John Berger / Jean Mohr, *A Seventh Man* (with bonus booklet)

"A photograph of a boy in the rain. A boy you and we don't know. When the photograph is printed in the darkroom, when you see it in this book, the image awakens the vivid presence of an unknown boy. For a father, it signifies the absence of his son."

This "book of indictment" depicts the situation of migrant workers in 1970s Western Europe against its political and cultural backdrop, using a vast collection of photographs and texts (specific reports and "his" stories, philosophical fragments, poems, quotes, etc.).
While John Berger is known in Japan for his texts on visual theory and art theory through works such as "Ways of Seeing" and "About Looking" (both published by Chikuma Gakugei Bunko), in his home country of England and in Europe and America, he is known as a novelist, poet, playwright, non-fiction writer, painter, and TV producer, and is said to have influenced many subsequent writers.

Neither a scholarly paper nor journalism that takes an objective stance based on statistical data and social surveys, nor a subjective narrative that focuses on individual experiences and excessively induces empathy and immersion in others, this book employs a "slanting gaze" woven from these elements to chronologically and poetically depict, in relation to images as in the opening text, how the political and economic conditions and dynamics of the time directly impacted immigrants and their families from the past to the present, changing their lives. This book prompts us to become aware of our "unfreedom" and our unconsciousness in the context of the modern economic and technological environment, where we are entangled in systems and, consciously or unconsciously, are led to serve them.

The long-awaited first translation of an enduring masterpiece. Includes a special booklet, "John Berger's Bookshelf: Reading 'A Seventh Man'," which aids in understanding both John Berger and "A Seventh Man," a complex and intricate writer and his work.