Title: Photo document Japan's nuclear power plants
Photographer(s): Kenji Higuchi
Writer(s): Kenji Higuchi
Designer(s): Toshinobu Takeuchi
Publisher(s): Origin, Tokyo, Japan
Year: 1979
Print run:
Language(s): Japanese
Pages: 186
Size: 21,5 x 25,5 cm
Binding: Hardcover with obi
Edition:
Print: Koyosha Co.,Tokyo, Japan
Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: Japan, 1970
ISBN:
Kenji Higuchi’s photos depict people and situations that document the nuclear lunacy of our age – they are portraits of our own ignorance. For almost thirty years Higuchi has focused his camera on the nuclear industry’s silent victims. So long as the criminal corporations that are making a profit from nuclear technology succeed at selling accidents (they speak of catastrophes only when the human devastation portends financial ruin for themselves) as minuscule, harmless deviations from normal operations, so long as this art of propaganda continues, so too will the nuclear industry’s on-going licensed manslaughter.
Telling images need not cry out – what impresses may spring from quiet witness.Scattered across the island nation of Japan are 17 commercial nuclear power stations outfitted with 52 reactors. That makes Japan, per capita, one of the most nuclearized nations on earth. Yet, historically, there has been little public opposition to the tacit cooperation between the Japanese government and the nuclear industry. Thanks in part to Higuchi’s graphic work this is beginning to change. Conceived as a subtle, eye-opening account for students, teachers, and the lay public, “Irradiated Workers Disappear in the Dark”, one of Higuchi’s eight volumes of photography, became a surprise best seller.