This translation of photographer and critic Nakahira Takuma's (1938-2015) 1972 essay, “The Illusion Called the Documentary: From the Document to the Monument,” illuminates a crucial shift in Nakahira's understanding of both the profound limitations—as well as the radical potential of—photography. The essay's contemporaneous insights into the role of photography during the infamous Asama-Sansō Incident in 1972 offers a crucial counter-perspective that remains absent from existing accounts of this incident. Nakahira's essay demonstrates a pivotal moment within the development of a radical discourse of media power in the year of Okinawa's Reversion to mainland Japanese rule, shedding light on an undercurrent of critical perspectives that continue to resonate in the contemporary moment.
