Shoichi Ito - Matsukawa Incident - 1961

Matsukawa Incident

Shoichi Ito
Tokyo Chunichi Shimbun /1961/Japanese/185*260*10

Matsukawa Incident” is a collection of works by Japanese photographer Shoichi Ito, born in Sakhalin in 1934, a graduate of Akita Technical High School, and an amateur photographer working at the Tohoku Pulp Akita Factory. In 1960, he was awarded the Camera Geijutsu Press Photo Prize for “Around the Matsukawa Incident”. This book, published the following year, is a collection of his work covering the “Matsukawa Incident,” which is said to be one of the “Three Mysterious Incidents of the Japanese National Railways” after the war. A train was derailed due to intentional rail tampering. Three crew members were killed when the train capsized, and the people who had been reassigned by JNR and Toshiba were accused of being the culprits who had tampered with the rails. However, after repeated trials, the final verdict was “not guilty,” resulting in what is said to be “the largest false accusation case in history,” and has raised many issues in the world. The author summarized in this book what he has been covering for several years, and according to Domon, “This is the reason why I have been advocating the realism movement in photography for the past 10 years. (Included in The Japanese Photobook 1912-1990)