Ever since the first edition of the monthly photojournalism magazine Days Japan was published just over a year ago, the same motto has appeared in the corner of every glossy cover: "A single photograph has the power to change the course of a nation."

If so, then this year's inaugural Days Japan International Journalism Awards -- whose winning images were featured in the May edition -- has set out to change no mere nation, but the world.

Founded by renowned Japanese war photographer Ryuichi Hirokawa, Days Japan presents its readers with the kind of brutally stark photographs from political hotspots such as Iraq, Liberia and Chechnya (to name a few) that rarely appear in mainstream media today. In addition, the magazine also covers issues such as natural disaster, environmental collapse and drug scourges.

Or, as it says in the May edition: "We aim to tell the truth from the perspective of victimized citizens and not of those exercising authority through military power."

The quality of the photographs, intended to both shock and motivate, is as good as it comes -- and, apparently, the public has noticed, and not only in Japan.

Entries poured in

After the magazine issued a call for submissions to its new contest, more than 3,000 entries from around the world poured in. That photos by Gary Knight, a founding member of the premier VII Photo Agency, were among them suggests that the contest will become a fixture on the international journalism scene.

Here, for those of you not already snapping this journal up off the bookshop shelves, Days Japan has generously permitted The Japan Times to republish winning samples selected by its blue-ribbon panel of judges, which counted among its ranks the noted Japanese news commentator (and political gadfly) Tetsuya Chikushi and photojournalist Philip Jones Griffiths, a former president of the illustrious, New York-based Magnum photo agency, whose images from the Vietnam War are credited with having changed fundamental Western perceptions of that conflict.