In 1968, a magazine with the programmatic title Provoke was published in Tokyo by the photographer and writer Takuma Nakahira, the art critic Koji Taki and other members. Investigating the relation between photography and text, the magazine was an artistic and philosophical manifesto, responding to the upheavals of the late sixties. Originally published in very small editions (Provoke magazine had a print run of 1,000 copies), the publications reprinted in The Japanese Box are extremely rare today and almost impossible to find, even in Japan.