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Peace Education in Japan's Schools: A View From the Front Lines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Orihara Toshio  and
Kyoko Selden
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I think the Constitution of Japan is well formulated. The preamble starts out saying that we pledge perpetual peace: we are “resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government.”

And, rather than defining peace just in this narrow sense, it goes on to say “all peoples of the world have the right to live in peace, free from fear and want.” This means that it advocates “the right to live in peace,” while apparently holding within this vision poverty and starvation, disaster and disease, or various kinds of gaps as factors leading to social disintegration and conflicts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 16 , April 2009 , e5
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2009

References

Notes

[1] Asahi Shinbun, August 6, 2008.

[2] Saotome Ai, et al. Heiwa wo tukuru kyōiku: ‘guntai wo suteta kuni’ Kosuta Rika no kodomotachi (Imawami Booklet, 2002).

[3] In the film, an old woman keeps silence for many years about what she experienced in the cave. She has an estranged daughter in the US. Despite her fierce objection, the daughter married an American pilot, now deceased. The daughter's son, age 22, visits Okinawa wishing to know what happened between his mother and his Okinawan grandmother. The old woman is reluctant, but finally tells him the story. At the cave, she lost her four-year old boy (when the cave collapsed under US attack), her husband (shot by Japanese on his way back from successful negotiation with US forces), then her one-year old daughter (she held her, perhaps too tightly to keep her quiet). When she was ready to use the grenade to kill herself, she heard a faint cry of another's baby and picks her up. That baby became her daughter, replacing the dead child. (tr.)

[3] Directed respectively by Katagiri Naoki, 2001, and Ōsawa Yutaka, 1996.

[4] Ikezawa Natsuki, Kenpō nante shoranai yo—to iu kimi no tame no ‘Nihon no Kenpō‘ (Hōmu-sha, 2003).

[5] The NHK Special was broadcast on June 18, 2003. The film was directed by Kamiyama Seijirō, 1995. Tamiya Torahiko's book was published by Shinchōsha in 1972.

[6] Asahi Shinbun, March 9, 2008.

[7] Yomiuri Shinbun, May 15, 2007.

[8] Asahi Shinbun, December 5, 2007.

[9] Fukuda Seiji, Kyōsō yametara gakuryoku sekai-ichi: Finrando kyōku no seikō. Asahi Shinbunsha, 2006.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Sanekawa Mayu and Motoko. Bungei Shunjū, 2007.

[12] Asahi Shinbun, September 11, 2007.

[13] See footnote 2.

[14] Maeda Akira, Guntai no nai kokka 27 no kuniguni to hitobito. Nihon Hyōronsha, 2008.