Nakahira Takuma was one of the founding members of Provoke, and For a Language to Come is one of the key post-war Japanese photobooks, marking the culmination of his involvement in the Provoke movement. The following year, he burned his early prints and negatives. Nakahira's work explored the complicated relations between photography and language and between art and political resistance in a way that galvanised a generation of photographers.

'At its core, the collective aim of the Provoke photographers was to dismantle the idea that a photograph is inextricably a document, separating the photograph from its socially prescribed function as a record. In so doing, these photographers eliminated information, record, and especially narrative from their work to create "pure" images' (Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s p17).

First edition; 4to (300 x 211 mm, 11¾ x 8¼ in); black-and-white photographs printed in gravure, texts by Nakahira Takuma and Okada Takahiko, design by Kimura Tsunehisa, minor spotting to edges; photo-illustrated wrappers, reading crease, head bumped, illustrated dust-jacket printed in blue, red, and black, light spotting to spine, rubbing from sleeve as usual, publisher's cardboard sleeve with label printed in black, yellow, and red mounted on upper side, wear to slipcase and label, a very good copy; 190, [2]pp.

The Photobook: A History I, pp292-293; Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s pp130-135; Provoke: Between Protest and Performance 56 pp368-397; For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography 1968-1979 196; The Japanese Photobook 1912-1990 p351.