2/26/24, 4:38 PM Does ‘Provoke’ still push back today?

- The Japan Times

The Japan Times

CULTURE / BOOKS

Does ‘Provoke’ still push back

today?

Taki Koji, a photograph from Provoke 3, 1969 | © TAKI YOSUKE

BY DAN ABBE
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES

Aug 20, 2016

The year 1968 saw a wide range of actions directed against the
Japanese government: Universities were occupied, protesters
demonstrated en masse against Japan's complicity in the
Vietnam War and students mobilized to stop the transportation
of Vietnam-bound jet fuel through Shinjuku Station. A quieter,
though equally radical, event could be added to this list: the
publication of a slim, independent magazine of photography and
essays called Provoke.

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2/26/24, 4:38 PM Does ‘Provoke’ still push back today? - The Japan Times

Streetlights burn white holes into one of the images inside; the
unlit pavement in the foreground is a nearly even tone of black.
This photograph, by Takuma Nakahira, of a city at night stands
out among the collection. It is a study in harsh contrast.
Nondescript men in suits linger to the right of the frame, and a
couple of cars are visible on the left. There is practically nothing
else in the image — except for a placard above the cars that
spells out a single word: "Empire."

Provoke: Between Protest and

Performance, Edited by Diane Dufour
and Matthew Witkovsky

STEIDL, Magazines.

Provoke is now the subject of a major exhibition, "Provoke:

Between Protest and Performance," that will travel through
Europe and the United States over the next two years. Although
only three issues of Provoke were ever published (between 1968-
69), it has influenced both the development of photography
within Japan and the reception of this work outside of the
country. Thanks to the magazine, the rough look of photographs
by Nakahira (and fellow contributor Daido Moriyama) have
practically become a visual shorthand for "Japanese
photography." The intensity of these images, combined with the
rarity of the magazine itself, have granted Provoke mythic status
as an obscure source of aesthetic innovation.

These blurry, high-contrast images are arresting — but don't let

that distract you from Provoke's critical project. It's no
coincidence that the word lingering in the background of
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2/26/24, 4:38 PM Does ‘Provoke’ still push back today? - The Japan Times

Nakahira's photograph is "Empire." At this time, Japan was

involved in the Vietnam War by proxy, through the American
occupation of Okinawa. Provoke struck a blow against this
union of military power and of capital — which means that to
view the magazine in aesthetic terms only is to erase its critical
position.

Now comes "Provoke: Between Protest and Performance," a

catalog edited by the Western curators of the exhibition for an
English-speaking audience. The book weighs in at nearly 700
pages, and its sheer abundance of material alone — including
full reproductions of the magazine's three issues, and many
previously untranslated texts — makes it an invaluable reference
for anyone with even a passing interest in the relationship
between art and politics, to say nothing of Japanese
photography. But does the catalog continue to push the myth of
Provoke as aesthetic, or does it make a case for the magazine's
relevance to contemporary political struggles — in Japan or
otherwise?

Much to their credit, the curators know the danger of

aestheticizing the images inside Provoke; they make it clear
from the start that they will not treat these works as "artistic
achievements for which political strife was only a colorful,
circumstantial setting." They have made a serious attempt to
account for the broader context of political activism in which the
magazine was produced.

As a result, a third of the book is devoted to Japanese protest

photo books, a diverse category that includes tomes published
by activist groups, student organizations and individuals alike.
These images report directly from sites of struggle, such as the
major Shinjuku anti-war protests of October 1968, or the

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2/26/24, 4:38 PM Does ‘Provoke’ still push back today? - The Japan Times

movement (from roughly 1966 on) against the construction of

Narita airport. This material helpfully situates Provoke within
the political climate of its time, while another third of the book
explores performance-based photography in Japan from the
1960s and '70s.

While this catalog does not reduce Provoke to a style, it has

missed an opportunity to connect the magazine to
contemporary times. To take just one example, the ongoing
protest against the construction of helipads in Takae, Okinawa,
makes clear that the urgent political questions of the late '60s
and early '70s in Japan are still relevant. (Needless to say, these
questions are not specific to Japan, either.)

On this point, though, the catalog essays largely come up short:

it is clear that they are the fruits of meticulous research, but they
do not offer enough opportunities to think of Provoke in terms
of the present. Why Provoke, and why now? The very first
sentence of the catalog offers a wry answer: "Western interest in
Japanese photography has been running high in recent years."

Although the book certainly makes a powerful argument for why

its English-speaking audience should not take Provoke as a
mere aesthetic, more work remains to be done to show just why
the magazine deserves our attention today.

KEYWORDS

PHOTOGRAPHY(HTTPS://WWW.JAPANTIMES.CO.JP/TAG/PHOTOGRAPHY),
DAIDO MORIYAMA(HTTPS://WWW.JAPANTIMES.CO.JP/TAG/DAIDO-MORIYAMA),
TAKUMA NAKAHIRA
(HTTPS://WWW.JAPANTIMES.CO.JP/TAG/TAKUMA-NAKAHIRA), ANTI-WAR
PROTEST(HTTPS://WWW.JAPANTIMES.CO.JP/TAG/ANTI-WAR-PROTEST), TAKI
KOJI(HTTPS://WWW.JAPANTIMES.CO.JP/TAG/TAKI-KOJI)

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