Senkyūhyakurokujūhachi Shinjuku

The photographs in this book by Provoke era photographer Watanabe Hitomi were taken in the years 1967-1969, the great majority in 1968. At the time Shinjuku was the area of Tokyo where everything happened, the center of avant-garde culture, long before areas like Shibuya, Omote Sando, or Kichijoji or other parts of Tokyo were well-known. Shinjuku was also the center of student activism, where on October 21—International Anti-war day riots broke out in the area, and student radicals took over then National Railways Shinjuku station. The book captures an entire era, and as fellow photographer Araki notes on the obi (band) of the book, “These are not photographs of the past, they are photographs of the present.”