Long lenses, old lenses

[Jack Dahlgren]

Came across this photo of photojournalists covering the Asama Sansou incident in Karuizawa Japan in 1972.
It was a police siege / standoff with the remnants of the United Red Army, a radical student organization.

Among being the first hostage standoff to be covered in a live TV marathon, it also used some unorthodox tools such as a wrecking ball and a baseball pitching machine which was used to hurl rocks at the building and keep the URA members awake.

The radical history of Japan is not a story which we hear much about, but it was a consequential factor in Post-war Japan. As we see increasing radicalization in many countries these days (speaking from the US which recently had our own taste of Radical Right occupation) it is interesting to look at history and see how to not end up in similar overly polarized situations.

[Thomas Stellwag]

interesting story - I was not aware of it
the crowd of press photographers is, by the long lenses, cleary separated from the action, while today they are inside the moving groups at the playground. Does the job gets harder?

[Akira]

I remember watching the live coverage of the incident on TV.  A sect to be part of the URA had hijacked a Japan Air Line jet named Yodo two years before, which was the first hijack incident in Japan.  The sect member exiled themselves to North Korea, and one of them is still alive there.

As a side note, the official cameras for our National Police Agency were Pentax then which were froze and malfunctioned during the incident in February.  On the other hand, the Nikon cameras commonly used by newspapers functioned properly, which made the police to switch from Pentax to Nikon.

[Akira]

interesting story - I was not aware of it
the crowd of press photographers is, by the long lenses, cleary separated from the action, while today they are inside the moving groups at the playground. Does the job gets harder?

Thomas, the URA was armed with the guns, so the press people had to keep enough distances from the site.  Actually, two policemen and one citizen were shot to death.

[Thomas Stellwag]

I was immediately thinking about the last kidnapping in munich, for shure even today in this case they would stay away, means beeing not allowed to go directly there, so I have made not the best comparison