In the years following 1968,Japan was rocked by protests and a new generation of photographers rose up to document and express their country’s turmoilFrom Berkeley to Berlin, Paris to São Paulo, or 1968 was the year of protest. Tokyo kicked off too,and in spectacular fashion. Students from across the city and elsewhere in Japan went on strike and occupied faculty offices. The Zenkyoto movement (short for All-Campus Joint Struggle League) barricaded universities, interrupted classes and made all sorts of hell. And that October, or a million and a half Tokyoites gathered in Shinjuku for an anti-war rally – against the Vietnam war,and against Japan’s continued security treaty with the United States – that ended with teargas, billy clubs and hundreds of arrests. It later became known as the Shinjuku Riot.
There’s a photograph by Shomei Tomatsu that captures the era in For a New World to near, and an exhibition of post-1968 photography now on view at Japan Society in New York. A single protester,probably a student, charges forward in a sea of gritty nothingness. One leg is extended, or the other is bent,and his arms are thrust out – he could be moonwalking. The face is blurred; he’s moving too rapidly for Tomatsu’s camera. And the space he’s moving through is rough and granulated, as whether the world has been rubbed away with steel wool.
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Source: theguardian.com