Title: Document of Grief and Anger - Ikari to kanashimi no kiroku
Photographer(s): Hamaya Hiroshi
Writer(s):
Designer(s): Sugano Umezaburo
Publisher(s): Kawade Shobo Shinsha, Tokyo, Japan
Year: 1960
Print run:
Language(s): Japanese
Pages: 100
Size: 18,3 x 25,9 cm
Binding: Softcover with obi
Edition:
Print: Gurabia Seikosha, Tokyo, Japan
Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: Japan, 1960
ISBN:
“A Chronicle of Grief and Anger” marks the beginning of a decade of turbulent political protests in Japan and is one of the first among the series of publications — known as “protest books” — which opened up a new form of photographic expression throughout the 1960s. The series remains an outlier in Hamaya’s oeuvre: the project marks a turning point in his own work and contains the seeds of a new immersive, dynamic photographic approach which reached an apex in the late 1960s.
Although Hamaya had generally steered clear of politics in his work up until this point, inspired by the grassroots movements burgeoning at the time, he came to Tokyo to document the events that would unfold surrounding the renewal of Anpo.
Between May 20 and June 22, Hamaya took some 2,600 photographs which he edited down to a selection of around 200 images in preparation for a book which was published in early August of 1960. His photographs of the Anpo protests were sent to Magnum in Paris and published in the June 25 issue of Paris Match. Soon thereafter he became the first Asian photographer to join the Magnum agency.
In 1960 the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States [Sōgo Kyōryoku Oyobi Anzen Hoshō Jōyaku], known as “Anpo” in Japanese shorthand, came up for renewal. Between May and June, millions of protesters took to the streets of Tokyo in an attempt to block the revised treaty and topple Nobusuke Kishi’s conservative government.