KAZUO KITAI

‘During the 5 years between 1964 to 1968, I was taking photographs of the students from Zengakuren, Zenkyōtō [All-Campus Joint Struggle League] and other groups who were together called the ‘Kagekiha’ [Agitators] as apart of their group.’ (Kazuo Kitai, The Kagekiha).

Yumiko Chiba Associates is delighted to present The Kagekiha, an exhibition to mark the reprinting by the Miyanomori Museum of Art, Sapporo, of the eponymous volume of Kazuo Kitai photographs published last yearby Heibonsha.

The Kagekiha was the first book to cover all Kitai’s work documenting the social movements of 1960s Japan—his first series as a photographer—and contains his personal selections from photo series such as Resistance documenting student protests against the 1964 visit to Yokosuka by American nuclear submarines; 1966’s Kobe Dockers portraying the wharf workers who labored at the bottom of Japanese society; 10.8 Haneda Conflict recording the clash between members of the Zengakuren student organisation and riot police on October 8 1967, and the monumental Barricade, which captured the Zenkyoto strike at Nihon University in 1968, when students demanding university democratisation barricaded the campus and occupied it for four months.

During the 1960s Kazuo Kitai documented these movements continuously from the inside, and the resulting photos convey the urgency felt by the students who flocked to join the struggles of a tumultuous interlude in Japanese history, and also the sheer intensity of living through that era.

This exhibition presents a total of 63 photographs from Kitai’s Resistance, Agitators and Barricade series. We invite you to take a look.