind of bad taste and nihilism we have in mind.

This pessimistic outlook is summed up by the politically-inspired Kim Itoh, who formed his group The Glorious Future last year. "Of course I'm being sarcastic," he says. "There's not going to be a future--and if there is, it won't be glorious." No, not unless more butoh performers like Itoh get off their pretty backsides to pump up some shared, even political vision--preferable scathing.

After all, if we can't depend on butoh to make us uncomfortable, what will? Andrew Lloyd Webber? Puleese.