Uses seminal theoretical literature, photo roman (by, e.g., Abe, Nakagami) and narratives about photography (by, e.g., Tanizaki, Mishima, Kanai) to examine the rhetorical complicity and coercion of the two modes of representation which emerged in the modern and nationalistic age, and persist, in the wake of the newer media, as dominant registers of everyday life and departures from there.