Toward a Century of Peace: A Dialogue on the Role of Civil Society in Peacebuilding [1 ed.] 1138585742, 9781138585744

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TOWARD A CENTURY OF PEACE

Peace studies pioneer Kevin Clements and Buddhist peacebuilder Daisaku Ikeda engage in dialogue on topics such as conflict resolution, the refugee problem, nuclear disarmament, building a culture of peace and human rights, and the path to recovery and reconstruction following natural disasters. While articulating their personal religious beliefs, their unique perspectives underlying their actions for peace and their problem-solving methodologies, they present a message based on unlimited trust in the transformative power for change residing within each individual. Dr. Kevin Clements is the Foundation Chair and Director of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His career has been a combination of academic analysis and practice in the areas of peacebuilding and conflict transformation. He has been an adviser to the New Zealand, Australian, British, Swedish, and Dutch governments on conflict prevention, arms control, defense, and regional security issues. Daisaku Ikeda is President of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), an association of more than 12 million people practicing Nichiren Buddhism around the world. He has written and lectured on ways of applying the practical wisdom of Mahayana Buddhism as a philosophy of empowerment and compassion in today’s world. He has also published dialogues with more than 70 prominent individuals including Mikhail Gorbachev, Hazel Henderson, Elise Boulding, Joseph Rotblat, Linus Pauling and Arnold Toynbee.

TOWARD A CENTURY OF PEACE A dialogue on the role of civil society in peacebuilding

Kevin P. Clements Daisaku Ikeda

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Kevin P. Clements and Daisaku Ikeda The right of Kevin P. Clements and Daisaku Ikeda to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Clements, Kevin P., author. | Ikeda, Daisaku, author. Title: Toward a century of peace : a dialogue on the role of civil society in   peacebuilding / Kevin P. Clements, Daisaku Ikeda. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,   [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018029081 | ISBN 9781138585744   (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780429446412 (e-book) |   ISBN 9781138585768 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Peace-building. | Conflict management. | Reconciliation. |   Civil society. Classification: LCC JZ5538 .C597 2019 | DDC 303.6/6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018029081 ISBN: 978-1-138-58574-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-58576-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-44641-2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

Editor’s note   1 Lessons of history and the commitment to peace

vii 1

  2 Youth united for a world without nuclear weapons

16

  3 Making the sanctity of life the spirit of the age

33

  4 Spiritual transformation to build a society of harmonious coexistence

48

  5 The bonds between Pacific neighbors

60

  6 The path to the reconstruction of hope and courage 

72

  7 Empowerment of women: the foundation for transforming our times

83

  8 Building a culture of human rights and respect for diversity

95

  9 Social security: protecting the dignity of life

106

10 Social capital and the importance of engagement in society

117

11 New currents in education for global citizenship

129

vi Contents

12 Creative joint efforts between the United Nations and civil society

140

13 Rejection of war and violence: the banner of humankind

152

About the authors Index

165 167

EDITOR’S NOTE

The dialogue between Dr. Kevin P. Clements and Soka Gakkai International (SGI) President Daisaku Ikeda was originally serialized in the Japanese monthly magazine Ushio between October 2013 and October 2014. The completed dialogue was published in book form in Japanese by Ushio Publishing Co., Ltd., in December 2016 under the title Heiwa no seiki e: Minshu no chosen (Toward an Age of Peace: The Challenge Facing Humanity). Since the completion of the dialogue, Dr. Clements has been appointed Director of the Toda Peace Institute, whose name was changed from Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research in January 2017.

1 LESSONS OF HISTORY AND THE COMMITMENT TO PEACE

Building a creative vision for peace Ikeda:  Peacebuilding begins with deep consideration, both as an individual and as a member of global society, of our incomparable mutual worth and dignity as living beings. It is a challenging process of taking one step forward after another, motivated by the wish for happiness for self and others alike, and through a constant process of open-minded communication and exchange. More than a decade has gone by since the passing of the twentieth century, an age that has been described as a time of war and violence, and our embarkation into the twenty-first century. Globalization has advanced at a rapid pace, and both people and goods are moving around the world on an unprecedented scale. At the same time, we have seen a rise in conflict and frictions among peoples and cultures that, in tandem with clashes over economic and national interests, have heightened tensions around the world. In addition, since the 9-11 terror attacks on the United States, an extreme emphasis on security has caused major problems, leading to such infringements of basic human rights as excessive restrictions on freedom of speech and intrusions into personal privacy. If these trends proceed unchecked, we will be unable to halt the cycle of war, violence, and hatred, and the lives, dignity, and human rights of many individuals will continue to be enormously compromised. We must find a way to bring an end to this vicious cycle and, through a network of the people, open the way forward on the great path of hope leading to a century of peaceful coexistence, free from the bane of war. Clements:  I share your concerns, President Ikeda, about the direction in which our world seems to be moving.

2  Lessons of history

Humanity is indeed facing a battery of extremely serious challenges—the persistence of violent conflict and civil unrest, the deforming impacts of poverty, hunger, and environmental destruction, and the all-too-persistent violations of human rights. Unfortunately, however, what is sadly missing from much of the current international political debate about how to deal with these questions is a vision of what a just and peaceful world might look like. Through the peace proposals that you offer annually, President Ikeda, and in numerous other ways, you have made a continuous effort to develop such a vision. In particular, you have focused on visions that flow organically from a deep awareness of our history (learning from its mistakes) and by some sense of creative possibility based on an awareness of our present strengths and aspirations. Ikeda:  Thank you for your kind words. They are especially meaningful coming from you, a leading peace scholar who has offered a creative vision for peace. Through our dialogue, I would like to explore together with you a new means to creating peace that will impart hope to future generations. You are a professor at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, as well as the director of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS)1 there. In addition, as a former secretary general of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA)2 and a policy adviser to the governments of New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands, you have made important contributions for many years in the areas of peacebuilding and conflict resolution. In our dialogue, while asking you in detail about your efforts for peace, I hope to work together with you to outline a “people’s peace alternative,” a program of action by the people and for the people, that is effective in overcoming the barriers presented by the harsh realities that we are facing. Clements:  I look forward to these discussions with high hopes. What is clear is that while states are important sources of law, order, and stability, they cannot be relied upon in all circumstances to serve the common good. When states fail or ignore their duties to their citizens, it is vital that there is a robust civil society in place to remind political leaders of their obligations and of the necessity to serve the public good rather than private or sectional interests. Equally important in this globally interdependent world is the need to develop some sense of global citizenship, which can transcend the limitations of individual states, with all that this means in terms of global responsibilities and higher levels of global solidarity. This is a theme that I hope to explore with you in our dialogue. Ikeda:   Yes, that is an absolutely critical point in creating a better world and bringing an end to the tragic history of the human race as it has unfolded up to now, and one that I would definitely like to discuss in depth.

Lessons of history  3

I first met you, Dr. Clements, in July 1996, soon after the establishment of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research.3 I fondly recall the discussion that you, I, and the institute’s first director, Dr. Majid Tehranian (1937–2012) had on the importance of the United Nations, the challenges of conflict prevention, and other important topics. At that time, you strongly emphasized the following points: peace is a neverending process, and we never really arrive at a static place that we can call peace. This is sometimes captured in the phrase “There is no way to peace—peace is the way.” Peace and conflict are dynamic processes which we choose to employ for different purposes. Because of this it is important, for those of us interested in promoting stable peace, that we identify values, beliefs, and institutions that promote peace and reinforce these so that they might eventually restrict and replace cultures and structures of violence with cultures and structures of peace. Your argument that neither government, economics, culture, nor education alone is sufficient, that every aspect of our lives must be directed toward building peace, resonates powerfully with the principles of Buddhist pacifism that we of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) embrace. Clements:  I remember our very first meeting in Tokyo in 1996 with much pleasure. The philosopher Simone Weil (1909–43) observed that attention is “the rarest and purest form of generosity,”4 which you demonstrated in abundance on that occasion. I was extremely impressed by the time you had taken to get to know something about my background, my interests, and my driving passions. I also deeply appreciated the way in which you listened to every word I said, reflected on what was said, and built on my contributions to develop a generative dialogue, resulting in a meeting of minds and concerns. Ikeda:   I was deeply moved by your abiding passion for peace and your perceptive observations backed up by keen intelligence. As one effort to lead our world in the direction of peacebuilding, Dr. Tehranian and I were engaged in a dialogue between Islam and Buddhism, seeking to offer a vision of a civilization illuminated by respect for the worth and dignity of life and a pluralistic outlook. Our dialogue was published in 2000 as Global Civilization: A Buddhist-Islamic Dialogue. Unfortunately, Dr. Tehranian passed away at the end of 2012, but I am deeply grateful to him for his precious contributions in extending a global network of peace studies, transcending ethnicity and religion, as the first director of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, through the research projects he established on the theme of human security and global governance. You supported Dr. Tehranian’s efforts in numerous ways and have continued to cooperate with the activities of the Toda Institute. As one of the core international advisers to the institute since its establishment, you have been an invaluable

4  Lessons of history

support in international conferences and research projects, and since 2009, as secretary general of the institute, have worked with its second director, Dr. Olivier Urbain, to promote its further growth. As the institute’s founder, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for all your contributions. Clements:   It has been a great honor to work with the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research and participate in its activities and programs. From my many years of involvement with peace research as well as my experience with the NGO International Alert,5 which specializes in conflict resolution in Africa and Asia, I am very much aware that academic research which gathers dust in libraries is not very useful for changing attitudes and behavior, nor for removing some of the structural sources of violence. Dr. Tehranian and the others at the Toda Institute, knowing this all too well, tried to overcome those limits by providing opportunities for diverse constituencies of peace researchers, policymakers, and community activists to engage in conversations and concrete collaboration on ways of solving different problems associated with violent conflict. I have always believed in the power of multi-track diplomacy and conflict prevention to generate innovative research on nuclear weapons and other questions. When I think back to the late 1990s, it is clear that many of these discussions in Toda and similar organizations generated a solid intellectual rationale for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. The institute has also generated groundbreaking work on the need for solid regional and multilateral organizations in its papers, books, and workshops on the reform of the United Nations. I thought that the institute’s sponsorship of the Persian Gulf Security Forum (held on four occasions since 1999) was an excellent effort to create an environment conducive to peacebuilding in the Middle East. In the Middle East, it is very challenging just to get the people of the various countries together for a conference. The Toda Institute exerted itself admirably to promote dialogue among the nations of the region and continued to create opportunities for constructive dialogue. I see this as a very meaningful effort not seen in other research institutes. I have been engaged in scholarly research on promoting peace in Asia and the Pacific for many years. I organized a regional meeting in New Zealand in 1993 on what sorts of regional peace and security mechanisms would promote peaceful relations in Southeast and East Asia. This was published as Peace and Security in the Asia Pacific Region (1993) by the United Nations University (UNU). Building on the achievements of the Toda Institute to date, as secretary general of the institute I would like to focus on making the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)6 more effective for building peaceful coexistence in Southeast Asia and I would like to see something similar established for Northeast Asia. While there is a certain skepticism (on the part of big powers) about the utility of such mechanisms for the prevention of violent conflict, they do provide important fora for airing grievances, confidence building, and creating ripe conditions for thinking about arms control and disarmament. Because of this, I was deeply sympathetic

Lessons of history  5

with your call for renewed efforts to establish a Northeast Asian Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone, and your concrete proposals for easing tensions in China-Japan relations that you gave voice to in your peace proposal issued in January 2013. Ikeda:   Thank you for the encouraging words. Since the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan in 1972, the two countries have expanded cooperation and exchange in a wide range of areas and, step by step, nurtured a friendly relationship. But in 2012, in spite of it being the fortieth anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic relations, bilateral relations cooled to the worst state of affairs since the end of World War II. In that context, I suggested that in order to prevent further deterioration of relations, Japan and China should engage in high-level bilateral dialogue as quickly as possible, based on a reconfirmation of the two main points of the 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and the People’s Republic of China— namely that they should settle all disputes by peaceful means, refraining from the use of threat or force, and that neither party would seek hegemony in the AsiaPacific region or in any other region. Further, believing in the indispensability of creating an environment where the leaders of both countries could meet face-to-face no matter what the prevailing circumstances, I proposed that Japan and China institute the practice of holding regular summit meetings. The more difficult the situation appears to be, the more important it is to engage in frank and open dialogue. Heated and earnest dialogue based on a commitment to peace and creative coexistence is an extremely important process that can reveal the fears, concerns, and aspirations of each side. With the postponement of talks between Japanese, Chinese, and Korean leaders that had been scheduled for May 2013, the situation remains problematic, and I hope that talks between the leaders of China and Japan will take place at the earliest possible moment, leading in the direction of improved relations. Clements:   I completely agree with the idea that the more serious the conflict or tension is, the more important it is to create, by whatever means possible, a space for constructive problem-oriented dialogue. In order to prevent conflicts escalating into violence and war, it is vital to pause and reflect. Simone Weil described this as an “interval of hesitation,” a moment of pause before taking action. This is a moment in which one tries to be truly empathetic and consider the effects of one’s actions on the feelings and behavior of the other. This is absolutely key to successful problem solving and peacemaking. Hesitation and reflection are critical to good relationships. These processes are foundational for the process of considered and peaceful decision making for both sides of the conflict. The opportunities for such hesitation and reflection, however, are rapidly disappearing under the impact of the Internet and globally instant communications. The act of reaching out in dialogue that you have repeatedly

6  Lessons of history

and continuously advocated depends on time and space for reflection and is the essential force for fostering sustained amicable relationships. Ikeda:   The peace scholar Sissela Bok has also noted the importance of the “interval of hesitation” that you mention. In her work A Strategy for Peace—a copy of which she presented to me—Dr. Bok cites the passage from Simone Weil, “that halt, that interval of hesitation, wherein lies all our consideration for our brothers in humanity,” and goes on to say: It is this interval of hesitation, of reflection, that permits us to think of the moral dimensions of what we as human beings do to and for each other; of what we owe to ourselves, to members of our own groups and communities, and to others, even our adversaries.7 In an address I delivered at Harvard University in September 1993, (“Mahayana Buddhism and Twenty-first-Century Civilization”),8 I introduced an episode attributed to the life of Shakyamuni Buddha in ancient India. Called upon to mediate in a conflict between two peoples, Shakyamuni said: “I perceived a single, invisible arrow piercing the hearts of the people.” The “arrow” symbolizes attachment to distinctions, a prejudicial, egoistic mindset that discriminates against others, especially on the grounds of ethnic or cultural differences. Focusing on that perspective of Shakyamuni, Dr. Bok, noting that she had recently been asked to write a preface to a new edition of the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), observed that Gandhi insisted that all the changes we desire must begin from within ourselves. As the example of the “single, invisible arrow” indicates, she continued, I was making the same point as Gandhi in my Harvard speech. Twenty years have now passed since that speech, yet in spite of the tremendous advances in communications and the development of instant information-sharing through the Internet and smart phones, we cannot but conclude that efforts around the world have still fallen far short of removing that “single, invisible arrow”— that is, focusing on our differences and discriminatory attitudes that lead us to look upon others as our enemies or less than our equals—and deepening mutual understanding.

From the logic of domination to the logic of compassion Clements:   I agree. I have long believed that the challenge facing us in the twenty-first century is to free ourselves from the logic of domination and build a new world based on the logic of compassion. The logic of domination is the underlying factor behind inequality, war, and famine—a logic of sacrificing the needs of others in the pursuit of one’s own

Lessons of history  7

security and welfare. The logic of compassion, in contrast, promotes the valuing of one another’s existence and the importance of working together to build a world of peace and sustainability for the entire human race. As you argue in your Harvard speech through the words of Shakyamuni, in our dealings with others we need to build relationships based not on a fixation on our differences but on a recognition of our common human vulnerability and frailty. The American philosopher Judith Butler, in her work Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, has written: Those who remain faceless or whose faces are presented to us as so many symbols of evil, authorize us to become senseless before those lives we have eradicated, and whose grievability is indefinitely postponed.9 No matter what country we are born in, as human beings we experience the same illnesses and misfortunes, as well as the same natural disasters and manmade threats such as environmental destruction. Only by understanding that the tragedies which afflict others can afflict us as well will we be open to a sharing of their suffering. Only by being willing to share the suffering of others can we form correct relationships with them and remain flexible and open to their needs. Ikeda:   I also regard such sensitivity and recognition as the starting point of mutual understanding and the foundation for coming together. The twentieth century, as symbolized by the Cold War, was focused largely on preparing to respond to perceived threats from enemy nations, with competition for military superiority continually deepening the gap of mistrust and fear dividing opponents. The twenty-first century must be an age in which we establish a broad-ranging network focusing on the common challenges that confront humanity, such as environmental destruction and poverty. One example of this type of global problem is climate change. The Human Development Report of 2007/2008 states: Dangerous climate change is the ultimate public bad. While some people (the world’s poor) and some countries stand to lose faster than others, everybody stands to lose in the long run, with future generations facing increased catastrophic risks. It further warns that “collective action is not an option but an imperative.”10 This seems a completely justified evaluation of the situation. To bring about this kind of epochal change in East Asia, where the aftereffects of Cold War structures still persist to some degree, I suggested in my 2013 peace proposal that: Japan and China together launch an organization for environmental cooperation in East Asia. This new organization would create opportunities for

8  Lessons of history

young people from China and Japan to work together toward a common goal. It would also establish a pattern of contributing together to the peace and stability of East Asia and the creation of a sustainable global society. Young people working together for a shared goal, transcending national boundaries to unite in problem solving—this kind of “shared challenge,” I believe will not only become a precious treasure in the lives of the young people involved but also will enable deep friendships to be fostered in the process that will open the way to enduring amity between China and Japan, and moreover serve as the keystone for establishing a foundation for peace in East Asia. Clements:   That is a very important point. If we can convince people of the importance of superordinate goals aimed at satisfying human needs for water, food, and shelter, we will generate higher levels of cooperation. I am not optimistic regarding the problems presented by climate change and global warming. The predictions included in the 2007 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in my opinion, have failed to receive the general recognition they deserve. The most recent research indicates that the situation with regard to CO2 density, rising sea levels, glacial melt, and the risk of forest fires is deteriorating at a much greater pace than indicated by the worst-case scenario presented in the report. In 2009, more than a hundred icebergs broke off the southern polar cap and began floating toward my homeland of New Zealand. In addition, in recent years Australia has experienced record heat and drought, resulting in widespread fires. Damage caused by anomalous weather and rising temperatures continues around the world, and there is a pressing need for all nations to recognize the gravity of the problem and work together to find solutions. This means a heightened consciousness of the problems, but more importantly discussions on ways in which states and people can unite to begin resolving these problems. Applying a logic of compassion to this problem, for example, would mean deepening awareness of the ways in which climate change is bearing heavily on the weakest and the poorest—everywhere—and working to ensure that the most vulnerable are protected before the strongest secure their interests. Climate change is focusing a lot of attention on whether state and corporate wealth will prevail over individual and human security. The logic of compassion starts with the weakest and the poorest and builds from there. Ikeda:   Political leaders around the world need to recognize the fact that elevating the logic of compassion that you advocate to the driving ideology of global society is the path to creating a “win-win world” in which every country benefits, and they must act responsibly to make that a reality. Jean Monnet (1888–1979), the father of European integration, devoted himself to restoring peace between Germany and France after World War II. He said at the Schuman Plan Conference (June 20, 1950),11 addressing the delegates from

Lessons of history  9

every nation: “We are here to undertake a common task—not to negotiate for our own national advantage, but to seek it in the advantage of all.”12 It is precisely this enlightened vision that is required today, as we face such pressing global problems. As one way of making that enlightened vision a reality, I believe that we need to create structures, such as the organization for environmental cooperation in East Asia that I mentioned earlier, enabling young people to work together to transcend national boundaries to build a better shared future. Such efforts, however, will remain incomplete if they are not supported by a commitment to transmitting from one generation to the next the spirit of honestly examining the past and learning from its lessons. Weil’s “interval of hesitation” will remain weak and rootless, and activities aimed at creating win-win results will, in the face of tensions caused by the ups and downs of current events, be too easily abandoned. In a dialogue we conducted, Gu Mingyuan, president of the Chinese Society for Education, said that it is by remembering our history that we know what we must and must not do in the present, and he added that he particularly wanted young people to acquire a firm grasp of history in order to enable friendly Sino-Japanese relations to endure. In those words, I feel he was asserting the importance of honestly facing our history and expressing at the same time his enormously high hopes for young people. For this reason, what is important is the kind of history we will set as an example for the future to follow. There are countless statues of so-called “heroes” who have caused great multitudes of people to lose their lives in war, but very few statues have been raised to commemorate those who have endured incarceration or other forms of persecution because of their opposition to war. I believe that we must not allow the lofty footsteps of such valiant individuals of principle and conscience to fade from view into the morass of history; their stories must be told and transmitted to future generations for eternity. In that context, as we begin our dialogue, I would like to inquire in detail about your father, who was a true champion of peace and humanitarianism. I learned at my first meeting with you that your father was a conscientious objector during World War II and was imprisoned as a result.

A sincere belief as a conscientious objector Clements:   Yes, that’s true. This occurred before I was born, when my father was about twenty-seven years old. He was a Methodist minister at a church in Auckland on New Zealand’s North Island. My father was conscripted into the military in 1941. He conscientiously objected to being conscripted and was told to appear before the Armed Forces Appeal Board. My father’s unyielding conviction was that evil could not be conquered by evil.

10  Lessons of history

Before World War II, from 1935 to 1939, most Methodist bible class members declared that their religious beliefs prevented them from killing anyone under any circumstances. They came to this conclusion after many vigorous debates about the reasons for and consequences of World War I, the so-called “war to end all wars.” But with the outbreak of World War II, that climate suddenly changed. At a very acrimonious Methodist Conference in 1940, a contentious resolution declaring Methodist support for the government and the war effort was passed. It urged all clergy and laity to support the war and withdrew its support from Methodists who adopted a pacifist position. This meant that when my father, whose views remained unchanged, appeared before the Armed Forces Appeal Board—set up to determine whether individual conscientious objectors were sincere in their beliefs—he had absolutely no support from the Methodist Church. He had to argue his case alone without any assistance from the Church hierarchy. As a result, when he was asked whether his Church supported his stand as a pacifist, he had to answer in the negative. This gave the Appeal Board the right to dismiss his conscientious objection on religious grounds, and—along with 1,000 other conscientious objectors—he was imprisoned in 1942 for the duration of the war. Ikeda:  I am deeply moved by your father’s courage, remaining true to his convictions even though he had been abandoned by his Church and imprisoned. Our movement’s founding presidents Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944) and Josei Toda (1900–58), because of their opposition to Japan’s militaristic government as it strengthened its control over freedom of thought and belief in an effort to rally the Japanese people to the cause of war, were forced in May 1942 to cease publication of their movement’s journal Kachi sozo (Value Creation). In addition, they were subjected to surveillance by the so-called “thought police” (the Special Higher Police), their meetings were disrupted, and they were the targets of continuous oppression and persecution. They refused to retreat a single step, however, and continued to travel throughout Japan holding discussion meetings in which the people engaged in free dialogue. Holding more than 240 such meetings in which they encouraged individuals facing a wide variety of problems, they persisted in remonstrating against the militaristic government authorities. President Makiguchi had written in Value Creation: Mistaking vice for virtue, and failing to see it as wrong, and the misguided belief that it is acceptable to behave badly or unethically as long as one isn’t breaking the law, are the cause of many of the ills afflicting society today and, as a result, self-righteous hypocrites abound.13 […]

Lessons of history  11

The defining quality of “minor goodness” is that it despises “great goodness,” rejoices in the praise of the ignorant crowd, lacks the courage to oppose great evil or the strength of character to ally itself with great goodness. Though it has an aversion to evil, it lacks the willpower to do real good, which is why it can never transcend petty egoism.14 Clements:  I love this quotation. It raises some very important questions about ways in which individuals can and should make ethical decisions at the personal, community, national, and global levels. How do we ensure that all small goodnesses contribute to great goodness at the national and global levels? Or to put it another way, how do we ensure that altruism replaces egotism as a guiding principle in all our behavior? Ikeda:   Those are crucial questions. President Makiguchi continued to take the lead through courageous action exemplifying his conviction that one must not allow oneself to be swept away by the current of the times into overlooking the evils that are prevailing in society. He did this based on his certainty that remaining true to one’s beliefs, no matter how one may be attacked or persecuted, is the way to practice the spirit of the Buddhism of Nichiren (1222–82), the Japanese Buddhist thinker and reformer, which he upheld. The priesthood of Nichiren Shoshu,15 however, who should by all rights have supported the actions of President Makiguchi, a lay follower whose beliefs they were supposed to have shared, chose the path of caving in to the restrictions on freedom of belief imposed by the militaristic authorities. They were motivated by fear that they would also become the targets of persecution. They went even further, pressuring Makiguchi to obey the government’s orders. President Makiguchi, however, adamantly refused to do so, and just a few weeks later, he was arrested, in July 1943, on suspicion of violating the Peace Preservation Law and lèse-majesté, and incarcerated. It’s now seventy years since this took place. At the same time, many leaders of the Soka Gakkai were also arrested, but the only ones to continue their struggle for their beliefs in prison were President Makiguchi and his disciple, second president Toda. President Makiguchi was a man of courage. Even while being interrogated by prosecutors, he continued to speak out for his beliefs, refusing to be intimidated. Even in prison, he also continued his intellectual quest, reading Kant, but the hardships of prison life took a fatal toll on his aged body, and he died while still in custody, in November 1944, at the age of seventy-three. Clements:   I was aware that the struggles of founding president Makiguchi and second president Toda during World War II were the starting point of the Soka Gakkai and SGI movement for peace and human rights, but I am deeply moved to hear your detailed account once again. Militarism and war suck the oxygen out of much principled behavior as individuals get seduced by patriotic and nationalist fervor.

12  Lessons of history

Whatever the country, refusing to cooperate with the authorities—during wartime in particular—always comes at a high cost. My father and the other conscientious objectors in New Zealand were imprisoned in detention camps scattered across the country. In these detention camps they did a variety of different kinds of very monotonous manual labor: planting forests, clearing farm land, planting vegetable gardens, cutting wood, and so forth. They were not permitted any leave except for family emergencies, and these emergency leaves were rarely given. They were also subject to very strict censorship, so family members and friends were unable to get a good picture of what was happening inside the detention camps. One inmate died because he was not taken to hospital fast enough for lung treatment. Visits to prisoners were sporadic because the camps were located in very remote parts of New Zealand. Ikeda:   Clearly your father suffered greatly. It is important to communicate these events to future generations, so this tragedy caused by war is not repeated. When President Makiguchi was in prison, he learned of the death of his son in a letter from his family. He must have experienced profound grief, but what moves me most is that while he was both astonished and disappointed at the sad news, he was most deeply concerned about how his wife and daughter-in-law must be feeling, and was relieved to learn of their brave acceptance of this tragedy. In another letter President Makiguchi encouraged his family members, writing: “Our shared faith is the first priority. Though incarceration is a hardship, regard it as a mere fraction of the persecution that the Daishonin [Nichiren] experienced [for his repeated remonstration of the authorities] and strengthen your belief.”16 In such cases, not only the individual who stands up for peace and human rights, but their family members as well become the target of society’s harsh censure and experience great suffering. In one of your books, Back from the Brink: The Creation of a Nuclear-Free New Zealand, you describe the situation at that time: The main pain that conscientious objectors and their families suffered during the war years was one of social stigma. Relatives of those detained had to deal with an unsympathetic social environment. As casualty figures mounted, there was a considerable amount of direct and indirect prejudice and discrimination against them. […] There were no celebrations for conscientious objectors released at the end of the war. The peace movement was practically nonexistent and pacifism seemed discredited. Most faced great difficulties getting jobs. The public service prohibited the employment of conscientious objectors, ex-teachers were banned from the classroom, and there were numerous instances of vindictive dismissals.17

Lessons of history  13

Conveying the lessons of war to the youth Clements:   Yes. Family members of conscientious objectors were often subject to harassment and discrimination because their husbands, fathers, sons, or brothers were considered cowardly shirkers and defaulters. When my father went into detention, my mother and my older sister went and stayed with her mother and father in the Methodist Parsonage in Hamilton. My mother was staying at their home and participating actively in the life of the church as well as mothering my sister. But even in that situation, she had to endure a lot of critical comment from other women and men in the church about my father’s pacifist position in a time of war. When her brother (who had volunteered for the army) was killed in North Africa, this simmering critical comment escalated and became quite cruel. She was asked, for example, how she could endure being married to a “coward” when her brother had laid down his life for king and country. Her brother was buried in the Libyan Desert which meant that she was not able to mourn his death properly. This caused her terrible anguish. The church and many members of the community seemed to hold her personally responsible for the pacifist stance of her husband. Throughout the country, the wives and family members of many conscientious objectors were in the same situation. This criticism and condemnation continued after the war ended as well. I was born in September 1946 in Opotiki on the North Island. Our family experienced active discrimination there because of my father’s beliefs. The Returned Serviceman’s Association of Opotiki persuaded shopkeepers not to serve my parents because my father was a pacifist! Fortunately, a returned fighter pilot came to our rescue and said that he did not fight the war so that prejudice and bigotry would prevail in the peace. He provided us with essential food until the shopkeepers lifted their boycott of my family. Ikeda:   I would like to express my gratitude for having you so openly share with us memories that must be extremely painful for your mother and your entire family. I believe that passing on the painful events that people experienced in war and encouraging the young people who will shoulder responsibility for the future to forge a profound pledge for peace based on sympathy with such misery and suffering can serve as the driving force for building a world without war. A merely intellectual grasp of the events of history is not enough to galvanize the people to triumph over the stampede to war when it rears its head again with renewed force. What we need is for individuals who have made a firm pledge never to allow the all-too-real suffering and misery of war to be repeated to strive, in their daily lives, to foster a culture of peace and forge an alliance with other like-minded individuals to actively oppose all threats to the worth and dignity of life and to human rights. Steadily expanding the repercussions and influences of such actions becomes the source for transforming society from its foundation up.

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That is why, from the 1970s, the Soka Gakkai has been engaged in gathering personal accounts of World War II from people throughout Japan, interviewing and recording their experiences and transmitting them to future generations, to ensure that the harsh reality of war is not forgotten. Young people have taken the lead in this activity, compiling and publishing in eighty volumes the wartime experiences of 3,400 individuals—not only victims, but soldiers as well—highlighting the misery and futility of war. In addition, the Soka Gakkai Women’s Peace Committee has also published a twenty-volume work chronicling the experiences of women who lived through World War II. In these and various other ways, we continue to communicate the terrible reality of war, and this activity is a major pillar of our activities for peace. Delegations, mostly of young people, have visited China, South Korea, and other Asian nations, deepening their connections with those of their generation in other countries and actively seeking out opportunities to listen to the wartime experiences of residents of those nations. In August 2013, one such delegation, consisting of representatives of the youth division, visited various parts of China. I am pleased to see a large number of young people in the Soka Gakkai and the SGI are actively engaged in building ties of friendship and trust with the people of other Asian nations, in a wide range of fields based on those experiences.

Notes 1 The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) was established at the University of Otago in 2009 as New Zealand’s first center to combine global crossdisciplinary expertise on the issues of development, peacebuilding, and conflict transformation. Its aims include building understandings of peace and conflict, conducting research on the causes of intrastate and international armed conflict, and providing advice and training for government and nongovernment organizations engaged in conflict resolution, peacebuilding, development, humanitarian intervention, and policy making. 2 The International Peace Research Association (IPRA) was founded in 1964. In addition to holding biennial peace research conferences, its principal aim has been to increase the quantity of research focused on world peace and ensure its scientific quality. 3 Founded in 1996 by Daisaku Ikeda and named after the second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda, the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research brings together peace researchers, policymakers, and community activists in the promotion of conflict resolution and peace initiatives at local, national, and regional levels. It has subsequently been renamed Toda Peace Institute. 4 Miklós Vetö, The Religious Metaphysics of Simone Weil, trans. Joan Dargan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 45. 5 Founded in 1984, International Alert is a conflict resolution organization that aims to empower local people to build peace by providing them with training, advice, and support, and to bring together communities divided by conflict to find nonviolent means of conflict resolution. 6 The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was set up in 1994 by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to foster constructive dialogue and consultation on political and security issues of common interest and concern, and to make significant

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7 8

9 10 11

12 13 14 15

16 17

contributions to efforts toward confidence-building and preventive diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region. Sissela Bok, A Strategy for Peace: Human Values and the Threat of War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), p. 10. Daisaku Ikeda has delivered numerous lectures and addresses at universities and seats of higher education around the world, the first being “Toward the Twenty-first Century” at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He lectured at Harvard University in 1991 and 1993. These university lectures are published as A New Humanism by I.B. Tauris, while the full text of “Mahayana Buddhism and Twenty-first-Century Civilization,” delivered at Harvard University in 1993, is available at www.daisakuikeda.org. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London, New York: Verso, 2004), p. xviii. United Nations Development Programme, “Human Development Report 2007/2008: Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world,” p. 58, http://www.hdr. undp.org/en/content/human-development-report-20078 (accessed June 6, 2017). The Schuman Plan Conferences negotiated the Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) whose six members would pool coal and steel production, signed on April 18, 1951. The concept was proposed in the Schuman Declaration presented by French foreign minister Robert Schuman (1886–1963) on May 9, 1950. It is viewed as one of the main founding events of the European Union. Jean Monnet, Memoirs, trans. Richard Mayne (Glasgow: William Collins Sons, 1978), p. 323. Translated from Japanese. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Makiguchi Tsunesaburo zenshu (The Complete Works of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi) (Tokyo: Daisanbunmei-sha, 1981–97), vol. 10, p. 29. Ibid., p. 31. For decades following the establishment of the Soka Gakkai (1930), it supported the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood, building hundreds of temples and restoring the head temple. The crux of the priesthood’s motives, however, lay in the view that priests are necessary intermediaries between lay believers and the teachings of Nichiren Buddhism. The priests sought to make veneration and obedience to themselves the keys to a practitioner’s faith. They taught, for example, that the high priest is absolute; without unquestioningly following the high priest, practitioners could not attain enlightenment. In contrast, the Soka Gakkai bases itself directly on the spirit and intent of Nichiren as set forth in his writings. Translated from Japanese. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Makiguchi Tsunesaburo zenshu, vol. 10, p. 278. Kevin Clements, Back from the Brink: The Creation of a Nuclear-Free New Zealand (Wellington: Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, 1988), p. 97.

2 YOUTH UNITED FOR A WORLD WITHOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Groundswell of voices protesting the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons Ikeda:   September 8, 2013, was the fifty-sixth anniversary of the declaration by my mentor Josei Toda, the second Soka Gakkai president, calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.1 President Toda delivered this declaration as a Buddhist leader upholding the philosophy of the value and dignity of life, and from that position denounced the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons, calling them a fundamental threat to the inviolable right to live of all citizens of the world. No country, he insisted, could be excused for the employment of nuclear weapons, under any circumstances. At the time, the height of the Cold War, the opposing camps were focused solely on the other side’s possession of nuclear weapons, but Mr. Toda saw through that fallacy and called out for a complete renunciation of nuclear weapons by all parties. Mr. Toda’s message has now risen to a global awareness. In May 2012, Switzerland, Norway, and fourteen other countries signed a joint statement on the “humanitarian dimension of nuclear disarmament” at the 2012 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Preparatory Committee2 in Vienna. This number grew to thirty-five in October 2012, and in April 2013 a new Joint Statement on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons was signed by eighty countries.3 Profound anxiety concerning the devastating and inhumane effects of nuclear weapons has been voiced repeatedly, not only with reference to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also to the terrible damage caused by more than two thousand nuclear tests around the world thereafter. Yet in spite of this, these aspects of nuclear weapons are never dealt with at conferences regarding nuclear arms reduction or nonproliferation.

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This joint declaration is a breakthrough in that respect and marks an attempt to place the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons at the center of every conference concerned with the issue of nuclear arms. New Zealand is one of the countries that have been a signatory of these statements from the very beginning of the process. Clements:   Yes, that’s true. After struggling with the many twists and turns of the Cold War world order in the period after World War II, finally in 1987 New Zealand passed the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act, becoming the first country of the Western bloc to officially adopt such an antinuclear weapons policy. Since then, it has remained steadfast in this antinuclear stance and in recent years has joined forces with other nations of the New Agenda Coalition (NAC)4— Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, South Africa, and Sweden—to advance the cause of nuclear disarmament. It’s a pity, however, that New Zealand (under pressure from its Western allies) decided that this policy was not for export, and it’s also a big pity that despite the fact that nuclear-armed states have paid lip service to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons, none of them have committed themselves to any “minimization objective” nor to any specific timetable for their major reduction. On the contrary, on the evidence of weapons arsenals, fissile material stocks, force modernization plans, stated doctrines, and deployment practices, all nine nuclear-armed states are not listening to popular opinion and are holding on to nuclear weapons indefinitely. The issue of nuclear weapons is one in which I have taken a strong personal interest from my youth. I still remember joining my father in taking part in demonstrations against the nuclear tests being carried out in the Pacific Ocean by the United States and the United Kingdom when I was about ten years old (1956). Young as I was, I thought it was very strange that though nuclear weapons were touted as existing to protect us, their testing was causing harm through radioactive fallout. After World War II, my father became the editor of the Christian Pacifist Society Journal, The Christian Pacifist, which voiced strong and sustained condemnation of nuclear weapons. My father and the other members of the Christian Pacifist Society were appalled at the diabolical power of the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The early editorials of The Christian Pacifist, therefore, acknowledged again and again that these bombs changed the nature of warfare forever. The fact that they were indiscriminate in their destruction of combatants and noncombatants alike meant that it was no longer possible to sustain the “just war theory,” since nuclear weapons eliminated the distinctions between civilians and military. In addition, destroying everything in their wake, they could never be considered proportionate to any military threat. But during the 1950s, the majority of New Zealanders placed a very high value on supporting the U.K. and the British Commonwealth and their new alliance

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partner, the U.S. They generally thought it inappropriate to raise objections to their nuclear policies since our allies were intent on building their entire defense and security arrangements around them. It was the Lucky Dragon incident of March 1954, in which a U.S. thermonuclear device test contaminated the crew of the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5 with nuclear fallout, that started worrying New Zealanders about the invisible and negative radiation effects of nuclear testing. I remember my father talking very seriously about the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing immediately after the Lucky Dragon incident. Then, two years later, an American thermonuclear test, the flash of which could be seen on the east coast of New Zealand, alarmed New Zealanders and gave rise to the beginning of a long and sustained antinuclear movement there. The first slogan was “No Bombs South of the Line”—the line referring to the equator. My father was a part of that movement. I felt immensely proud of the early stand my father took against nuclear weapons. Ikeda:   I see. So, your commitment to peace began with and was nurtured by your father’s actions? In Japan, too, the contamination by nuclear fallout of the crew of Lucky Dragon No. 5 triggered a petition drive calling for the abolition of nuclear arms. At various meetings at that time, President Toda often raised the issue of nuclear weapons, expressing the firm opinion that anyone who employed them was irredeemably evil and calling for a complete ban on them, while continuing to explore the essence of the problem in greater depth. Seven months before his death, in a brief period of recovery from a persisting illness, he made his Declaration Calling for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, the culmination of his thoughts on the issue, before an audience of some 50,000 young people. The year that President Toda made his declaration was also the year that the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a gathering of scientists committed to eliminating war and nuclear weapons, began meeting. Dr. Joseph Rotblat (1908–2005), who was for many years the president of the Pugwash Conferences, once said to me: Two approaches to nuclear weapons have been taken. One is the legal approach, and the second is the moral approach. Mr. Toda, as a religious person, took the latter. I believe that he was right to do so.5 In his dialogue with me, published as A Quest for Global Peace, Dr. Rotblat said that it was actually the Lucky Dragon incident that provided the occasion for his first meeting with Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). At that time, the dangers of nuclear weapons were drawing increasing attention among the citizens of the U.K., and the BBC put together a special program on the subject. Dr. Rotblat

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was asked to explain, in his role as a scientist, the principles behind the hydrogen bomb, while Dr. Russell, as a philosopher, was invited to discuss the moral implications. The following year, Dr. Rotblat was asked to sign the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, and a couple of years later the two worked together to found the Pugwash Conferences. Clements:   I am interested to hear Dr. Rotblat’s assessment of President Toda. It’s also interesting to learn of how Bertrand Russell and Joseph Rotblat originally met. I remember as a fifteen year old wanting to go off to England and join the Committee of 1006 led by Russell, and was set on raising money to do this. As you know, the Committee of 100 was an organization established by Russell in 1961, which sponsored demonstrations and rallies against nuclear weapons. I was very eager to take part in the Committee’s activities, but my father suggested it might be good to finish my schooling and go later. The consequence of his prudent advice was that I never got arrested with Bertrand Russell and Canon Collins of the Anglican Church! So I stayed in academia, but I was quite active in New Zealand in the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

The demonic nature of nuclear weapons Ikeda:   Your passion for the cause of nuclear disarmament from your youth is communicated by those recollections. In October 1961, shortly after Russell and the other protestors were arrested, I made my first visit to Europe, visiting countries such as the U.K. and West Germany. At the time, the Berlin Wall had just been erected. I felt a compelling urge to visit West Berlin, where tensions were rising, and I went as close as possible to the Brandenburg Gate, which had been sealed off. Seeing in person the reality—that long wall, cruelly separating family members and friends and casting so many people into the sloughs of despair—I still recall offering a profound prayer for peace and making a vow to strive to put an end to these divisions that wracked our world by dedicating myself to following the path of dialogue. The Berlin Wall had been built after the Vienna Summit between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had ended in a stalemate that June. At that summit, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) said to U.S. President John F. Kennedy (1917– 63): “Force will be met by force. If the U.S. wants war, that is its problem. The calamities of a war will be shared equally.”7 Such inflammatory declarations were exchanged on numerous occasions during the Cold War, and tensions heightened to the degree that the world was brought to the brink of nuclear war, for example during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This all took place in spite of the clear reality that a nuclear war would result not only in the death of those living in the enemy country but also of those in one’s own and allied countries, and in fact the destruction of all life on Earth.

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Bertrand Russell once described the omnipotent leaders who have the enormous power of science and technology at their command as succumbing to the delusion that they are “armed like Jove, with a thunderbolt.”8 In his Declaration Calling for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, President Toda denounced the demonic nature and disrespect for life that underlies nuclear weapons, the willingness to sacrifice the lives of multitudes of people and the very planet on which we depend in the name of military necessity. Clements:   I agree with you completely. I have personally experienced an event that led me to conclude that nuclear armaments are indeed diabolical weapons. It occurred on July 9, 1962, when I witnessed the way the sky changed during a high-altitude nuclear test called “Starfish Prime” conducted by the U.S. The bomb, launched from Johnston Atoll southwest of the Hawaiian Islands, exploded 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the ground, producing a yield of 1.4 megatons of TNT and knocking out communication systems all around the Pacific. The aurora it generated could be seen from New Zealand and many other islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean. The flash and the aurora turned the sky red and yellow, and I still remember the feeling of tremendous dread it stirred in me. The fact that the bomb had such a profound effect on the electromagnetic nature of the atmosphere once again underlined how cavalier nuclear bomb makers were about playing with nature! This experience unsettled many New Zealanders, as it was uncertain what the short-, medium- and long-term effects of such an explosion would be on weather patterns and all the electromagnetic fields so critical to life and well-being. It also coincided with a spike in the amount of strontium and cesium measured in New Zealand milk. It stretched credulity for political leaders to assert that these nuclear tests were harmless. Those of us who were around at the time of the explosion could see the direct consequences in the sky, and scientists were detecting the invisible consequences in the milk and in pastureland. I was shocked that scientists were continuing to devise more and more diabolical ways of testing such weapons and I was appalled at the increasing megatonnage and power of each bomb. It was insane that the scientific establishments of the U.S., U.S.S.R., U.K., China, and France were dedicated to the production of bigger and bigger bombs with higher and higher levels of lethality. Ikeda:   As you have so vividly stated, even if nuclear weapons are not used, they are the epitome of immoral weaponry that in its very development and production inflicts irreparable harm on people and the biosphere. Throughout the approximately seventy years of the Nuclear Age, the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands and other places where nuclear testing has been conducted, as well as the areas around the facilities for the development and production of nuclear armaments in the nuclear-armed nations, have been sites of radiation contamination, presenting serious health hazards to the local population.

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The word hibakusha has gained global currency, describing not only those who experienced the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but people everywhere who have been victimized by the harm that accompanies the development and production of nuclear weapons. Dr. Bernard Lown, cofounder of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW),9 has denounced this radioactive contamination produced in the name of security. He asks how we are going to safely dispose of the great stockpiles of highly radioactive materials that have accumulated as part of the nuclear arms race.10 In addition to the massive destruction that would result from a nuclear war, when we consider the ongoing threat represented by nuclear weapons as well as the incalculable burden they place on our future, how is it possible to continue to defend nuclear weapons as a “necessary evil”? At the first special heads-of-state-level UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament held in 2009, a resolution was adopted urging the need “to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.” Now is the time, I believe, for the nuclear states and those existing under their “nuclear umbrellas” to begin to take action to establish those conditions in reality. As part of that process, I think countries that have long enjoyed protection under the nuclear umbrellas of the nuclear states, including Japan, are the key to effecting major changes in this situation.

How New Zealand became denuclearized Clements:   I agree. Though New Zealand is now consistent in its antinuclear arms policy, in the past it was taken for granted by political leaders and members of the public that we were safe under the U.S. and U.K. nuclear umbrellas. Mainstream public opinion accepted all the conventional arguments about extended deterrence, believing that the only way to prevent their country from being subject to nuclear attack was to remain under the nuclear umbrella of their allies, without challenging the implications of a failure of such deterrence or the appalling consequences of all-out nuclear war. Most New Zealanders accepted that the Cold War was a real war—a contest between good and evil—and that we in the West were on the side of the angels. Any questioning of nuclear weapons or nuclear tests, therefore, was considered somewhat unpatriotic. In 1964, I (and a small group of young antinuclear activists) decided that we would try and persuade children and young people of the dangers of nuclear weapons. So in the summer of 1964 we decided to run a series of puppet shows, plays, and folk songs at the popular beach holiday resort Tahunanui, near Nelson, New Zealand. We called it “On the Beach” to capitalize on the Nevil Shute film of that same name.

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This was an enormously successful ten days. People were interested in hearing our views on nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and nuclear testing. Little children seemed to understand the threat from nuclear weapons more immediately and intuitively than their parents. This experience made me understand the importance of connecting with and working alongside the next generation if you want to generate effective social and political change. Imitating the annual antinuclear Aldermaston marches11 organized by Russell in the United Kingdom, we also used to march from Featherston to Wellington every Easter, talking to individuals and communities along the way. While these marches did not reach the numbers of people who walked from Aldermaston to London, they were nevertheless important in providing individuals with an opportunity to express their concern about nuclear weapons and for us to talk about their impacts on peace and the future of the human species. The Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and its parent body, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), provided plenty of opportunity for all of us to read and discuss the latest scientific information about nuclear weapons and their indiscriminate genocidal consequences. Ikeda:   My mentor Josei Toda firmly believed that a new century would be created by the power and passion of youth. I think it’s wonderful how you and your fellow young people refused to blindly accept society’s established dogmas, thought for yourselves and stood up and took action to plead the case of the threat of nuclear weapons. Far from ensuring security, nuclear weapons act as a lightning rod attracting the threat of war. I personally witnessed how, at a time not only of East–West friction but also of heightened tensions between the Soviet Union and China, the people of both those nations lived in anxiety and fear, under the ever-present threat of the possibility of nuclear attack. When I visited China for the first time in May 1974, I saw the underground shelters the people of Beijing had been building as protection against possible attacks and witnessed junior high school students furiously digging an underground shelter beneath their schoolyard. The fact that the threat of nuclear war was casting its ominous shadow even over these children pained me deeply. Today, more than twenty years after the end of the Cold War, that degree of tension is no longer present in most nations, but more than 15,000 nuclear warheads still exist around the world, a sword of Damocles hanging by the thinnest of threads over the heads of global humanity, as President Kennedy pointed out, threatening the very survival of the human race. This reality remains unchanged. Instead of ignoring this fact, we need to resolutely open the way to a world without nuclear weapons and bring an end to this absolutely untenable situation as quickly as possible. In that regard, I think there is a great deal to learn from the

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people of New Zealand, who took the initiative to remove their country from the nuclear umbrella and transform it into a non-nuclear state. Looking back at the events leading up to the adoption of the 1987 New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act, what movements and events do you see as having underpinned or played a major role in this change in New Zealand’s direction? Clements:   I would be delighted to respond to that. In fact, I wrote a book on this subject, Back from the Brink: The Creation of a Nuclear-Free New Zealand. As you know, at that time our country was under the nuclear umbrella of the U.S. through the Australia, New Zealand, United States (ANZUS) Security Treaty, signed in 1951. Having allied ourselves with the U.S., the general assumption of the people of New Zealand was that we had to accept our allies’ nuclear policies. A former New Zealand Prime Minister, John Marshall, used to say that he could sleep easy in his bed at night knowing that the United States would come to our aid if we were attacked. And, he said, he liked to think that the citizens of the United States could sleep easier in their beds knowing that New Zealand would come to their aid if they were attacked!!! This collective security logic means that smaller nations/allies inevitably accept the defense and security doctrine of the larger, and their enemies become ours even if those states have no malign interest in New Zealand. It’s important that we start challenging some of these old understandings of defense and security and focus much more on common security/human security as more enlightened frameworks for national defense. After witnessing the results of the nuclear testing that I mentioned earlier, the people of New Zealand became much more apprehensive about nuclear “theology” and doctrine. There had been growing disquiet at U.S., British, and Soviet nuclear tests during the 1950s and 60s, but the first major national reaction was triggered by the repeated nuclear tests of the French at Mururoa Atoll in the 1970s. Antinuclear sentiment grew among the people, and the response to the French testing became a major point of debate in the 1972 national elections. Then in 1973, pressed by strong public opinion on the matter, the New Zealand government sued France at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have them stop the tests on medical, political, and humanitarian grounds. The French refused to participate in the court case and continued testing, but after a wave of strong international criticism, eventually announced that all future tests at Mururoa would be underground. The ICJ took this statement as justification to determine that New Zealand no longer had any claim before it and there was nothing for them to decide. Though in that form the case was dismissed, the effect was a practical victory in bringing a halt to atmospheric testing, and through this chain of events the call to make New Zealand a non-nuclear nation grew stronger among the people.

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Ikeda:   New Zealand’s struggle in the ICJ, along with that engaged in at the same time by Australia, brought hope to those living on the island nations of the Pacific and all others who had experienced harm from nuclear testing. Clements:   Yes. New Zealand’s prime minister at the time, Norman Kirk (1923– 74), declared, “We are a small nation, but we will not abjectly surrender to injustice.” Through taking the case to the ICJ, he demonstrated that bringing the issue to the attention of people around the world could become a restraining force on the actions of nuclear powers. But the next New Zealand government returned to the position of supporting ANZUS, and U.S. nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships and submarines were allowed entry into New Zealand’s ports. Many citizens’ groups rose up in protest against this development, and in December 1981, the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone Committee was formed, based in Christchurch. Simultaneous with the founding of the Nuclear Free Zone Committee, women in Auckland and throughout the country began a movement to symbolically rid themselves of the nuclear menace by declaring their homes and other buildings nuclear-free. Their efforts, along with those of educational and church groups, resulted in imaginative peace campaigns and events. The most important theme running through this movement was that of empowering people to assume personal responsibility for eliminating the nuclear threat instead of waiting for or relying on governments to take action. The Nuclear Free Zone Committee took note of this personal and community-level empowerment and encouraged local antinuclear groups around the country to press local governments to declare themselves nuclear-free. Eventually, with Christchurch as a model, local bodies began to declare themselves nuclear-free, and by the end of 1986, 104 local governments, representing about 2.2 million people or more than 70 percent of New Zealand’s population, were nuclear-free.12 In addition to this rising tide of support for the antinuclear stance, the attack on the Rainbow Warrior, the ship of the antinuclear movement Greenpeace (July 1985) through French sabotage while the ship was in port in Auckland Harbour, and the Chernobyl Disaster in the Soviet Union (April 1986) created strong majority support in New Zealand for the antinuclear cause, which culminated in the adoption of the Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act in 1987. What was clear to me and other antinuclear activists was a certain political timidity that needed to be challenged and broken. Politicians and government officials always err on the side of caution and prudence. In the face of direct and potential threat from nuclear weapons, the people of New Zealand said loud and clear that the prudent, responsible action at this moment in time is to take a stand against nuclear weapons and work for their reduction, management, and abolition. When confronted by a united population the politicians had no choice but to respond to antinuclear sentiment. We need to activate this sentiment again in the twenty-first century.

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Worldwide awareness-raising toward abolition of nuclear weapons Ikeda:   Thank you for that clear explanation of the process through which New Zealand abandoned the nuclear umbrella and became a nuclear-free-zone. Both in the 1970s and the 1980s, it was citizens’ movements, spread through the efforts of committed individuals, that triggered these social changes and played a major role in transforming government policies. I am especially impressed by the philosophy of empowerment that formed the axis of this movement, leading individual citizens to see these problems as relevant to their lives and encouraging them to speak out and take action on their own initiative instead of relying on the government to act. That is the point upon which the members of the SGI have placed our greatest stress and the direction in which we have exerted the most concentrated efforts in expanding our grassroots movement for the abolition and elimination of nuclear weapons around the world. Because the threat of nuclear weapons and their harmful effects is so rarely brought to people’s attention, they lack a sense of the reality of the dangers, which has been a factor leading many people to overlook the seriousness of the problem. That motivated us to create and present around the world a series of exhibitions to break through that unconscious barrier and bring the subject of nuclear weapons directly into the line of sight of the people. The first such exhibition opened at UN Headquarters in New York in June 1982, where it was shown in conjunction with the UN Second Special Session on Disarmament. In all, we have created four antinuclear exhibitions, revising and renewing the contents and perspectives to address issues current at the time, in an effort at promoting empowerment and awareness-raising among the citizens of the world. Clements:   I have been aware for many years of the initiatives the SGI has been making for the abolition and prohibition of nuclear weapons. You mention that you revised and renewed the exhibition to address topical matters. What themes were the focus in each of the four versions of the exhibition? Ikeda:   The first exhibition, “Nuclear Arms: Threat to Our World,” was held in conjunction with the United Nations Disarmament Campaign. It traveled to twenty-five cities in sixteen countries on both sides of the Cold War struggle, including nuclear-weapon states. I attended an opening of its Moscow showing in May 1987. Focusing on artifacts from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki such as roof tiles melted by the heat generated in the explosion and the charred remains of clothing, it communicated the atrocity of the attack and the horror and cruelty of nuclear weapons. For the second exhibition, the title was revised to “Nuclear Arms: Threat to Humanity,” sounding an alarm concerning the proliferation of nuclear weapons in

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the post-Cold War world and seeking ways to overcome the barriers of mistrust separating the nuclear and non-nuclear powers. This exhibition was held in fourteen cities in eight countries. I attended the opening ceremony for the debut of this second version of the exhibition in Costa Rica in June 1996. At that event, former president of Costa Rica Oscar Arias Sánchez noted that the problems of war and peace are not the sole concern of the nuclear nations and should not be left up to the UN Security Council and the developed nations to decide. Rather, he insisted, they are issues which each individual must earnestly engage with and discuss together to resolve. His words resonated very closely with our motivation for presenting the exhibition. Coincidentally, just ten days after the exhibition opened in Costa Rica, the ICJ delivered an Advisory Opinion stating, “A threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law.”13 I recall that we took this Advisory Opinion, which was a product of forceful initiatives by the people of New Zealand and other citizens’ groups around the world, as an incentive to redouble our efforts, and thus deepened our commitment to bringing about the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. Clements:   Yes, it was the determined effort of a New Zealand magistrate, Harold Evans (1916–2006), who worked tirelessly to mobilize opinion behind another case to the ICJ. He was a lovely man who had earlier been involved in the Japanese War Crime Tribunals as a prosecutor. He was a dedicated humanitarian who, for relaxation during court hearings, would play Bach on a piano in his office! Ikeda:   Mr. Evans was not only a person who strongly sought peace and humanitarianism but also an individual who never forgot his love of art, wasn’t he? Though regrettably he passed away at the age of ninety in 2006, the members of the SGI have learned a lot from him as we have engaged in the movement toward nuclear weapons abolition. The third incarnation of the exhibition was titled “From a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Peace: Transforming the Human Spirit,” and began in 2007. It highlighted the issue of nuclear weapons from the viewpoints of a culture of peace and the right to human security, and it communicated the message that the driving force for the resolution of the problem of nuclear weapons must come from the transformation of the mind of each individual. The exhibition has been shown in more than 230 cities in 31 countries, and was supported by the people of New Zealand from an early stage. It was shown in The Beehive, your Parliament’s new executive wing (August 2007), as well as at Victoria University, the city of Auckland, and other venues. The exhibition at the Parliament commemorated both the fiftieth anniversary of President Toda’s call for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the twentieth anniversary of New Zealand becoming a nuclear-free zone, and the exhibition was supported by the United Nations New Zealand Association, the New Zealand Foundation for Peace Studies, and numerous other groups.

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Clements:   Victoria University is my alma mater, and my father was formerly the director of the New Zealand Foundation for Peace Studies. I am very happy to have been able to forge a closer relationship with SGI members through the exhibition. The New Zealand Foundation for Peace Studies, established in 1975, was dedicated to the development of peace education in schools and also to the promotion of a chair in peace studies at a New Zealand university. Because the time of its establishment was still the heyday of the Cold War, the government and universities were suspicious of the political content of Peace and Conflict Studies and the chair never materialized, although small research and teaching programs were established at Auckland and Canterbury Universities. The movement to urge the ICJ to deliver an Advisory Opinion on nuclear weapons—the World Court Project—can be traced back to former magistrate Harold Evans and Kate Dewes, a member of the New Zealand Foundation for Peace Studies and special lecturer on Peace Studies at the University of Canterbury. They worked assiduously on this issue through the 1980s. This initiative ran in parallel with the Nuclear Free Zone movement, the Peace Squadrons, and many other campaigns. Taken together, these highlight the importance of disarmament campaigns adopting multiple initiatives simultaneously. My father was one who believed in the need to view peace and conflict issues from as many different perspectives as possible. He believed strongly, for example, in the importance of dialogue between the peace research community and the military. After I became a scholar of peace and conflict issues, he was very pleased that I was appointed to the New Zealand Government’s Defence Committee of Enquiry in 1985, because this provided me with a chance to talk with the military about how we could best be defended without dependence on extended deterrence or the American nuclear umbrella. I thought at the time that if the New Zealand government really desired to build on its antinuclear policies to advance détente, it needed to assign a higher priority to the development of common security than to enhanced conventional defense. By common security, I did not necessarily mean a movement in the direction of neutrality, but to reconsider defense and security issues in a way that national defense did not generate insecurity for other nations.

Eliminating reliance on nuclear weapons Ikeda:   With the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the diffusion of the threat, the nuclear issue seems to have reached an impasse. To resolve this, as former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz and others have emphasized, what is needed “first and foremost is intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to turn the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise.”14 We need to free ourselves from the spell of the theory of nuclear deterrence, which posits a balance of levels of threat and fear, and set out on a new approach of working together to reduce threats and provide a sense of mutual security,

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moving in the direction of expanding circles of physical and psychological security in regions and around the world, including countries that have depended upon the nuclear umbrellas of nuclear powers. In the peace proposal that I issued in January 2013, I said in this regard: Japan, which likewise comes under the extended deterrence of its ally, the United States of America, should join with other countries seeking the prohibition of nuclear weapons as inhumane and work for the earliest realization of a world free from these weapons. […] Further, having made clear its determination to shift toward security arrangements that are not reliant on nuclear weapons, Japan should undertake the kind of confidence-building measures that are a necessary predicate to the establishment of a Northeast Asian NWFZ. In particular, Japan should make proactive contributions to the reduction of regional tensions and to shrinking the role of nuclear weapons so as to create the conditions for their global abolition. There have been recent signs, even within the nuclear-weapon states, of changing attitudes regarding the utility of these weapons, and U.S. President Barack Obama and other NATO leaders have recognized the lessened centrality of nuclear weapons in national security thinking. Most of all, we cannot ignore the onerous burden and harmful effect imposed upon the world as long as national security is regarded as based on the possession of nuclear weapons. For example, it is estimated that the annual aggregate expenditure on nuclear weapons globally is about 105 billion dollars. If those financial resources were redirected domestically to health, social welfare, and education programs, or to development aid for other countries, the positive impact on people’s lives would be incalculable. Clements:   You have mentioned that states possessing nuclear weapons are reassessing their utility, which represents, I think, a critical paradigm shift in the issue of nuclear weapons. It is very clear from many different sources that for over thirty years political and military leaders in all nuclear nations resisted scientific advice, religious and humanitarian concerns, and the largest political movement in history, and are only now somewhat begrudgingly acknowledging the impossibility of defending the indefensible in relation to nuclear weapons. As I mentioned before, however, it would seem that lip service is being paid to the abolitionist position while the doctrine and behavior of the nuclear states is in favor of the retention of such weapons for the foreseeable future. The challenge facing us in the twenty-first century is reconnecting to the historic antinuclear movements of the 1980s and 90s and making a final push for

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the abolition of nuclear weapons. It would be good if the nuclear-armed states could become more self-reflective and subject their nuclear doctrines to more critical scrutiny, and it would also be highly desirable (and a mark of their good intentions) if the U.S. and Russia, in particular, would change their nuclear force postures and reduce the dangerously high launch-alert status of their nuclear weapons. That would be one small signal of their intention to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons. Ikeda:   As I mentioned at the beginning of our discussion, there is a constantly growing consensus on the need for a joint agreement that nuclear weapons can never be used, under any circumstances, and to stir up a cascade effect we need to rally global public opinion for a complete farewell to the nuclear age. The fourth SGI antinuclear exhibition, “Everything You Treasure—For a World Free from Nuclear Weapons,” jointly developed with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN),15 opened in August 2012 in Hiroshima. Since then it has been presented in Oslo, Norway, and Geneva, Switzerland, and in August 2013 it was shown at the University of Otago in New Zealand. I would like to express my sincere appreciation for your support and assistance with the exhibition in New Zealand. I heard it has been very well received. Clements:  I was privileged to open this exhibition with Dr. Ted Nye from IPPNW, Professor Grant Gillett from the Department of Bio-Ethics, and Jimi Wallace from SGI-New Zealand. The exhibition was extremely well received and attracted a lot of press and media coverage. Thousands of students have seen it as they made their way to the library. I think it definitely succeeded in getting individuals and the next generation to think more carefully about the connections between nuclear questions, humanitarian law and the environment. It also focused important attention on health and well-being and the human rights consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. The continuing aftermath of the Fukushima disaster of March 2011 has reactivated considerable anxiety in New Zealand—as presumably it has in Japan— about the negative environmental and health consequences of nuclear incidents and accidents. While there are some positive impacts of nuclear technology (as in controlled radiotherapy), accidents do happen and when they do the consequences are insidious and appalling. We need to remind people that the negative radioactive impacts of Fukushima would pale into insignificance compared to the negative impacts of a nuclear war or a major nuclear weapons accident. Ikeda:   The latest exhibition, in addition to warning of the threat of nuclear weapons, examines the issue of nuclear weapons from twelve different perspectives, including environmental, economic, human rights, and gender. By this means it seeks to engage the interests of individual viewers, helping them draw the connection between nuclear weapons and their personal concerns, and by so doing expand and extend solidarity for a world free from nuclear weapons. In order to

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achieve this, I firmly believe that joint efforts of civil society in both nuclear and non-nuclear states, especially those led by youth, will play a major role. In May 2010, the Soka Gakkai youth division collected 2.27 million signatures on a petition calling for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) to seek the abolition of nuclear arms. The petition was presented to the United Nations and the NPT Review Conference. Ambassador Libran N. Cabactulan, President of the 2010 NPT Review Conference, sent a message to be read at the ceremony presenting the petitions, praising the efforts of the young people and saying that if the people speak and remain united, leaders will follow. The final report of the Review Conference contained a noteworthy sentence: The Conference expresses deep concern at the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and reaffirms the need for all States at all times to comply with the applicable international law, including international humanitarian law. This represents an advance upon the Advisory Opinion issued by the ICJ in 1996, the phrase “all States at all times” clearly expressing the epoch-making import that there are no exceptions to this principle. The fact that the final report referred to the NWC that the young people were calling for in their petition was also truly significant. During the summer of 2013, Soka Gakkai youth striving on the frontlines of the peace movement held their annual joint peace summit for representatives from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Okinawa. With the upcoming 2015 NPT Conference and the seventieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki firmly in their sights, they are determined to rally the voices of the younger generation to achieve concrete results in leading to an age without nuclear weapons. Clements:   I am always deeply impressed by the impassioned efforts of the Soka Gakkai youth division members for the abolition of nuclear weapons. I find it incredibly moving that they have collected 2.27 million signatures calling for a Nuclear Weapons Convention to seek the abolition of nuclear weapons. It’s a wonderful achievement, and I would like to offer my praises to all who participated. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the world will abolish nuclear weapons and that it will be carried out by the generation currently in the youth division. The arguments for nuclear weapons in terms of old deterrence theory, extended deterrence, and hegemonic stability all seem less and less plausible in our interconnected world. Mobilizing larger and larger numbers of people in favor of total abolition of such weapons is vitally important for the future of the world and for preventing the further proliferation of such weapons. It is critically important, therefore, that young people supported by those who are older, continue to protest such weapons. They are an abomination to humanity,

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infringe international humanitarian law, and have no place in securing the future of the species. My sense is that those countries that are committed to the continued possession, deployment, and potential use of such weapons have lost interest in guaranteeing humanity into the future. It is vital that those of us who do want to guarantee species survival resist these and all weapons of mass destruction with all the intelligence, enthusiasm, and mass mobilization that we can muster. To achieve that, I look forward to working with the SGI and all other likeminded individuals and organizations interested in nuclear abolition. It is vital that we all continue to expand concern about the continuing dangers of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The risks posed by nuclear weapons have reduced a little since the crazy years of the 1980s but they remain high. We cannot and should not burden the next generation with anxiety about such weapons. It’s vital that we do what we can now to change nuclear doctrines, reduce the numbers of weapons (en route to total abolition), that we de-alert existing weapons, and mobilize political will behind a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

Notes 1 Second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda made his Declaration Calling for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons on September 8, 1957, a few months before his death. At a meeting of some 50,000 members of the Soka Gakkai’s youth division at Mitsuzawa Stadium in Yokohama, he denounced those who would use nuclear weapons and asked young people to take up the challenge of ridding the world of them. The declaration can be read at www.joseitoda.org. 2 The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament. It entered into force in 1970, with Review Conferences held every five years to discuss the operation of the treaty. 3 International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, “79 States sign Joint Statement on Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons,” April 25, 2013, http://www.icanw.org/ campaign-news/78-states-sign-joint-statement-on-humanitarian-impact-of-nuclearweapons/ (accessed June 6, 2017). 4 The New Agenda Coalition (NAC), composed of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, and South Africa, is a geographically dispersed group of countries seeking to build an international consensus to make progress on nuclear disarmament. 5 Joseph Rotblat and Daisaku Ikeda, A Quest for Global Peace: Rotblat and Ikeda on War, Ethics and the Nuclear Threat (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), p. 52. 6 The Committee of 100 was a British anti-war group set up in 1960 with a hundred public signatories, whose first president was Bertrand Russell. It organized nonviolent demonstrations campaigning for nuclear disarmament. Many of its original signatories were arrested and sent to prison. It was wound up in October 1968. 7 See U.S. Department of State, “Memorandum of Conversation,” June 4, 1961, https:// history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v05/d89 (accessed August 23, 2018). 8 Bertrand Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis (London: Allen, 1938), p. 31. 9 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) is a non-partisan federation of national medical groups in sixty-four countries, representing doctors,

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10 11

12 13 14 15

medical students, other health workers, and concerned citizens aiming to create a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation. See Bernard Lown, Yameru chikyu o iyasutameni (Curing the Sickened Earth) (Hiroshima: Chugoku Shimbunsha, 1991), p. 31. The Aldermaston marches were British antinuclear weapons demonstrations in the 1950s and 1960s. At their height in the early 1960s they attracted tens of thousands of people marching between the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire and London, a distance of about fifty miles (eighty km). Kevin Clements, Back from the Brink, p. 116. International Court of Justice, “Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons,” p. 44, Advisory Opinion, July 8, 1996, http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/95/7495.pdf (accessed June 6, 2017). George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn. “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.” The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, https://www.wsj.com/ articles/SB116787515251566636 (accessed August 22, 2018). International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is a coalition of nongovernmental organizations in a hundred countries advocating for a strong and effective nuclear weapon ban treaty. Founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 2007, its aim is to build a powerful global groundswell of public support for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

3 MAKING THE SANCTITY OF LIFE THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

Ending the cycle of violence and hatred Ikeda:   “Nothing is more barbarous than war. Nothing is more cruel.” Those are the words with which I began my novel, The Human Revolution, when I started composing it nearly a half-century ago. I am still writing the novel’s sequel, The New Human Revolution, and I regard the original and the sequel as my life work. In the twentieth century, so many lives were lost and subjected to indescribable suffering due to perpetual warfare, including two world wars. Despite such grave lessons of history, conflicts and civil wars are still occurring in many parts of the world. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Yearbook 2013, in the decade from 2002 through 2011 there were 73 active state-based conflicts—conflicts involving at least one state—and 223 non-state conflicts—conflicts among regional powers or between political, religious, or ethnic groups. We can also see an increase in the number of refugees and internally displaced people, reaching 45.2 million at the end of 2012, a number greater than any time since 1994.1 The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that most refugees are forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of conflict, which is shown by the top five countries in numbers of refugees, i.e. Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, and Sudan. The UNHCR has also noted that nearly half of the refugees are children below the age of eighteen.2 The international community should not shy away from these realities that are the root causes of the tragedies, and should act together to further promote cooperation toward the relief of the refugees. A culture of war that leads to the escalation of opposition and tensions into military conflict still prevails in the world today. We cannot put an end to this cycle of

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violence and hatred unless we are able to firmly establish a culture of peace based on respect for others, mutual understanding, and openhearted dialogue. From your time as the chair and director of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) at George Mason University up to your present role as professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, you have for many years engaged in research on conflict prevention and resolution as well as on preventing recurrence. What led you to become involved in your research on these subjects? Clements:   I think that the Vietnam War was the greatest influence. The war lasted from 1959 to 1975, ending with the defeat of South Vietnam in April 1975. Nearly 1.5 million soldiers and over 2 million civilians were killed during the war. It was a preventable tragedy. The so-called “domino theory,” which held that if Vietnam fell to Communism the rest of the countries of Southeast Asia would follow in a remorseless march, was totally spurious. This was a war of independence and self-determination reframed by the West and its Asian allies as a war between Communism and Democratic Capitalism. The Vietnam War was an important catalyst for me and my generation. It forced us to think about big issues like power, domination, militarism, imperialism, and war and peace. The war had the same sort of significance for us as World War II had for my father’s generation. The major difference was that it could not be interpreted as a just or justifiable war. New Zealand was not a major or even a middle-ranking military power, but we were subject to a lot of high-level political and economic pressure from the United States to provide troops in support of the war. Air Vice Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky (1930–2011) visited from South Vietnam, as did Vice President Hubert Humphrey (1911–78) and finally President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–73) himself from the U.S. The New Zealand Government tried to resist extensive engagement in the war but in the end succumbed because of Cold War concerns, alliance membership obligations, and a growing anxiety about continued access to the United States dairy and beef markets. The then Prime Minister, Keith Holyoake (1904–83), decided to keep New Zealand’s involvement in Vietnam at the minimum level deemed necessary to meet allied expectations as required by the ANZUS security pact. But even this limited contribution to the war effort provoked national opposition. As the war went on, protest about New Zealand’s role grew. Ikeda:   The Vietnam War and the Korean War are regarded as having produced the most casualties since World War II. The Vietnamese people were once again engulfed in a large-scale conflict, following their occupation by the Japanese military in World War II and the French Indochina War. When the fighting in Vietnam intensified with the beginning of the U.S. bombing of the North in 1965, the anti-Vietnam War movement spread in Japan as well.

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I was among those who felt a powerful sense of anger and outrage that once again young people were being pulled into ideological conflicts during the Cold War and the people were being cast into the depths of misfortune and despair. I began writing The Human Revolution in December 1964, just two months before the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam started. As tensions rose to the point where it was feared the conflict might escalate into a direct military action between the United States and China, I called for an immediate cessation of the Vietnam War and the convening of a peace conference of all involved parties, in a speech I gave at a youth division general meeting in November 1966. At a student division general meeting in August 1967, I once again strongly urged the cessation of the bombing campaign against the North. Though peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam began in May 1968, and in the fall the U.S. announced a cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam, the conflict escalated again, and in December 1972 the U.S. carried out the largest aerial assault on the North to date, engaging in carpet bombing. In January 1973, I sent a letter to U.S. President Richard Nixon (1913–94) through his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger calling for a speedy end to the war. By that time, world public opinion widely supported an end to the conflict. Soon thereafter, at the end of January, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. I was greatly relieved that at last a path to the war’s end had been opened, and I prayed for the repose of all who had lost their lives in the war. Clements:   I did not know that you took these excellent second-track initiatives3 to try and end the war in Vietnam, nor did I realize that the Vietnam War was part of the initial motivation for your excellent book, The Human Revolution. It’s a very great pity that there was no political willingness to respond to your initiatives and the wishes of people around the world to bring the war to an end and to search for a negotiated solution to the war much earlier. It would have saved many lives and minimized the traumatic consequences for all the combatants and innocent victims of the war.  The global opposition to the war, which in New Zealand grew remorselessly from 1963 until 1973, developed for a whole variety of different reasons. Those holding pacifist beliefs opposed the war on moral and humanitarian grounds. As we became more conscious of the indiscriminate nature of the weapons being used—Agent Orange, napalm, and the carpet bombing of Viet Cong areas—it became clear that the war also infringed international humanitarian law. The antiwar movement in New Zealand challenged us to think about our security agreements and the advantages and disadvantages of alliances with other nations. The war, therefore, forced us in New Zealand to think about the morality of violence, the utility and disutility of coercive diplomacy, big power politics, and the pros and cons of alliance membership with global hegemons like the United States. It generated a strong desire for a more independent foreign and defense policy. It is difficult to say whether the protest movement had much influence over government policy, but there is no doubt at all that, as the war dragged on and

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became more disreputable, the government was forced to defend its moral and political position. It certainly pressed me and my generation to reflect on our own national identity and who we were as New Zealanders. The war made me and fellow protesters realize how racist, overbearing, and coercive the West had been and could be in relation to the rich cultural and religious traditions of Asia. I know that out of this experience I dedicated myself to making some personal atonement for my indirect complicity in colonial and neocolonial processes. From that time, I began to study Asia. I wanted to learn more about how we could develop more respectful relationships with Asian cultures and peoples. I committed myself to developing relationships with peoples and cultures in Asia on a basis of trust, mutuality, and a deep respect for the honor and dignity of the other. Ikeda:   I am deeply moved by how you have followed through with integrity and commitment on the pledge you made in your youth. I have met in the past with Professor Kevin Bowen, a respected authority on the Vietnam War and co-director of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Mr. Robert Glassman, a member of the Center’s advisory board. Both served in the Vietnam War. Speaking of his personal experience of the war’s barbarity, Mr. Glassman said that it transformed him, making him much more caring and aware of others. I will never forget him saying that he went to war as a soldier and returned as a human being. Dr. Bowen and Mr. Glassman also shared with me about the William Joiner Center’s activities to promote grassroots exchanges such as its support for youth education, based on the hard-won lessons of the Vietnam War. I was reminded of the spiritual conversion of the ancient Indian monarch King Ashoka of Magadha4 from war to peace. In about the third century B.C.E., King Ashoka invaded and conquered the neighboring kingdom of Kalinga. A huge number were victimized by the war, with 100,000 residents of Kalinga killed and 150,000 taken prisoner. The people’s homes were torched, and the cries of those who had lost loved ones echoed with sadness and despair into the heavens. Even King Ashoka, who was known and feared for his ferocity, was filled with pained regret and remorse at the hellish scene. Experiencing a change of heart, he vowed never again to engage in war and began to build a government based on Buddhism that placed top priority on the people’s welfare. He also adopted a policy of freedom of religious belief for all and engaged in cultural exchanges with other kingdoms. Clements:   It would be wonderful if political leaders who are currently embroiled in war might have a similar epiphany and focus on the welfare of the people rather than the security of the state.

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Ikeda:   I believe that many thinking people share similar sentiments. When I visited India, I had the opportunity to see one of the rock pillars upon which Ashoka’s edicts5 were inscribed. As I looked at the pillar and thought about Ashoka’s life, I felt as if I could hear him saying, from the distant past: Why did I engage in this bloody conquest? Why did I wish to expand my realm? Why did I employ violence? What is the value of war, which destroys precious life and people’s happiness? Why do people kill other people? In the twentieth century, destruction and violence dozens or hundreds of times worse than that perpetrated by Ashoka have occurred. Since World War II, only twenty-one of the world’s nations have been free from state-based armed conflict.6 The world’s leaders need to transcend narrow national interests and reflect on the tragic reality caused by past wars so as not to repeat the same mistake again. I cannot stress enough the need for leaders to work together to build a world without war.

Sustainable peace: the task assigned to all humanity Clements:   I agree completely. Most strategists who advise national leaders on international issues and diplomacy tend to have a negative view of peace as simply the avoidance of war, rather than a positive view that includes removing the causes of war and generating the conditions for cooperative and just relations between peoples. This narrowness of focus has resulted in a tendency to think short-term rather than long-term, to think narrowly and exclusively rather than broadly and inclusively, and to discount variables that do not fit easily into military thinking. To build a sustainable rather than a temporary peace, we need to rethink the assumptions underlying our accepted diplomatic and military strategies. Above all, the building of sustainable peace is an issue confronting every human being on the planet, a challenge for all people, which we must all recognize. It is not something that is the exclusive preserve of those living in zones of conflict. It demands everyone’s attention as we work out how to accept responsibility for the welfare of others. Ikeda:   As you say, building peace is the mission and responsibility of all people on Earth, not just some particular group. Nor should it be an issue restricted to those who have personally experienced conflict and its tragic results. The leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68), harshly criticized the Vietnam War, declaring: “Justice is indivisible.”7 If we can just once imagine that problems affecting people, such as conflicts and other violations of human rights, as well as poverty and starvation, are actually threatening us personally, and realize their injustice, we gain a completely different view of the situation, even if it is occurring to other people far away.

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The members of the SGI have been involved in activities to establish a culture of peace at the citizens’ level on a global scale. Our efforts are based on an awareness that all of us have a unique, personal mission in building a peaceful society. “Culture,” after all, is the sum total of the thoughts and lifestyles of the people who make up a society, coming to fruition as it is passed from generation to generation. Ensuring that this culture is oriented toward the creation of peace depends ultimately on each individual in society, on the strength of their commitment to protect the sanctity of life and their power of character. The historian Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) said in this regard that culture is not simply conceptual; it is experiential, dynamic. He also wrote that culture is only engendered within character, and can only be healthy within character. It seems to me that education is the key element for nourishing and forging the character of which Huizinga speaks. And the social role of religion is to act as an impetus for fostering the kind of character based on humanistic principles that can sustain a culture of peace. In the late 1970s, I embarked on a dialogue with Dr. Bryan Wilson (1926–2004), the director of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion. In it, he said: People busy themselves with their own lives and take up their problems in language that has local and specific application. It is not easy for men to see how their personal wants and their families’ concerns are related to the wider, perhaps global, issues that confront mankind, and it is difficult to recruit men to support what they may regard as “lofty” ideals. If the link were ever to be made and the gulf ever bridged between, on the one hand, numerous diverse local concerns and, on the other, general, over-arching goals of global civilization and the culture(s) of all humanity, perhaps only religion would be capable of doing it.8 This is a very important theme. SGI members, as Buddhists, strive to build trust and friendship in our communities while endeavoring to be good citizens in our respective countries. As a UN-designated NGO, we are engaging in grassroots efforts to find solutions to global problems. Clements:   The SGI is widely recognized for its efforts to contribute positively to finding solutions to problems confronting the international community as an organization based on religious principles and from the perspective of spiritual values, ideas, and philosophy. Many NGOs are actually extremely localized organizations, but the SGI has a global network and its activities span the entire world. And most important, the SGI is known for its promotion of dialogue. It is famous as an organization that supports dialogue among civilizations and religions around the world. I hope that the SGI will continue to uphold those values and grow and develop further.

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Your mention of Dr. Bryan Wilson stirs fond personal memories, since I participated in his postgraduate sociology of religion seminar at Oxford. Though he described himself as an atheist, he regarded freedom of religion as very important and evinced a strong interest in the emergence of the SGI and many other religious movements. In the area of sociology of religion, in addition to Bryan Wilson, I have been heavily influenced by Peter Berger, professor emeritus at Boston University, and David Martin, professor emeritus at the London School of Economics. Peter Berger gave me an excellent theoretical framework for thinking about the ways in which religious ideas, attitudes, beliefs, and practices played a critical role in helping us understand the construction and significance of personal, social, and political meaning. His work A Rumor of Angels also provided me with a wonderful insight into the power and capacity of religious institutions to enable individuals to deal with the deepest existential questions about life, death, and human vulnerability. I used Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality and Berger’s The Social Reality of Religion as the theoretical framework for my own doctoral thesis. Dr. Martin was the examiner of my Ph.D. thesis. In his book A Sociology of English Religion, he spelled out the various ways in which different kinds of religious institutions played strongly integrative and challenging roles vis-à-vis state and society, focusing on the kinds of problems raised by Max Weber (1864–1920).

Inculcating a love of learning Ikeda:   Dr. Berger has participated in the activities of the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue in Cambridge, Massachusetts,9 on numerous occasions. When he attended the opening luncheon seminar for the spring lecture series on “Religion and Transnational Society” in February 1996, he spoke of the role of religion in the present, noting that in the 1960s, sociologists believed that the role of religion would gradually be eradicated by the simultaneous advance of modernization and secularization, but that assumption was incorrect. Before starting your conflict studies, Dr. Clements, what areas did you focus on in your undergraduate and graduate years, along with the sociology of religion? Clements:   I attended Victoria University in New Zealand, and I left school early in order to go to university. I was very keen to do subjects that I had not been able to pursue in high school. In particular I wanted to learn more about people and the complex relationships between mind, self, and society. I wanted to know how individual and collective identities were formed, shaped, and sustained in different cultures and communities. I also wanted to understand how and why societies persisted through time, and what theories of change best explained social, economic, and political transformation. Those were the issues that fascinated me.

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And there was another reason that I wanted to leave high school early and attend university. We still had a form of military training in high school in New Zealand at that time, called school cadets. I conscientiously objected to school cadets and to doing military service in high school. This meant that I was always somewhat in the minority at high school. In addition, high schools at that time placed a lot of stress on sport and passing examinations. Little attention was paid to inculcating a love of learning for its own sake. It sounds amazing in the twentyfirst century that corporal punishment was still permitted and widespread in New Zealand schools at the time. Apart from two or three teachers who stimulated my interest in History, Drama, Social Studies, and English, the rest were fairly authoritarian and didactic. So, skipping my final year and entering university early, I chose to focus my studies on history and political science, and majored in both political science and sociology. In history, I was particularly taken by Professor John Beaglehole, who had dedicated his entire life to an analysis of the great explorations of Captain James Cook (1728–79) and others of that era. In politics, I had an utterly eccentric teacher from New York, Larry Coates. In his international relations classes, he introduced us to important questions about the ethics of political decision making and the risks of miscalculation. He used to teach wearing dark glasses and would come into the classroom carrying a huge pile of books which were marked for him to quote from. But he challenged me to think out of the box. John Roberts was another political scientist who combined a commitment to the poor with a deep concern to understand how politics and the bureaucracy could serve their interests. In sociology, though, my key mentor was Professor Jim Robb. He introduced me to important discussions on prejudice, bias, discrimination, and authoritarian personality types. I was impressed that both Jim Robb and John Beaglehole, who, though they could have pursued their careers in the U.K. where both were established and well-regarded scholars, chose to return home to New Zealand to work and share their wisdom in the country of their birth. When I was beginning my own graduate studies, I had a choice of a scholarship to the U.K. or New Zealand, but after discussing the matter with people like Jim Robb and John Roberts, I decided to stay in New Zealand. I was the first person to graduate with a Ph.D. in sociology from a New Zealand university. Since I made this decision, many hundreds of students have chosen to stay at home and deepen New Zealand’s indigenous research capacity rather than go overseas. When I made this decision to stay in the late 1960s, I was the exception rather than the rule. Ikeda:   The problem of the so-called “brain drain,” with the most capable students going abroad to study, is one being faced by higher education in many countries.

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Moscow State University Rector Victor Sadovnichy said in his dialogue with me that Russia’s greatest resource for preventing the drain of capable individuals is its many universities. Based on that belief, he said he had striven to provide strong systems to support outstanding undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and faculty. I also find it very interesting that in addition to history and political science, you majored in sociology. In his Soka kyoikugaku taikei (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy), first Soka Gakkai president Tsunesaburo Makiguchi discussed Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) and other sociologists. While stressing the importance of sociology for educators, he wrote that if he had not studied sociology and come to embrace the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, he might well have become the sort of person who, like some of his friends, would pretend not to see the evil taking place around him so as not to spoil the mood of those he was with, would hold back from saying what he wanted to say, and would constantly curry favor from others.10 President Makiguchi’s struggle for peace and humanitarianism was based not only on the conviction imparted to him by his faith in the Lotus Sutra but also on the wisdom of sociology and other academic disciplines. Clements:   Your brief paraphrase of President Makiguchi’s remarks ably communicates the essence of his character. The reason that I wanted to study sociology in university was that I was curious to know why and how most people most of the time conformed to collective norms and expectations. With that question in mind, I studied classical writers such as Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and their competing materialist and idealist explanations for human behavior. I was particularly interested in what drove cooperative as opposed to competitive or conflictual behavior, and what sorts of institutional and cultural frameworks best explain harmonious and peaceable societies. The sociologists George C. Homans (1910–89) and Alvin Gouldner (1920–81) developed theories that led to an understanding of this problem. Homans came up with some elegant theories about the ways in which different patterns of and frequency of interaction engendered friendship, trust, and commitment, and the roles of rewards and punishments in these processes. Alvin Gouldner basically developed a sociological rationale for the Golden Rule, as well as focusing attention on what he called “negative norms of reciprocity,” whereby individuals did not return benefits but returned injuries. I found this analysis helpful in terms of understanding what kinds of behavior would enable smooth cooperation and harmony through time and what kinds of behavior were most likely to generate conflict, discontent, and violence. He fueled a long-standing interest of mine in what promotes altruism and selfless behavior in a world that seems to celebrate the ego and selfishness. I would be interested in hearing what you think about the primary sources of altruistic, empathetic, and compassionate behavior.

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Re-humanizing society Ikeda:   There are many ways of looking at this issue, but I would say that the primary source, as I touched upon earlier when we were discussing the culture of peace, is the depth of the commitment of each citizen to respect and observe the principle of the sanctity of life. From its establishment, the United Nations has clarified key themes that should guide and propel international cooperation, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which marked its sixty-fifth anniversary in December 2013, to sustainable development as a response to the problems related to development and the environment, the culture of peace in response to the challenges of conflict and structural violence, and numerous other guiding ideas. I believe all of these ideas must be based on the fundamental concept of the sanctity of life if they are to exercise a greater significance as common guidelines for global society and not be swept away by the tendency of our world to celebrate the ego and selfishness that you decry. If we were to liken global society to a building, such concepts as human rights and sustainable development are the pillars holding it erect, and the sanctity of life is the foundation upon which the entire edifice rests. But if that idea which serves as the foundation remains just a slogan or an abstract concept, when faced with a severe crisis the pillars will not hold and the edifice will collapse. Based on this awareness, in my peace proposal of January 2013, I suggested three guidelines that society should observe to ensure the protection of the sanctity of life: (1) the determination to share the joys and sufferings of others; (2) faith in the limitless possibilities of life; and (3) the vow to defend and celebrate diversity. My reasons for using the words “determination,” “faith,” and “vow” to articulate these guidelines were twofold. Firstly, all three of these mental vectors are irrepressible urges arising spontaneously from the depths of our beings rather than the results of any external force or coercion. Secondly, these are not abstract notions related to some unknown individual far away from us: it is only when we have a concrete object, a dear friend, a person suffering before our eyes, that we are able to practice them with any continuity. Buddhism, which teaches the sanctity of life, makes it clear that one does not have to possess some special qualifications as a human being to practice these three principles. As Gandhi stressed when he said, “What is possible for one is possible for all,”11 these are capabilities residing within all of us. The power to protect the sanctity of life is not solely the domain of laws and policies. All human beings have a rich and powerful inner spirituality, and when we realize that, we will have succeeded in making a great advance in the challenge of building a global society of peace and harmony. Clements:   It is extremely important to widely establish that view in society.

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In recent years, research has advanced in neurology and the area of psychology called mirrored emotions. According to the research of one of my colleagues at Otago University, we are beginning to discover that from birth human beings have a drive or impulse to empathize, to become a member of a social group, and to respond to the suffering of others. We are hard wired for this: it is built into our brains. Our brains are the most refined of all mammals, and built into them is the need to establish ties to other human beings, to be involved in a group rather than to exist as isolated individuals. We seek social identity through our mutual ties. We wish to secure our own prosperity and security, our sense of safety, and that is made possible through human relationships based on trust. That makes it all the more surprising that there are very few universities in the world where the importance of such things as empathy, love, compassion, and tolerance is actually taught directly in classes. While we have many classes in physics and mathematics, it is indeed very strange that we have no classes that teach us what we need to know to live our lives properly. Ikeda:   With ongoing advances in the field of neuroscience, we are beginning to grasp the mechanisms of how humans generate mutual sympathy as well as the function of nerve cells. On several occasions, I have had the opportunity to conduct dialogues with experts in the field, and they have stressed that humans inherently possess the social ability to communicate with others harmoniously in order to realize peace. As you noted, one of the essential functions of education is to nurture and bring out that intrinsic ability. Intellectual ability must be sustained by soundness of character and depth of humanity. It was with that in mind I presented to Soka University12 when it opened a bronze statue with these words engraved on its pedestal: “For what purpose should one cultivate wisdom? May you always ask yourself this question!” At the opening of Soka University of America, I presented the school with these three mottoes: (1) Be philosophers of a renaissance of life; (2) Be world citizens in solidarity for peace; and (3) Be the pioneers of a global civilization. Though Soka University of America still has a very short history, it is focusing on an academic program called “Learning Clusters” that we hope will become an enduring tradition. The Learning Cluster is a research seminar in which students propose their own theme of study, working together and conferring with faculty facilitators to choose the texts and class content and find the best approach to solving the problem they have set for themselves, including conducting surveys and engaging in other hands-on activities. For example, in one Learning Cluster seminar on the theme of “Poverty and Inequality in Brazil,” students researched the history of slavery and military rule in Brazil, the country’s recent economic growth, the causes of crime and racial inequality, and the government’s actual steps to combat these problems, while also visiting poor areas in Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais State, participating in

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the NGO Child Fund, acquiring a grasp of the issues through actual experience, and seeking ways to resolve the problems. In another Learning Cluster on the subject of “AIDS, Education, and Social Activism in South Africa,” the students traveled to South Africa and participated in the health education program being carried out by South African physician Dr. Michael Benish. They also visited diagnostic clinics and orphanages, studying the connections of AIDS and poverty. Thanks to the rare experience seminars such as these offer, each student summons up the determination to take action for people around the world who are encountering various forms of suffering. Clements:   That’s a very meaningful program. I think that increasing the number of universities teaching empathy, love, compassion, and tolerance—in classes and textbooks—would in itself be a significant step forward, but the actual experience of taking dedicated action for the sake of those who are suffering is even more meaningful. This reminds me of something. In the 1990s, an experiment was conducted on students in the Princeton University Theological Seminary called “From Jerusalem to Jericho.” In the experiment, the students were divided into two groups. One group was assigned to study the parable of the Good Samaritan and prepare a talk on it. The Good Samaritan, as everyone knows, helped a traveler he encountered lying fallen by the roadside, who had been attacked by bandits. The second group of students was asked to prepare a talk about future seminary positions that would be available to them after graduation. After preparing these talks, they were directed to go from one building on campus to another. On the way, they encountered a man slumped in an alleyway, apparently in distress. The results of the experiment were that more of the students assigned to prepare a talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan helped the man they found slumped in the alleyway than did the students in the other group. Another experiment provided even more interesting results. This time the students were divided into three groups. One was told that they had just enough time to get to their next class, the second that they were already late, and the third that they had ten extra minutes to get to class. Once again, the students encountered a man slumped in an alley on the way to class. The results were that 40 percent of the first group, who thought they had just enough time to get to class, helped the man in distress; none of the second group, who thought they were late, did; and 65 percent of the third group, who believed they had ten minutes to spare, helped him. This made me think of the fact that people in the West and other developed nations like Japan are always living such rushed lives, so pressed for time. People today, especially in the developed nations, need to find a way to slow down the processes of government, the economy, and society. Instead of always being pressed for time to the point that they overlook the important things in life,

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they need to create the time for themselves to act with courage and compassion, for the sake of peace. This experiment suggested two things to me, the first was the importance of values in sensitizing us to the needs of others and the second was the importance of controlling time rather than have it control our own lives. Ikeda:   Yes, I understand your point well. I think our understanding of time and its effect on our behavior are extremely important factors in addressing the problems of contemporary society. Nietzsche (1844–1900) described the essence of this problem, noting that “we live like men who are continually ‘afraid of letting opportunities slip.’”13 This points to a serious failing underlying modern civilization. This tendency to lead hurried, alienated lives has intensified in recent years, and as a result people are entirely preoccupied with their own situations, so that the weight of the existence of others in their consciousness has been drastically reduced. As a result, the sanctity of the lives of great numbers of people has been disregarded and trampled on in various realms of human activity. You mentioned the parable of the Good Samaritan, which teaches that the true meaning of love for one’s neighbor is reaching out to help those in need. The word used in the Greek version of the New Testament to describe the feeling of the Good Samaritan as he was unable to overlook the suffering of the traveler he encountered by the roadside is esplangknisthe, meaning a feeling so powerful that it stirs one’s inner organs. In Japanese, the Buddhist word for compassion consists of two characters, one of which conveys the meaning of embracing others and strongly empathizing with their sufferings. Empathy is thus the foundation of the Buddhist conception of compassion. Rather than mere pity for someone deemed less fortunate than oneself, it is a spirit of profound concern welling up from the depths of one’s being, a desire to share the suffering and pain and to support one another. In true compassion, there is no “superior” or “inferior,” nor is it a one-way street. The relationship between self and other engendered by this irrepressible urge, the vibrant connection established between the life of the person directly experiencing the suffering and the one who shares that suffering, is the key to restoring the shining worth and dignity of life. Though we assert the sanctity of life, a life cannot shine on its own. Buddhism teaches that only through this kind of relationship with others does the life of the other manifest itself in its true preciousness, and the wish to protect and support others adorn one’s own life. SGI members, based on the spirit of Buddhism, strive in the midst of our own busy personal lives, meeting the obligations of work and family, to help those who are suffering, seeking to lead a life in which our greatest joy is bringing smiles to others’ faces and restoring their vitality. At the SGI discussion meetings that are held at the community level each month, people of all ages gather and exchange ideas about peace and community issues, share their personal experiences in overcoming life’s challenges through

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their Buddhist faith and practice, and reinforce their personal relationships in pursuit of mutual growth, thus furthering our understanding of the Buddhist teaching of the sanctity of life. In that regard, your call in Activating Human Rights and Peace, a collection of well thought through cases published in 2012, resonates deeply with me: We must learn to radically re-individualize the Other while building just and caring communities; re-humanize those who have been demonized; resist efforts to disrespect and debase others and create the conditions whereby peaceful processes are seen as a dimension of all human relationships and not the exclusive preserve of states.14 I firmly believe that we can create a century shining with the sanctity of life through the effort as individuals in our own communities to spread waves of the restoration of the other, the re-humanization of the dehumanized, and creating the conditions for peace that you call for. Clements:   I share the same sentiment as you. Seeing the person behind the aggregate statistics, acknowledging their truth, uniqueness, and singularity is one of the central challenges of the twenty-first century. Only by developing a truly radical respect for and honoring of the other will we be able to develop bonds resilient enough to sustain individuals and groups as they confront the very specific challenges of the twenty-first century.

Notes

1 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2013: Armaments, 2 3

4

5

Disarmament and International Security, http://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2013/files/ SIPRIYB13Summary.pdf (accessed September 9, 2013). UNHCR, “UNHCR Global Trends 2012,” http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/country/ 51bacb0f9/unhcr-global-trends-2012.html (accessed August 22, 2018). These are citizen led initiatives that are intended to complement official track negotiations. They have played a very important role in a number of conflicts—clarifying key issues, building confidence between protagonists, and identifying options that might be explored by official negotiators. The idea of multi-track diplomacy was developed by two former State Department officials, Ambassador John McDonald and Joe Montville. King Ashoka of Magadha (304–232 B.C.E.) was an ancient Indian emperor belonging to the Maurya Dynasty who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from c. 268 to 232 B.C.E. In about 260 B.C.E. Ashoka waged a destructive war against the state of Kalinga (modern Odisha). He is believed to have converted to Buddhism after witnessing the mass deaths of the Kalinga War. The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of thirty-three inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, made by King Ashoka. The inscriptions were dispersed throughout the areas of modern-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India,

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6 7 8 9

10 11 12

13 14

Nepal, and Pakistan. They proclaim Ashoka’s adherence to the Buddhist dharma (law) and demonstrate his efforts to develop the Buddhist dharma throughout his empire. Human Security Report Project, “The miniAtlas of Human Security,” p.17, http://www. hsrgroup.org/docs/Publications/miniAtlas/miniAtlas_en_part1.pdf (accessed June 6, 2017). Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 24. Bryan Wilson and Daisaku Ikeda, Human Values in a Changing World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008), p. 147. The Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue is a not-for-profit institute located in Cambridge, Mass. Founded by Daisaku Ikeda in 1993, it engages scholars, activists, and social innovators in the quest for solutions to the major issues facing humankind. The Center was initially named the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century. See Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Makiguchi Tsunesaburo zenshu, vol. 6, pp. 68–69. Mohandas Gandhi, The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi, ed. Homer A. Jack (New York: Dover Publications, 2005), p. 66. Soka University is part of the Soka schools system founded by Daisaku Ikeda. The Soka Junior and Senior High Schools were first established in Tokyo in 1968, and have been followed by similar schools in Kansai as well as kindergartens and elementary schools. Soka University was founded in 1971 and Soka University of America, a liberal arts college in Aliso Viejo, Calif., in 2001. Soka (value creating) education draws its roots from the pedagogic theories of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Thomas Common, vol. 10 (Edinburgh and London: T.M. Foulis, 1910), p. 254. Kevin P. Clements, “New Wars―Old Wars: Thinking Creatively about the Prevention and Transformation of Violent Conflict in the Twenty-first Century” in Activating Human Rights and Peace: Theories, Practices and Contexts, ed. Goh Bee Chen, Baden Offord, Rob Garbutt (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2012), p. 74.

4 SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION TO BUILD A SOCIETY OF HARMONIOUS COEXISTENCE

A young girl appeals to the UN Ikeda:   In September 2013, a high-level forum on the implementation of the UN Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace was held at United Nations Headquarters in New York. At that forum, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson declared: “This is a moment in history when we need a culture of peace—not just the absence of war, but a fully formed culture of peace.” He stressed the importance of focusing on human beings as opposed to larger, abstract concepts such as cultures, faiths, and nations.1 It is indeed true that focusing on human beings—in striving not only to prevent civil war and conflict but also to build a society in which the worth and dignity of all individuals are treasured and people can exist in peaceful harmony, transcending ethnic and religious differences—is one of the most pressing challenges of the twenty-first century. A rejection of all forms of structural violence that inflicts harm on people, such as poverty, suppression of human rights, and destruction of the environment, alongside sustained efforts to work together to eliminate those threats, must be the foundation of a culture of peace. Dialogue and the promotion of education are the keys to forming that foundation. The words of one young girl speaking at the UN on the importance of education moved the hearts of people around the world. I am referring to the courageous speech given by Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan, who was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen in October 2012 for her advocacy of the right of girls to receive an education. Having miraculously recovered from her wounds, on her sixteenth birthday in September 2013 she declared:

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I speak not for myself, but so those without a voice can be heard. Those who have fought for their rights. Their right to live in peace. Their right to be treated with dignity. Their right to equality of opportunity. Their right to be educated. […] We will continue our journey to our destination of peace and education. No one can stop us. We will speak up for our rights and we will bring change to our voice. We believe in the power and the strength of our words. Our words can change the whole world because we are all together, united for the cause of education.2 While appealing to world leaders to change the emphasis of their policies toward the realization of peace, she called on the women who have been oppressed by society and the children who have been exploited and unfairly treated to stand up for themselves to change the world. From the viewpoint of creating a world that upholds the sanctity of human life as its fundamental principle, I think this is a crucial requirement. For many years now, through my peace proposals and other public statements, I have repeatedly emphasized that women and children should not be regarded as passive beings in need of protection but rather should take the initiative as leaders and protagonists in the effort to build a culture of peace. Clements:   That is a very important point. Though being shot in the head, Ms. Yousafzai refused to be defeated and, having recovered, continues to speak out for her beliefs. Her example represents the voices of countless suffering individuals around the world who do not enjoy the right to a life of peace or to receive an education. Everyone wants to live in communities where they are known, valued, and respected, everyone wants to live free of fear and want, and everyone wants to be treated with empathy, dignity, and compassion. I came to fully appreciate this through my participation in an “Imaging Workshop” conducted by Elise Boulding (1920–2010) and the educator Warren Ziegler. Elise Boulding’s husband, Kenneth Boulding (1910–93), had written a book called The Image in which he focused on the power of images to shift attitudes and behavior. The workshop picked up this idea and developed it. At the beginning of the workshop, the participants performed warming-up exercises that reminded them of how powerful images and imagination are in relation to behavior. At the next stage, the participants were asked to exercise their imagination and creativity, to which they readily responded. Finally, they were given the concrete task of imaging a world without weapons, and they exercised remarkable creativity in doing so.

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When I participated in such a workshop held in New Zealand in the latter half of the 1980s, I was fortunate enough to be able to be mentored directly by Elise Boulding on how to maximize the impacts of this type of process. She gave me excellent tips on how to work with different groups in order to liberate their own imaginations on such issues, and it was a very special experience for me. This technique has been widely circulated in a range of global peace and justice movements. I have personally conducted such workshops on several occasions, and know from my own experience that they have been great sources of inspiration and learning for the participants. Ikeda:   I had a chance to hear briefly about that workshop in my dialogue with Dr. Boulding, published as Into Full Flower: Making Peace Cultures Happen. I can see that it was an extremely meaningful exercise. In our dialogue, when I asked about how she came to believe in the importance of imaging peace, Dr. Boulding related a very evocative episode. In the 1960s, she was attending a meeting of academics who were studying the economic aspects of disarmament. When she asked what a totally disarmed world would look like, their response came as a complete surprise: they said they had no idea, averring that their role was solely to convince others that disarmament was possible. Dr. Boulding said she realized at that moment that many people involved in the peace movement had no concrete vision of what a peaceful society would actually be like.3 As she related this incident, she speculated how anyone could wholeheartedly dedicate themselves to a movement when they were unable to envision the concrete outcome of that movement’s success. I found her concern very convincing. The peace movement cannot be expected to achieve its results overnight. It requires sustained efforts over a long period of time. But since the movement is based on the voluntary participation of individuals, if it lacks concrete visions and fails to produce any visible progress, in most cases it is bound to lose steam. The key issue for the peace movement is to find a way to overcome this dilemma and create a shared feeling of moving toward the realization of the goal, thereby reinforcing the movement’s solidarity. That’s why, as a UN-recognized NGO, the SGI has steadily promoted grassroots movements by holding exhibitions on the themes of nuclear abolition and disarmament in various countries, while at the same time, our members have engaged continuously in efforts to help cultures of peace take root locally in their respective communities. Peace is not something abstract or removed from daily life. We can all take action for peace in our immediate circumstances. The promotion of mutual support and cooperation in local communities is an important step toward peace. Understanding and respecting other people’s views and standpoints are also crucial. Through dialogue and exchange we change both ourselves and others. And by expanding a space of friendship and trust, in which we respect one another’s worth as human beings, the foundation for a culture of peace is gradually nurtured in our communities.

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Nourished by the positive sense of fulfillment we receive from those daily actions, and reaffirming the inescapable primacy of the issues of disarmament and the elimination of nuclear weapons as crucial for building a society in which we respect one another’s worth as human beings to embrace the entire world, we press forward in our activities for peace. When Dr. Boulding began her work to promote a culture of peace, you joined her in this effort. How did you come to know one another?

Elise Boulding: The mother of peace studies Clements:   I first met Kenneth and Elise Boulding at a Quaker Higher Education Conference at Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina, in the mid-1980s. I had been in correspondence with Elise, however, from the time I was Director of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva from 1982 to 1984. We had communicated about peace education and Quaker peace-making initiatives, so we had been in communication for a number of years before we actually met. We shared common Quaker concerns, but after meeting we rapidly discovered that our views on most of the key peace and conflict issues were quite similar. At the 1988 International Peace Research Association (IPRA) Conference in Rio de Janeiro, we had a deeper encounter and continued our conversation. I was always mightily impressed by Elise. I liked her frankness, integrity, and her formidable intelligence. I was also very grateful that she was willing to tuck me under her wing and nurture me both as a sociologist and a peace researcher. After the Rio Conference I decided to take a year’s study leave with Elise and other colleagues at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she and Kenneth Boulding taught. It was there that she asked me to work with her on the book Peace, Culture, and Society: Transnational Research and Dialogue, a request to which I gladly acceded. This gave me a chance to work closely with Elise and Kenneth as we edited the different chapters and thought about how to frame deeper questions about cultures and structures of peace. This was about the same time that UNESCO was developing its ideas on a culture of peace, and Elise and I went off to a meeting on this topic organized by UNESCO in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire. I enjoyed the opportunity of working with her for a year on ideas related to a culture of peace, and we had many lovely lunches together exploring these and connected issues. This time gave us a chance to develop both a close professional as well as a personal relationship. Elise and Kenneth were important members of the Boulder Quaker Meeting, so not only were we professional colleagues but we also worshipped together, which was very special. Ikeda:   The fact that Dr. Boulding’s religious faith was a driving force behind her studies and actions for world peace, as well as her impassioned beliefs and convictions, was also powerfully communicated in our dialogue.

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When she married, she and her husband Kenneth made two pledges: to raise their children into peacemakers, and to work together to make a positive contribution to the world they lived in. I was very impressed by the great pride she took in her role as a mother, apart from her work as a scholar. Her conviction that raising children is in itself peace work is a source of encouragement for mothers around the world. The help and support of other Quaker women enabled her to find the time to complete her master’s degree. When her fourth child was born, however, it became difficult for her to continue her studies. But Dr. Boulding named that child Philip Daniel and proudly declared that he was her “Ph.D.” She remained out of university until her five children were old enough, continuing her research at home while raising her children. She also continued to support her husband’s career at this time. She recalled those times, sharing a private recollection of how many people wrote to her husband Kenneth and his colleagues at the time, inquiring about the new Center for Research on Conflict Resolution he had founded. Kenneth and his colleagues didn’t have time to answer, so she retyped all the letters that arrived and assembled them into the Peace Research Newsletter, which she sent to each person who had written in. The International Peace Research Association was actually born from that newsletter, she stated.4 In essence, while raising five children, Dr. Boulding founded the IPRA, acting as a seminal figure in peace research, playing a pivotal role in familiarizing people with the concept of a culture of peace. Clements:   I have also served as president of the International Peace Research Association Foundation and more recently as its secretary general. I have always taken the greatest pride in the fact that the devoted actions of this remarkable woman and mother, Elise Boulding, were the starting point for what became an international network of peace researchers. Elise was an excellent role model for me. We are both sociologists, Quakers, and equally committed to making the world a better place. Neither of us was content to just philosophize about the world. Both of us wanted to utilize scholarship to help transform it. She made me realize that it was possible to combine a life of action and scholastic reflection, living her beliefs in her private and personal life as well as her professional and public life. I was, naturally, delighted when in 1995 she received the first annual Global Citizen Award from the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue (at that time, the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century). I attended the award ceremony, where I delivered the following remarks: Elise regards the whole world as her home and has devoted herself unstintingly to its care and nurture. She knows that one of the fundamental roles of a peacemaker is to see and to realize wholeness where there is fragmentation

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and division. To this end, she derives great joy and delight from building networks and weaving relationships between peoples of all races and religions. She is an incorrigible networker. Ikeda:   Dr. Boulding worked together with the Soka Gakkai women’s division and young women’s division, serving as a consultant on the exhibition “Women and the Culture of Peace” that opened in 2002. Dr. Boulding’s belief that “a wholesome, peaceful world is possible if we devote all-out effort to the development of each member of the community”5 is in complete agreement with our conviction that the empowerment of the people, by the people, and for the people must be the pillar of the peace movement. Something that Dr. Boulding said that was previously communicated to me by the futurist Dr. Hazel Henderson comes powerfully to my mind. According to Dr. Henderson, Dr. Boulding maintained that to change the course of history and eventually transform the culture as a whole what you need is a small but active, determined minority, just 5 percent of the population, rather than the usual democratic model of a majority of 51 percent or more. To me this is a powerful affirmation of the role of those around the world who are continuing to act strenuously to build a peaceful and humane society. About six weeks before Dr. Boulding died, during a visit from Virginia Straus Benson, Senior Research Fellow and former executive director at the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue, Dr. Boulding spoke from the depths of her being, carefully choosing each word to say that peace is the process of building our world. It is a creative process, she said, not something that some important person tells us to do. We are all participants in that process, and if we listen carefully, we can become aware of the fact that we all have much, much more to do. It is an unending process. “We cannot escape the ‘now,’” she said. “To fight it would be a terrible thing to do. It would be like keeping a child from being born. The thing about peace being born is that the sun has to rise every day, and peace also rises every day.” Dr. Boulding died in June 2010, but without a doubt her exemplary life and many profound words of wisdom will continue to shine brilliantly in the hearts of all those acting for world peace. Clements:   Your words call forth Elise’s smiling face before my eyes. I would like to thank you for this sincere tribute to my teacher’s achievements. I was very privileged to be able to go and visit her in the care facility she had entered in her last years, and was deeply moved to see how she continued to do good while in managed care. She was focusing on “being rather than doing” at this time and wanted to know what the social significance of “being” was. That is, she wanted to know how she could continue to generate peacefulness, hopefulness, goodwill by being a patient. She told me that she felt she could bring good

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to others around by smiling and by being complimentary to others and thanking the medical staff for their kindness. I was humbled by my last meeting with her just two days before she died. She was moving in and out of a coma, but when her son Russell told her that I was there, she opened her eyes and said, “Kevin, thanks so much for coming to visit.” I melted at the fact that right to the end she was practicing perfect hospitality and welcoming everyone to her bedside, just as she had welcomed everyone to her home in earlier days.  You mentioned her words to the effect that peace is a process of building our world cooperatively and nonviolently and that this is an unstoppable process. In my long years of involvement in conflict-resolution research and activities, I have learned to savor the profound significance of those words. Peacebuilding is a marathon and not a sprint. We have to work at it all the time. Peace is never finally attained: it is a never-ending process. Even though conflict is ubiquitous, people are interested in living in ordered systems that are in equilibrium most of the time. The challenge is how to ensure that social and political systems are resilient and robust enough to contain the conflicts that are a part of everyday life so that those embroiled in conflict can resolve their problems nonviolently rather than violently. Elise’s husband Kenneth, with whom I also have a close personal relationship, would illustrate this point by holding up a clenched fist and stating that it was impossible to be productive when the hands and fingers were so tightly held together. To be open to others we need to unclench the fist so that our hands might be turned to productive rather than destructive engagement.

Four factors promoting resilience Ikeda:   Those are concise words, rich with meaning. The resilience that you advocate has also become a key concept in disaster management. It is an approach that goes beyond efforts to, as much as possible, eliminate the damage that could be caused by natural disasters, focusing instead on promoting, on a preemptive basis, the capacities of areas that might be afflicted by such disasters to make a quick recovery. This approach of resilience has four main factors: (1) robustness—the society’s inherent strength and resistance to withstand the destruction caused by natural disasters; (2) redundancy—the availability of alternative options and substitutions in the face of disaster; (3) resourcefulness—the capacity of society to mobilize the needed strength and wisdom to respond to disasters; and (4) rapidity—the speed with which disruptions can be overcome and normality restored before large numbers of people are subjected to serious harm.6 To elevate these capacities for responding to disasters into a methodology for preventing conflict, we need to reexamine the systems of political, economic, and social governance within each nation and strengthen our infrastructural responses in the form of our legal systems and other institutional approaches.

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But that will not be enough. The essence is always the heart-to-heart bonds of individuals, reaching out to those who are suffering and leading them forward. And we also need a firm faith in the future that can never be shaken, as well as the robust optimism that we are in control of our own destinies. In other words, the ultimate key is the intangible will and life force of the people supporting society from below. Clements:   I agree. Professor Adam Curle (1916–2006), another person whom I regard, along with Elise Boulding, as one of my mentors, holds views on this issue that are very similar to the ones you have just expressed. Professor Curle, the first professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, has said the following about the key to conflict resolution: Solutions reached through negotiation may be simply expedient and not imply any change of heart…. There must be a change of heart. Without this no settlement can be considered secure.7 In order to do this Adam insisted that we must unclench the fists around our hearts. It’s interesting that both Kenneth Boulding and Adam Curle use “fist” metaphors to describe some of the impediments to compassionate and peaceful engagement. The fists that Adam was referring to were things like status, pride, possessions, and the defensiveness that flows from these. Being peaceful implies some willingness to be vulnerable and open to others in a spirit of radical equality. Ikeda:   The Bradford University Department of Peace Studies has an outstanding reputation as a center for the study of peace and conflict resolution, and the Peace Research Institute of Soka University has been engaged in meaningful exchange with the department. Soka University students have attended the Bradford University summer school program and also studied Peace Studies as overseas exchange students there. Professor Curle’s point is in fact backed up by various data. A report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) states: “Peace settlements are often a prelude to renewed violence: half of all countries coming out of violent conflict revert to war within five years.”8 As Professor Curle points out, though peace agreements are concluded, if the parties involved continue to view one another with hostility and have not disarmed themselves spiritually through a genuine change of heart, the fear that conflict will recur remains. In addition, unless a change of heart from a culture of war to a way of life based on a culture of peace is fostered in people’s daily lives, even countries and regions that are not presently facing the threat of conflict may, through some event or other, find a minor source of friction developing into a violent confrontation from which they cannot extricate themselves. That may further lead to serious military confrontation, to which it may become very difficult to put a stop.

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That’s why the SGI is dedicated to spreading a culture of peace that is created by each individual acting as a protagonist and encouraging a transformation of the heart on a broad scale. To apply the four qualities of resilience I mentioned earlier, we are striving through our daily activities to extend deeply into society a multilayered network of the roots of coexistence, which are nourished by friendship that transcends differences, between individuals based on one-on-one dialogue. This can be seen as reinforcing society’s robustness in the face of incitement to racism and ethnocentrism, and preventing people from being swept away by the group psychology of exclusionism and discrimination. With regard to the aspect of redundancy, while consistently promoting educational and cultural exchange, we have always striven to keep the door of dialogue and exchange of ideas open, in all situations. In the areas of politics and economic activity, the danger of rising tensions between nations based on their respective interests is constantly present. When such tensions occur, the existence of a network based on mutual understanding and trust that allows open dialogue is crucial. With regard to resourcefulness, we have focused on expanding exchange and communication among the members of the younger generation, in order to pass on the spirit of amity from one generation to the next and transmit the lessons—the wisdom—of peaceful coexistence into the future. Efforts for peace and friendship cannot stop at a single generation. And as far as rapidity is concerned, we have always stressed the importance of speedy action and careful support, such as in our many forms of support for the activities of UN agencies in responding with rapidity to provide aid for refugees and other humanitarian crises. During natural disasters, we immediately open our local centers to the community as emergency centers, bring in relief supplies from other areas, and arrange for their delivery to the victims. We make a concerted effort to reach out to those who are suffering, encourage them, and do everything in our power to promote their spiritual and emotional recovery. Clements:   It is really vital to respond to humanitarian disasters and emergencies as swiftly as possible in order to address the suffering that has taken place and to lay solid foundations for post emergency/conflict recovery and development. Professor Curle defined peace in positive terms not simply as the absence of conflict but as active association, planned cooperation, and intelligent effort to forestall or remove potential conflicts. He paid particular attention to issues of inequality and injustice and the ways in which unjust relationships generated conflict and violence. It is good to know that SGI members are working for both negative and positive peace. As I listen to your explanation of the philosophy underlying SGI members’ efforts, I can see all sorts of connections between my Quaker beliefs and practices and the Buddhist beliefs and practices of SGI members.

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We share a common commitment to love, altruism, compassion, and the relief, alleviation, and prevention of suffering. We are both motivated by visions of our common humanity and we both acknowledge the central importance of personal revolutions and transformation as we contemplate changing the world around us. Both of us know the dangers of a closed heart, of not acknowledging our dependence on and debt toward others, and both of us understand the value of religion in enabling us to focus attention on how to deepen our empathetic consciousness. Professor Curle did a huge amount of work with Quakers as a mediator in many violent conflicts in India and Pakistan, Nigeria and Biafra, Zimbabwe, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Sri Lanka. He believed that “violence lies not so much in action as in a state of mind: it is ultimately the violence of the heart rather than of the body which damages us.”9 In his book To Tame the Hydra: Undermining the Culture of Violence, Professor Curle, in common with Buddhism, also highlights the ways in which the three poisons of lust or greed, envy, and ignorance of interdependence subvert peacefulness and harmonious relationships.

Vanquishing the violence within Ikeda:   As you say, those three phenomena—greed, anger, and foolishness—are described in Buddhism as the three poisons—the fundamental causative factors corroding society, giving rise to and exacerbating various problems. Buddhism then takes the additional step of teaching a way of life in which we transform the egoistic, destructive energy of the three poisons into a constructive energy that leads to the happiness of oneself and others and toward peace, and herein lies the true purpose of Buddhism. In other words, instead of directing the energy of anger and sadness that arises in response to one’s circumstances into destructive actions that harm and degrade others, it teaches us to base ourselves upon a positive and constructive sense of purpose and sublimate that energy into a force to oppose the social evils and menaces that cause suffering to both ourselves and so many others. This way we can transform the three poisons that are spreading the darkness of destruction and division into the fuel for illuminating our world with the light of courage and hope. As members of the SGI, we wish to continue with our movement for human revolution while allying ourselves with the many individuals who continue to take action dedicated to building a culture of peace, and steadily promote the stream of nonviolence in society. Former South African President Nelson Mandela (1918–2013), in spite of experiencing, along with his fellow activists, the harshest suppression of their human rights under apartheid, including a prison term lasting 10,000 days, rose up based on the belief that society must not infringe upon the dignity of any of its

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members, be they black or white, and carried on an arduous, hard-fought struggle to build a new South Africa. Looking back at his time in prison, President Mandela reflected: It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness…. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.10 President Mandela’s message that the transformation and liberation of the human spirit is of supreme importance communicated itself powerfully to me when we met. To build a nonviolent society, as President Mandela indicates, I am determined that we must continue our joint struggle to vanquish the violence within our hearts, while also vigorously opening the great way to a culture of peace, on into future generations. Clements:   President Mandela also underlined the centrality of opting to serve the weakest and poorest in any community and of maintaining hopefulness in the face of despair. Like Gandhi and Martin Luther King he knew the value of embodying within himself the changes that he wished to see take place in the wider community. I hope that this generation of young people are as inspired by their life, work and vision as I was in mine.

Notes 1 UN News Centre, “At high-level forum, top UN officials stress importance of individual in ‘culture of peace,’” September 6, 2013, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story. asp?NewsID=45792#.WTdc5ZKGOUk?NewsID=45792&Cr=mdg&Cr1= (accessed June 7, 2017). 2 Independent, “Malala Yousafzai delivers defiant riposte to Taliban militants with speech to the UN General Assembly,” July 12, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/ news/world/asia/the-full-text-malala-yousafzai-delivers-defiant-riposte-to-talibanmilitants-with-speech-to-the-un-general-assembly-8706606.html (accessed June 7, 2017). 3 See Elise Boulding and Daisaku Ikeda, Into Full Flower: Making Peace Cultures Happen (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Dialogue Path, 2010), p. 92. 4 See Ibid., p. 28. 5 Ibid., p. 93. 6 See MCEER, “MCEER’s Resilience Framework,” http://mceer.buffalo.edu/research/ resilience/resilience_10-24-06.pdf (accessed June 7, 2017).

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7 Adam Curle, Another Way: Positive Response to Contemporary Violence (Oxford: Jon Carpenter Publishing, 1995), p. 132. 8 UNDP, “Human Development Report 2005,” http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/ reports/266/hdr05_complete.pdf (accessed June 7, 2017). 9 Adam Curle, Another Way: Positive Response to Contemporary Violence, p. 135. 10 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (­Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1994), p. 544.

5 THE BONDS BETWEEN PACIFIC NEIGHBORS

Beyond state interests Ikeda:   At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting1 held in Bali, Indonesia, in October 2013, and attended by leaders of twenty-one countries and territories, in addition to discussions on cooperation in the areas of the economy and trade, leaders expressed a shared concern for promoting increased cooperation and regional connectivity in such areas as crossborder educational and disaster-relief cooperation. Additionally, the Leaders’ Declaration endorsed a target of “1 million intra-APEC university-level students per year by 2020” and pledged to “develop programs that will encourage greater and regular involvement of youth in APEC, so as to foster a sense of community and shared responsibility.”2 In the continuing discussions among member-state leaders that have been taking place since 1993, the themes have expanded and a vision for the future has gradually been articulated. I, too, have for many years cherished a vision of the future of the Asia-Pacific region and have discussed with many individuals how the area’s potential energy and infinite possibilities could be employed in the interests of world peace and harmony. In 1986, regarding it crucial to establish a permanent venue where the nations of the region have the opportunity to discuss matters as equals, I called for the establishment of an Asia-Pacific Organization for Peace and Culture and the holding of a regular Asia-Pacific summit. In that context, I view the growth of APEC into a forum for dialogue not only on economic issues but for seeking answers to such areas as issues related to human security, energy, and environmental problems as a very favorable development and hope for even greater cooperation among its member-states. The APEC member-states account for nearly 60 percent of world GDP, about 50 percent of total world trade, and about 40 percent of the world population. The

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ability of Japan, New Zealand, and the other Asia-Pacific nations to work together as “Pacific neighbors” and take action to resolve the various problems facing the region and the world will be an important factor in determining global trends in the twenty-first century. Dr. Clements, you are an authority in peace studies concerning this region and have served as secretary-general of the Asia-Pacific Peace Research Association (APPRA). APPRA began, I believe, as an organization focused on Asia. Clements:   Yes, that’s correct. The Asia-Pacific Peace Research Association was originally established in 1980 as the Asia Peace Research Association (APRA), a regional organization under the aegis of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA). There was at one time a plan to split the organization into two, one dealing with Southwest Asia and the other with East Asia, but when I became secretarygeneral in 1991, the scope of the organization was actually expanded to include the Pacific region and the new name Asia-Pacific Peace Research Association adopted. APPRA holds regional conferences once every two years. In November 2013, the conference convened in Bangkok, Thailand, and explored ways to resolve violent conflicts with nonviolent alternatives. The conference focused on ways to resolve conflicts over resources, border disputes, ethnic conflicts, nationalization and militarization, and establishing a just and peaceful regional order. These are all extremely challenging issues, but the critical question is how to overcome exclusionist attitudes rooted in the principles of national interest and competition. How do we build relationships of cooperation and trust that will enable us to act in tandem in order to respond to our common threats and problems rather than see one another as antagonists? In this regard, I have a profound sympathy with your consistent stress in your peace proposals and other writings for coexistence and mutual dependence and your call for a transformation of our consciousness. The principle of coexistence, in particular, has a very important and revolutionary significance because it helps national governments consider policies and actions that transcend national interests. As long as the majority of nations affirm national interests above all else, disregarding the effects of their actions on other countries, it will be difficult for them to come together, and the reduction of tensions will remain a distant goal. The APEC Leaders’ Declaration adopted in Bali states: “We aspire to achieve a seamlessly and comprehensively connected and integrated Asia Pacific.” The shared perception that we are all, as you said earlier, Pacific neighbors, is fundamental, I believe, to opening the way to achieving that goal. What led you to propose the concept of Pacific neighbors? Ikeda:   This worldview was introduced by President Makiguchi in his book Jinsei chirigaku (The Geography of Human Life), published in 1903. In one section, Mr. Makiguchi focused on oceans, which had rarely been regarded as a topic of special note in Japanese geographical studies up to then,

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calling them the “avenues of the human race” and describing Japan as a “shop” on “Pacific Avenue.” He went on to say that the destiny of island nations differed enormously based upon whether they perceived the surrounding ocean as a barrier separating them from the world or whether the ocean expanded their horizons and was seen as a means for engaging in exchange and interaction with other nations. In other words, in the former case the narrow-minded attitude of conservatism and exclusionism is reinforced, and in the latter case a broad-minded attitude that encourages an enterprising outlook and a willingness to adopt the strong points of other cultures while avoiding their shortcomings is fostered. President Makiguchi also cited the idea that the Earth can be divided into a land hemisphere and a water hemisphere, with London as the pole of the land hemisphere and New Zealand as that of the water hemisphere. While there is a tendency to focus on the great geographical distance separating Japan and New Zealand, based on President Makiguchi’s concept regarding the oceans, both nations are neighbors connected by the Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific region has long attracted attention from the economic perspective, but I have consistently urged the importance of working together as a region to find a way to foster the creation of a peaceful and harmonious global society, making the most of the geographical characteristic of being connected by the ocean. Research is presently underway in many areas on the potential and future prospects of the age of the Pacific Basin. Since 1988, Soka University has worked in tandem with many other universities of the region in holding a series of seven Pacific Basin Symposiums, while simultaneously expanding educational and scholarly exchange. In addition, Soka University of America, through the establishment of the Pacific Basin Research Center, has supported policy research for the peaceful development of the region and made efforts to foster young scholars. One result has been the publication of eighteen scholarly works on the area, including Great Policies: Strategic Innovations in Asia and the Pacific, which focuses on themes related to the creative growth of the Asia-Pacific region; Human Rights: Positive Policies in Asia and the Pacific Rim, which considers human rights violations in the area; The Value of Education, which treats educational systems and the establishment of social capital; and many others. The reason that I selected Hawaii as the first destination on my initial journey overseas, in 1960, and also that I chose Guam as the site for the establishment of the Soka Gakkai International in 1975, was my conviction that the beautiful Pacific region must never again become an ocean of war and division. When I signed my name at the Guam meeting, as an expression of my profound prayer and vow for peace I gave my nationality as “The World.” Clements:   I am reminded once again of the profound values underlying your actions to make the Pacific Ocean, true to its name, an ocean of peace.

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I think President Makiguchi’s idea that oceans are means of communication, interaction, and connection rather than moats—sources of division and isolation—is wonderful. The sea and the oceans are an integral part of the lives of New Zealanders. We are a nation of sailors, fishermen and women, and there is no part of New Zealand that is further than 180 kilometers from the ocean. In fact one of the lovely features of living beside the sea (or a common ocean) is that it invites you to contemplate all the peoples and cultures that share the same ocean from different vantage points. I have studied in Australia, and I certainly want to see Australia and New Zealand as integral parts of the Asia-Pacific region, sharing a common sea and open to the diverse cultures and peoples of East and Southeast Asia. The oceans present us with three boons. First, the sea, and particularly its tides, reminds us of the natural rhythms, the ebb and flow of all human life. Second, oceans are vital thoroughfares for communication, trade, commerce, and deeper human and spiritual connections. Third, except for the 200-mile perimeter around each nation-state, the oceans belong to everyone. We all depend and rely upon oceans for food and many other resources vital for living. So like President Makiguchi, I would like us to move beyond two-dimensional maps of the world and think of all the different ways in which our common Pacific Ocean binds the peoples of New Zealand and Japan together. We share a common affection for as well as some reasonable fears of the sea. Both of our countries depend on it for the import and export of goods and commodities, and we both understand the value of the sea as a global commons which needs to be nurtured and protected. Ikeda:   Yes, as you point out, Japan and New Zealand have many points in common. Even in terms of geography, though Japan is in the northern hemisphere and New Zealand in the southern, both countries are surrounded on all sides by the sea, enjoy a richly varied natural setting with numerous mountains, rivers, and valleys, and have four distinct seasons. They also both have many hot springs. Beppu in Japan and Rotorua in New Zealand, as well as Hakonemachi and Taupo—all located in popular hot springs areas—are sister cities, as are the cities of Dunedin, home to the University of Otago at which you teach, and Otaru, Hokkaido, where Mr. Makiguchi spent his mid-teens. All in all, forty-two pairs of municipalities in Japan and New Zealand are currently linked by special ties. New Zealand is an increasingly popular choice for Japanese students studying abroad as well as Japanese who are residing overseas long-term. I have heard that in New Zealand, Japanese is second only to French in foreign-language study among junior high and high school students. May I ask you what the image of Japan is among New Zealanders?

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Impressions of Japan Clements:   I’m not sure my impression of Japan and the Japanese is representative of all New Zealanders, but I can give my personal opinion. The people of New Zealand appreciate Japan for all its many contributions to modern technology and industrial development. I have heard that there is a widespread anxiety among Japanese that their nation is losing its economic dominance in Asia. Most New Zealanders, however, still see Japan as an economic powerhouse, responsible for most of the household electronic devices considered essential for twenty-first-century living. We are all also fond of Japanese food, and sushi shops exist all over New Zealand. New Zealanders understand and appreciate the symbolic significance of Japanese icons like Mount Fuji, and there is a deep appreciation of Japanese art and aesthetics. For example, we have a wonderful collection of Japanese woodcut prints in our local art gallery, including many pieces by the Japanese artist Eishosai Choki from the late eighteenth century. Japanese tourism to New Zealand is important to the New Zealand economy, and contacts and exchanges with Japanese tourists have done a lot to transform old negative stereotypes etched in the minds of the people of New Zealand during World War II. Perhaps more important, though, have been the student linguistic exchanges whereby Japanese students come here to learn English and New Zealand students go to Japan to study Japanese. These have generated long-term bonds of connection and friendship among exchange students of both countries. As Japanese rugby players come to New Zealand, where rugby is a very popular sport, we are beginning to appreciate Japanese rugby players playing for provincial teams. I hope that New Zealand rugby players playing in the Japanese leagues are generating similar affection from the Japanese side. Ikeda:   In November 2013, a rugby match between Japan and New Zealand was held at the Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium, which is close to Shinanomachi, Shinjuku, Tokyo, where the new Soka Gakkai Headquarters was opened a few weeks later. Japanese rugby fans were very excited to be able to watch a live game against the All Blacks, who have won the World Cup twice. The history of rugby games between Japan and New Zealand goes back to 1936, when a team of New Zealand students came to Japan. Though games were halted during World War II, they were reinitiated in the 1950s, and many student and professional matches have been held. I believe that actively promoting exchange and communication among the younger generation, not only in sports but also in overseas studies, language learning, and other areas, is extremely important for deepening relations between our countries. The significance of language studies is that they open people’s eyes to the culture, traditions, values, and thinking of the people who use that language in daily life. Language study will be of increasing importance in learning to understand one another as human beings and in deepening our friendships.

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Speaking of language studies, since 1991, Otago University has opened its arms to numerous Soka University and Soka Women’s College students, for which I am deeply grateful as those schools’ founder. Today, one-third of our Soka Women’s College students enjoy the experience of studying a foreign language overseas, in New Zealand and other places. Holding speech contests in the various foreign languages taught at the university has also become a Soka University tradition. In the fall of 1974, the year I made my first visit to China, a Chinese-language speech contest was held for the first time at Soka University to promote SinoJapanese friendship and facilitate exchanges between young people. Since then this has expanded to include other languages, and speech contests in English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Korean, and Swahili are held, along with a Japanese-language contest for overseas students studying Japanese—all organized by the students themselves. Another student-initiated project is the Asia-Pacific Symposium of Students, which has been held every year at the university since 2000. Clements:   In addition to the significance of those individual contests, I think it is especially meaningful that they are student organized. Speaking of language studies, many New Zealand English teachers have gone and lived in Japan as well. All of these exchanges have built a deep appreciation of what each one of us has to offer the other and elevated our opinions of one another. While trade has often been the driver in Japan-New Zealand relations, a genuine interest in and concern to understand the language and cultural traditions of each country has generated high levels of understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both cultural traditions. Before these many new forms of exchange were established, New Zealanders’ prevailing view of Japan was based on the bitterness that characterized perceptions of Japan from World War II. My early childhood was lived in the shadow of World War II, and this meant that my views of Japan and the Japanese people were heavily conditioned by the widespread and no doubt biased and prejudiced anti-Japanese feelings of the time. There were some people who returned from Japanese prisoner of war camps, for example, who, over the course of their lifetime, could never bring themselves to buy or use a Japanese car or any product associated with Japan. I was never that negative, but I remember being shocked by the revelations that came out of the Japanese war tribunals. Apart from the brutalizing effects of war, generally, I could never understand what precipitated such deep and bitter Japanese military vengeance and cruelty in different parts of China and Southeast Asia. On the other hand, my father and I, along with many others, were conscious of the ways in which the allies inflicted their own harm and suffering on the Japanese people, with the firebombing of Tokyo and the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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It was clear to me as an adolescent that men and women on all sides in World War II were brutalized by it and were willing to suspend normal human ethics in order to ensure their own survival. As a young person, therefore, I struggled with understanding how ordinary people could do extraordinarily harmful and brutal things to other ordinary people. I struggled with what I would have done had I been asked to join in the war on any side. My views of Japan, therefore, were ambivalent if not critical until I met Japanese people who visited New Zealand with an alternative message.

Rotblat’s warning against war frenzy Ikeda:   It is undeniable that during World War II Japan behaved with incredible brutality toward the people of New Zealand and the other countries in the AsiaPacific region, inflicting terrible scars. I believe that batteries built to defend against a possible Japanese attack still stand in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. We must absolutely prevent the occurrence of another war. For that reason I have repeatedly urged Japan’s young people to face up to the realities of our history and use it as a lesson for the future and the source for their principled actions. This reminds me of something that Dr. Joseph Rotblat said to me during a dialogue in which we engaged: “War turns people into mindless beasts.… People who detest barbarism start to act in barbaric ways. This is the insanity of war!”3 Dr. Rotblat usually had a very sunny expression, but I will never forget the stern look on his face at that moment. In 1939, Dr. Rotblat, who was working as a research scholar in England, returned to Poland to bring his wife Tola back to England with him. She was suffering from severe appendicitis at the time, however, and couldn’t be moved, so he was forced to return to England without her. Two days later, the Nazis invaded Poland, and it became very difficult for his wife to leave the country due to her Jewish background. He explored every possible avenue, and finally arranged for her to come to England through a third country. In June 1940, he received news that his wife was aboard a train out of Poland bound for Italy. At just the same time, however, the news that Mussolini had declared war on England reached him. Hoping against hope, he waited eagerly for news, but was unable to learn anything. After considerable time had passed, a letter arrived from his wife telling him that she had been turned back at the Italian border and forcibly returned to Poland. One more letter from his wife arrived after that, but that was his last communication from her. These painful memories, which he had rarely shared publicly, he expressly included in our dialogue, motivated by his wish that the young people who would shoulder responsibility for the future should know the full truth.

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Clements:   I can certainly sympathize with Dr. Rotblat’s feelings about those painful and tragic events. That is a truly heart-wrenching story. When I was active in the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, I worked closely with Dr. Rotblat. I was always very conscious of the ways in which his own personal experiences during World War II and his own early engagement in the Manhattan Project influenced him to become a lifelong campaigner for the eradication of all weapons of mass and minor destruction and the wider cause of world peace. Ikeda:   I was also deeply moved to hear him recount it, but I think the essential message that Dr. Rotblat wished to communicate to young people through his account was his fierce outrage against war, which plunges people into such terrible misfortune. After sharing that with me, he continued: Stalin once said, “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” Based on this perspective, my wife Tola’s death is a statistical fact. Her death had become a statistic. She was one of six million who perished in Poland during World War II. Ironically, around that time, I busied myself in the design of weaponry that could increase that death rate many times.4 As you know, Dr. Rotblat was selected to participate in the Manhattan Project, the U.S. wartime effort to develop an atomic weapon. He did take part for a time, but then voluntarily quit the project—the only scientist involved to do so. His reason was that he learned that the Nazis had abandoned their efforts to develop an atomic weapon, eliminating the fear that the Nazis might employ an atomic bomb. That was of course his main reason, but in our dialogue I strongly felt he was absolutely unable to accept the madness of war which was leading to a maelstrom of destruction and brutality that was engulfing so many good-hearted people who had done no wrong. Noting that even today the condition of being possessed by the insanity of war still existed in many countries around the world, Dr. Rotblat warned: The issue that most worries me and leaves me at a loss is the absence of ethical conduct under wartime conditions. The problem is that once a war begins, our moral consciousness is cast aside. I myself saw this happen many times. Therefore, it is most important to prevent hostile conditions from arising in the first place.5 I completely agree with Dr. Rotblat’s assessment. The evil of war is limitless, but one of its greatest evils is that it drives so many people into such extreme circumstances that they lose the faculty of reason. Society becomes a prisoner to the idea that we must either kill or be killed, and the human spirit is corroded at its very foundations.

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In recent years there has been active discussion on how to respond to this extreme situation, but as far as war is concerned, I would like to urgently plead that this is the very reason that we must never allow another war to occur. Clements:   You have made an extremely important point. My father and I frequently deliberated on the nature of ethics and morality during wartime. It is a theme that we both considered and struggled with for a long time. We had endless discussions about World War I, World War II, as well as the Korean and Vietnam wars. His lifetime spanned all four of these twentiethcentury cataclysms. They were the historical backdrop for his own pacifism and the development of his own ethical principles. His role models were people like Tolstoy (1828–1910), Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45), Martin Niemöller (1892–1984), Toyohiko Kagawa (1888– 1960), and others of like convictions. He was always trying to work out how to live one’s values and beliefs in the face of challenging human dilemmas. When he started hearing about death camps and concentration camps like ­Auschwitz, he wondered whether his own personal pacifist position was a luxury. He often pondered what resources, tactics, and strategy pacifists might employ to prevent the suffering of others. I remember numerous conversations with him about whether Europe might have resisted German occupation using Gandhian boycotts and protests. His principled position, however, was that in all societies and nations it was and is absolutely vital for there to be some people who are willing to adopt an absolute pacifist position. He used to say that without the presence of absolute pacifists, it is relatively easy for non-pacifists to justify and pursue political and social objectives by violent means. He could never understand why state-sanctioned killing, for example, should be considered more acceptable than ordinary criminal killing or murder. He believed that a group of individuals with unshakable pacifist convictions was indispensable to build a truly moral society, a society that would renounce dependence on military might and government-sponsored violence.

Youth exchanges to deter war Ikeda:   I am deeply moved by the commitment to peace your father forged through his intense and continuous spiritual struggle. The members of the Soka Gakkai are also advancing a movement for peace, with the selfless struggle of our first president Makiguchi and second president Toda as our starting point. I have long insisted that the social role and responsibility of the Soka Gakkai is to engage in a spiritual struggle, deriving from the innermost depths of our beings, against such external forces as violence and political and economic oppression that diminish the dignity and value of human life. I have traveled around the world in order to firmly establish and reinforce our movement for peace and have devoted all my energies to furthering educational and cultural exchange, focusing in particular on the younger generation, forging

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ties between individuals transcending national and ethnic differences to promote the establishment of a spiritual bulwark for building a world without war. The Fulbright Scholarships are well known as a postwar program for educational exchange. Interestingly, the bill proposing the scholarships was introduced into the U.S. Senate just a few weeks after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In his memoirs, Senator J. William Fulbright (1905–95) described his thoughts upon the program’s establishment: “When an individual is arrogant and looks down on the people of other countries, he feels he can do anything to them with impunity.” Speaking of the scholarship recipients, he said: They should stay one or two years to learn the language, to understand the history and culture, and to be accepted in the local community as a friendly neighbor. Then they can be a big, firm bridge between the two countries. When the number of such people increases and they all become leaders of their societies, we will have a new era in which wars are prevented and nuclear weapons are never used again.6 Following the war, the student exchange program put forward by France and Germany, with their long history of persistent hostility, played a largely unseen but important role as a powerful underlying force for advancing the cause of European unity. Since 1987, educational exchanges such as the Erasmus Programme,7 in which more than two million students throughout Europe have participated, have had a similar effect. With these precedents in mind, I have proposed a similar Asian program, and following the accord reached at the recent APEC talks, I believe this is the time to consider in earnest the establishment of an Asia-Pacific student exchange program. I have always extended the warmest welcome to overseas students studying at Soka University, valuing their presence and encouraging them. As one example, I once suggested that we hold a New Year’s Party for overseas students who had to spend the New Year’s holiday in Japan so they would not feel lonely and would have the opportunity to experience Japanese New Year’s celebrations. Since then, a pleasant New Year’s Party has been held annually. Overseas students and visiting faculty and their family members are invited to attend, and they have a good time with Soka University faculty members, partaking of traditional Japanese New Year’s foods, sushi, and other treats. I am glad to say that the students seem to enjoy the event very much. Clements:   It sounds like a very festive and heartwarming celebration. I can envision it perfectly. Looking back at my own life, I only truly began to understand Japan after I visited Japan and spoke with the friends I made at that time. I first visited Japan in 1970 en route to Oxford to take up a post-doctoral fellowship. This was at the time of the EXPO in Osaka, and a moment for Japan to

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showcase its extraordinary industrial development, modernization, and postwar recovery. I stayed in an onsen (hot springs) inn and youth hostels. In one of the latter, I was bedded down on tatami mats with about thirty other Japanese and overseas students. That was the first time I got to know something of what Japanese young people were worried about. It was a very hot night and we were all lying under mosquito netting. It was before the era of widespread air conditioning. I mentioned that I was very hot, whereupon a student came over with a fan and started to cool me. I was very moved by this kind gesture to provide me with “manual air conditioning.” Other Japanese students sat up and asked if I would speak English with them so that they could improve their spoken English. Though our conversation proceeded in less than fluent English, we were able to discuss various subjects, and I was very moved by the experience. We talked about the quagmire of the Vietnam War, about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and what the atomic bombings meant for the postwar generation of Japanese students. We talked what was happening in China, which was in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. Our discussions went on until the wee small hours of the morning. To this day I remember what a joy and a privilege it was to have met and made so many friends at that youth hostel. I was impressed at how sensitive everyone was to my physical welfare and I was equally impressed by their willingness to practice what was often very rudimentary English while talking about their hopes and fears for Japan. I learned a lot about the Japanese culture of hospitality and making people feel at home, and I realized yet again how wrong it was to stereotype people on a basis of history or past negative experiences. Ikeda:   Though they may have been born and raised in different countries, nothing is more effective in deepening mutual understanding than students and young people meeting face to face, spending time together, and sharing their feelings with one another. In such experiences one finds the personal human warmth that can never be gained through just reading books about an unfamiliar country. Firm and enduring amity among nations can truly only be achieved through the continuous accumulation of such personal encounters among individuals of both countries. In September 2013, an international youth symposium was held at China’s Nankai University to commemorate the forty-fifth anniversary of my call for the restoration of Sino–Japanese ties.8 In his lecture at the symposium, Nankai University Professor Ji Yaguang, who has engaged in numerous efforts to strengthen Sino–Japanese friendship, said: Establishing friendships is crucial in private or citizen-level diplomacy. … Sharing one another’s lives on a daily basis, getting to know one another as you eat together and share one another’s sorrows and joys, is also an important form of diplomacy.

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We are facing numerous challenges, including worsening relations between China and Japan and numerous other problems in the Asia-Pacific region, but I believe if we observe two guidelines, we are certain to be able to create a bright future: first, no matter what conflict or problem we face, we must never resort to military force; and second, we need to promote exchanges among the younger generation in every area and make a constructive effort to create opportunities for them to work together on our common problems. It is my fervent wish that 2014, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of APEC, will be an emphatic departure in that direction. Clements:   I do too. If the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were nationalist and imperialist eras, then I hope that the twenty-first century will be the era of positive regionalism. It is my hope that nations in East Asia, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific will be strong enough to start ceding some of their sovereignty for the benefit of regional security, prosperity, and identity. If we can engender high levels of trust in the utility and effectiveness of regional organizations we should be able to transcend narrow self-interest for higher levels of regional cooperation and coexistence.

Notes 1  Established in 1989, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is a forum for twenty-one Pacific Rim member economies promoting free trade throughout the AsiaPacific region. Its members are Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, the United States, and Viet Nam. 2   APEC, “2013 Leaders’ Declaration,” October 8, 2013, https://www.apec.org/MeetingPapers/Leaders-Declarations/2013/2013_aelm. (accessed August 22, 2018). 3   Joseph Rotblat and Daisaku Ikeda, A Quest for Global Peace, p. IX. 4   Ibid., p. 36. 5   Ibid., p. 50. 6   J. W. Fulbright, Against the Arrogance of Power: My Personal History (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shimbun: Tokyo, 1991), p. 56. 7  The Erasmus Programme (European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) is a European Union student exchange program established in 1987 and now covering thirty-seven countries. In its first year, 3,244 students participated, a number that had grown to over 150,000 students, or almost 1 percent of the European student population, by 2006. 8  On September 8, 1968, Daisaku Ikeda issued a Proposal for the Normalization of SinoJapanese ties. The two countries were at the time still technically in a state of war, and anti-Chinese and anticommunist speech was widespread. Ikeda saw peace with China as fundamental and considered the reintegration of China into the international community as vital to world peace. Diplomatic relations were restored in 1972.

6 THE PATH TO THE RECONSTRUCTION OF HOPE AND COURAGE

The disasters that struck New Zealand and Japan Ikeda:   At the United Nations General Assembly session at the end of 2013, it was decided to hold the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, in the Tohoku (northeastern) region of Japan, in March 2015. The year 2014 is the third since the occurrence of the Christchurch Earthquake and the Great East Japan Earthquake. The world continues to be afflicted by a series of extensive disasters, including the powerful typhoon that struck the Philippines and caused such enormous damage in 2013. Compared to the 1970s, the numbers of both occurrences of natural disasters and those affected by them are said to have tripled. In this situation, there is an increasing recognition of the importance not only of official policies for preventing and reducing the damage caused by natural disasters, but that community ties providing mutual encouragement and broad-based, steadfast support from society as a whole are important foundations for recovery and reconstruction following major disasters. The people of Sendai, where the UN conference will be held, have regularly expressed their gratitude for the warm support they have received from so many people, and are eager to let the world know about the important contributions of local disaster-prevention organizations within the neighborhood associations and NPOs in response to the recent disaster. The local residents, while confronting their profound grief and suffering, are keen to share their determination to cooperate in moving forward together toward reconstruction. In addition, in May 2015, the Seventh Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting (PALM)1 is scheduled to be held in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture. I can’t help but hope that through these conferences taking place in the Tohoku region, the lessons of these disasters and the challenges of recovery and reconstruction that need to

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be addressed will be shared with others, and deeper solidarity with international society will be forged. In 2013, sunflowers symbolizing the earnest desire of the people of Tohoku for recovery magnificently bloomed at Tokyo Soka Junior High School. Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture suffered terrible destruction in the tsunami. Salt water drenched the soil, but also brought some sunflower seeds with it, which sprouted and grew among the rubble and, in spite of the salt damage, flourished and flowered beautifully. People called them “gutsy sunflowers” and the flowers imparted hope to all who saw them. Youth division members of the Soka Gakkai in Ishinomaki collected seeds from those sunflowers and sent them to me. I passed them on to the Tokyo Soka Junior High School students who carefully tended and raised them. The seeds of the “gutsy sunflowers” have been distributed to Hokkaido, ­Shimane, and throughout Japan, acting as a tie linking the hearts of the people of Tohoku, still arduously stepping forward on the path to reconstruction in spite of the many hardships they face. Clements:   The indomitable courage of the people of Tohoku is alive in the “gutsy sunflowers.” That’s a very heartwarming story. This reminds me of two women I met when I was in Japan the year after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami who shared their personal experiences at the Culture of Peace Lecture Series (titled: Women and Reconstruction) sponsored by the Soka Gakkai Women’s Peace Committee, to which I had been invited. One was forced to relocate from her home in Futaba in Fukushima Prefecture, moving to Saitama where her daughter lived. She said that while it was painful, and her separation from her home town made her feel hopeless at times, the encouragement she received from her daughter and grandchildren helped her regain the will to live and she decided to rise up and make an effort to bring joy to others through traditional Japanese dance, to which she had devoted her life. The other woman managed a restaurant serving fish caught by the local fisheries cooperative in Oarai in Ibaraki Prefecture. Her shop was completely destroyed by the tsunami, and though public concern about the safety of the local catch made reestablishing it difficult, as a local leader she set about rebuilding her shop. Her efforts were featured on television and in other news outlets, which encouraged and revitalized her entire town. She showed me a photograph of her new restaurant, and I found it very interesting that in the photo women are inside doing all of the cooking while men are queuing outside waiting to eat. It reminded me of the important role of women as the ones who have maintained the survival of humankind throughout history. The experiences of those two women were eloquent testimony to the power of hope to call forth our inner strength in times of adversity. As a resident of New Zealand, which was also struck by an earthquake around the same time, though on a much less destructive scale, I felt a bond of intense affinity with all of those from Tohoku who experienced those tragedies.

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Ikeda:   When the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck, you sent us a message in which you said: New Zealand is shocked and dismayed by the news of the earthquake and tsunami that has just hit Japan. Here in New Zealand, we have been paralyzed for the past three weeks by the Christchurch Earthquake. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be dealing with the aftermath of a shock that was a thousand times greater than the one we have just endured here. We stand with you in shock and despair at the suffering, death and destruction that has taken place. I hope that Japanese resilience will once again be up to the challenge of responding to this crisis with care, compassion, and effectiveness. I am certain that your deeply empathetic words must have been of immeasurable comfort to all of those living in the affected areas. The Christchurch Earthquake, which took place just a month before the disaster in Japan, killed 185, including 28 Japanese students studying there, and destroyed or damaged nearly 4,000 buildings. The news was received as a great shock in Japan as well. Where were you when the earthquake occurred? Clements:   I was returning to New Zealand from Australia when the February earthquake hit. We were in the airport waiting for a flight from Brisbane to Dunedin. The plane was immediately delayed as the airlines and air traffic controllers on both sides of the Tasman Sea tried to work out what damage had been done and how to keep different airports operating to bring in emergency earthquake teams and supplies. We had lived in Christchurch from the 1970s to the mid-1990s, so we had lots of friends, relatives, and former colleagues who were caught up in the disaster. It was a terrible shock to learn how much of the physical infrastructure of Christchurch, particularly the City Centre and many of its old nineteenth-century Gothic buildings, had been destroyed. The initial government response to the earthquake was impressive. Once the depth of destruction became apparent, the New Zealand government legislated special powers to coordinate the immediate emergency search and rescue effort and to begin planning for the medium- to long-term reconstruction of the city. To do this, it invented a special body called the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA). This was a new public service department established by the New Zealand government to coordinate the rebuilding of Christchurch and the surrounding areas. It had wide-ranging powers and could suspend laws and regulations for the purpose of earthquake recovery. We were also helped by strong contingents of earthquake recovery experts from Japan, Australia, the U.S., and the U.K. It is very heartening seeing how such natural disasters generate high levels of international cooperation and sharing.

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This kind of international assistance underlines the ways in which we all know in our heart of hearts that there is a common humanity that unites all of us irrespective of our cultural, linguistic, or national differences. It’s a pity that this common humanity is often only realized in times of crisis. It is important, therefore, that we maintain this “disaster spirit” in normal times as well.

Volunteer activity in disaster relief Ikeda:   I agree completely. At the time of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, emergency rescue and medical teams arrived from all over the world, assisting with relief and recovery efforts. I have heard that a New Zealand rescue team arrived in Minami Sanriku in Miyagi Prefecture, just days after the disaster, and searched for survivors among the mountains of rubble and destroyed homes in the bitter winter cold and snow. In spite of the fact that there was still a state of emergency in effect following the Christchurch Earthquake and the situation there was still very dire, New Zealand sent the equivalent of a third of its rescue and relief workers to assist with the earthquake and tsunami here in Japan. The Japanese people must never forget the deep debt of gratitude we owe your country. In Japan, a book about disasters around the world became popular after the tsunami and earthquake—A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by the U.S. writer Rebecca Solnit. In it, Ms. Solnit observed that following disasters and other crises, a spirit of mutual assistance and support is naturally engendered, and relationships among people are strengthened as strangers reach out to help one another: Disasters are, most basically, terrible, tragic, grievous, and no matter what positive side effects and possibilities they produce, they are not to be desired. But by the same measure, those side effects should not be ignored because they arise amid devastation.2 I find a common message between Ms. Solnit’s words and your earlier comments. In this regard, I think it is important to never lose the powerful feeling that arises in our hearts following a disaster. To keep that feeling alive, we need to take action in our daily lives for those around us who are suffering. Through that way of life, we can spread the feeling of profound empathy embodied in your message to Japan after the earthquake, and pass it on to the next generation. An acquaintance from Tohoku shared the following story with me. The day of the earthquake and tsunami, a high school student in Niigata Prefecture came home to see his mother watching the reports of the disaster on the news. His mother suddenly said, During the Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake of July 16, 2007, which caused serious damage in Niigata Prefecture, it was the people of Tohoku who sent us food (rice balls). I’m sure they need our help now.

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After that, the high school boy helped his mother and other members of the community make rice balls to send to the people of Tohoku, while praying for their safety. The next month, the boy entered Tohoku University. Living in the affected area, he witnessed how the people comforted and encouraged one another, in spite of their personal sufferings, and he says he realized what true strength and the nobility of life are. He says that while it may be difficult to fully understand another’s suffering, he wishes to become like his mother, who cares about others and their hardships. Though we may regard empathy as an important quality, unless it is based in the individual’s experiences and actions, it is difficult to make it take root in society. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, many volunteers and young people participated in relief activities. Out of their wish to help others, members of the Soka Gakkai Tohoku student division formed a bicycle rescue team after the earthquake and engaged in various other rescue and relief activities, too. Soka Gakkai members have also initiated numerous activities to assist with spiritual recovery from the disaster, such as music festivals, symposiums, conducting surveys about disaster awareness, and other things. No matter how many the imposing challenges, as long as the spirit of empathy and caring for others, the commitment to rebuilding and recovery, remain alive in the hearts of the younger generation, I believe that we can find our way to a hopeful future. I heard that many students and young people took part in rescue and relief activities at the time of the Christchurch Earthquake, too. Clements:   Yes. The students of Dunedin, where I live, provided support to Christchurch by preparing thousands of packed lunches for the “student army” that had been assisting with earthquake relief in the city. Students at the University of Otago, where I teach, delivered 17,000 packed lunches to Christchurch victims. The Christchurch Student Volunteer Army was formed after the first earthquake that hit the Canterbury area in September 2010. It is currently a 10,000-strong youth organization. The Student Volunteer Army was also extremely efficient in responding to the second earthquake in February, since by then it had structures and processes ready to be deployed for community purposes. The group provided desperately needed services to the earthquake survivors, including removing huge amounts of sand produced by liquefaction in the earthquake and assisting with cleanup of damaged homes. It managed to channel the energy of the youth in Christchurch to constructive activism and social service. The Student Volunteer Army stands as one of the most successful youth relief efforts ever formed and it has been deployed in subsequent disasters. Otago University also made an unstinting effort to provide relief. The then Vice Chancellor, Professor David Skegg, immediately offered students from

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Canterbury University the chance to leave Christchurch and transfer into the Otago program to ensure no discontinuity in their studies. This was important because the Canterbury Campus was badly hit by both earthquakes. Since 2011, Otago has provided sanctuary to people who lost their houses, employment, or university program. While various organizations and groups, including the university and students, reached out to the earthquake victims and provided support, with the passage of time people have become more irritated and exasperated by bureaucratic delays and the glacial pace of recovery. With regard to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority that I mentioned earlier, it was given wide powers to do what was necessary to restore basic services. Nevertheless, wherever possible these programs and actions need to be performed in consultation with and with sensitivity to the citizens who are suffering the most. Unfortunately, however, many citizens felt that their interests and needs were being devalued or circumvented in favor of political and bureaucratic efficiency. What is clear is that the people who were most vulnerable before the 2011 earthquake have been most impacted since. For example, a walk through the eastern working-class suburbs reveals many residential homes still boarded up, damaged, or awaiting a positive or negative decision from CERA.

Psychological and spiritual support Ikeda:   In the areas affected by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, we still have not seen progress in true reconstruction, and many individuals are forced to spend their days suffering great anxiety about their work and lives. Government bears a heavy responsibility for ensuring speedy progress in reconstruction efforts. Government and its administrative institutions must stand firmly on the side of those affected by disasters and give top priority to alleviating the worries and anxieties of each individual and restoring hope to affected communities. The majority of the Japanese people wish that the government would take the sufferings of the disaster victims more seriously and forge the way forward to reconstruction as quickly as possible. Clements:   I understand. This is the situation in New Zealand as well. There is growing discontent with slow political responses to the post-earthquake needs of citizens. What has proven astonishing to those of us living in other cities has been the resilience and tolerance of Christchurch citizens in the face of bureaucratic delays, insensitivity, and sometimes willful neglect. This is certainly a commendable thing, but it has its limits. For example, the financial struggles of residents are increasing since the earthquake. More families are seeking food parcels and requesting special assistance. Social workers say that families are proud and do not like to ask, but they have been worn out from two years of trying to make ends meet.

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Behavior issues for children and adults have continued, and in some cases increased. Most common are anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and problems sleeping. Relationship issues are also severe, exacerbated by increased stress on families and relentless uncertainty. Job losses, financial strain, and relocation have negatively impacted many family relationships. The earthquake victims are in need of not only institutional support from the government for financial and other practical needs, but psychological and spiritual support as well. Ikeda:   As you say, true recovery and reconstruction are not possible unless we also focus on psychological and emotional care for the victims and take steps to restore hope and a smile to each individual affected. In the peace proposal I issued the year after the Great East Japan Earthquake, I urged that in responding to the problem of the tremendous damage inflicted on human lives, livelihoods, and dignity by natural disasters that destroy so many precious and irreplaceable elements of people’s lives in a single moment, society as a whole needs to work together in earnest and steadfastly support the victims in ways to enable them to fully rebuild their psychological and emotional well-being and their lives. I wrote: Nothing is more devastating than the loss of people who have been an integral part of our lives—the parent who raised us, the partner who shared our joys and sorrows, the treasured child or grandchild, the close friend or neighbor. Disasters inflict on large numbers of people the suffering of the loss of friends and family members, unexpectedly and without warning, creating an overwhelming burden of sadness and anger that it is impossible for any individual to bear on his or her own. In addition, as I said in the peace proposal: Disasters may also result in the destruction of the homes that were the basis for people’s daily lives and the shredding of the bonds of community. A home is much more than simply a vessel containing the processes of life; it is inscribed with the history of a family, filled with the emotions and sensations of daily living. It encloses a special kind of time linking past to present and present to future; its loss ruptures the history of our lives. Likewise, the sudden destruction of places of employment robs people of their livelihoods and thus the sense of purpose and dignity that so many derive from work. For people who have lost their homes and possessions in a disaster and are dealing with the strains of life as evacuees, the loss of work not only represents a severing of the economic lifeline but can further undermine the spiritual grounding necessary to move forward.

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My question to you in this regard is what kind of awareness of the need for emotional support and care for disaster survivors exists in New Zealand? And in your personal opinion, what kinds of concrete efforts are important for providing such emotional and spiritual support? Clements:   After the earthquake, many churches, schools, and medical centers provided immediate physical care for earthquake victims, but it became very clear very quickly that the deeper emotional and traumatic consequences of such an event were going to take far longer to heal. This recognition meant that many of the social service agencies initiated programs aimed at listening and responding to victim stories, specifically to diminish post-traumatic stress disorders. The serious issues of survivor guilt, unresolved fear, and trauma—problems that are not evident until one actually interacts directly with the earthquake victims—have yet to be resolved. Richard Rohr has summed up the serious effects of those issues with the insight that pain that is not transformed is transferred.3 Unless that pain weighing heavily on the spirit is successfully dealt with, it is transferred, generating various forms of personal dysfunction. For example, as long as heartbreak remains unresolved and bottled up inside, it can manifest itself as depression, severe anxiety, alcoholism, or, in the worst of cases, suicide. When, in contrast, it is manifested outwardly as anger, it can lead to actions such as domestic violence. In actuality, the symptoms of transferred pain described by Dr. Rohr are occurring with increased frequency in Christchurch. How can we provide emotional support and open the way to inner healing for all those affected by disasters? In considering this problem, I have some ideas based on the work I’ve done in Africa and elsewhere dealing with communities traumatized by war. The first thing you need to do is create what I call “safe spaces” for traumatized people. People cannot feel safe in a place where others, no matter how well intentioned, are lecturing them, telling them what they should do and what’s good for them. We must create spaces where people can come together in their shared humanity, where each individual is valued and acknowledged as a human being. That enables those who have experienced a disaster to relax and open their hearts. Then it is important to try to work out ways to acknowledge, without any judgment, the trauma, pain, and suffering that has taken place. And then the most important thing that needs to happen is that those people are quietly listened to. Everyone who has contact with the victims needs to strive to offer steady and strong support, so that through this process those who have suffered pain are helped to reconnect with their past and build new connections to a new future. Ikeda:   That is very important advice. In my 2012 peace proposal, I stressed the importance of everyone in the victims’ environment working together to share their pain instead of allowing

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individuals to suffer alone. The effort to create safe spaces that you propose is an indispensable basis for that approach, I believe. The Seikyo Shimbun, the Soka Gakkai daily newspaper, has been publishing a special series of articles called Tohoku fukko shimbun (Tohoku Light of Happiness News) for two years, starting immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The series has introduced the stories of people who, in spite of various kinds of suffering, have shared their grief with others, encouraged one another each time they stumbled and felt like giving up, pressing forward as best they can in the face of many difficulties. I’d like to share some of the voices that have been recorded in that series. A woman in Fukushima Prefecture wrote: There are people who, though they act positive and upbeat in front of others, say that they can’t stop crying when they are alone. When I say, “I know how exhausted you must be,” they just nod silently. I am praying that I can in some small part share their suffering. A man in Iwate Prefecture said: Hoping to be of some support, I invite those who are now alone or those who have some deep grief to my house for dinner. I can’t do anything special for them, but we talk and laugh and cry together. I am satisfied if I can lighten their hearts even a little bit. A woman in Miyagi Prefecture reflects: What we need now is a goal. Each of us needs to set our own goal, no matter how modest, and then do our best to achieve it. Those who don’t feel ready yet don’t have to do this, but in the end, everyone needs to be able to stand up and look to the future. I am determined to continue reaching out to people until we can all do that. These thoughts and actions may not be as sensational as the steady stream of news stories reporting on the progress of reconstruction, but I strongly believe that for those who come into contact with this genuine personal warmth, they can have a decisive importance and become a lifeline of hope that enables them to find the strength to go on living. The pathway to the restoration of the spirit is, for everyone, a perilous and difficult one, and just as one has surmounted one high mountain a whole range of equally daunting peaks may come into view. But even so, as long as there are others affirming that they are not alone, people who are prepared to share their lives, there is a light to illuminate the darkness of their suffering. Clements:   Each of these comments you have introduced are the voices of those who, while undergoing their own sufferings, are thinking about and are eager to do something to help others in a similar situation. I find that very moving.

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These kinds of relationships are completely different from the ones I expressed concern about earlier, in which one party lectures the other and tells them what is best for them. In such a relationship, between the helper and the helped, in many cases a relation of superior to inferior can unknowingly emerge, but the relationships you described are of a different nature, informed by a fundamental empathy and fellow-feeling. It is very difficult, even after much time has passed, to overcome the feelings of sadness and anger that one has been singled out, the feeling of “Why me, out of so many others? Why me, out of so many other New Zealanders or Japanese, still suffering from the earthquake?” Even so, to move forward even a little, I believe one needs to start from what my teacher Professor Adam Curle, whom I mentioned earlier, described as “unclenching the fists around our hearts.” By that he meant all the impediments to realizing our vulnerability and acknowledging our interdependence with each other. That is the key to transforming the cycle of sadness and anger into one of hope and courage. The best way to do that, as the individuals in the short passages you introduced from “The Tohoku Light of Happiness” column endeavored to do, is to encourage and help others, which helps both oneself and others and leads to the revival of everyone’s spirits. Dedicating yourself to the happiness of others helps one overcome anger and sadness and release one’s inner compassion and gentleness. Only by constantly striving in this direction can a compassionate, peaceful society be built, I believe. Ikeda:   I am sure your words will be received as powerful encouragement by those in Tohoku striving together to rebuild their spirits and their lives. In the foreword I contributed to the Japanese edition of a dialogue I published with jazz legends Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter in 2013,4 I introduced the story of a couple from Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture who had lost their twentythree-year-old daughter in the earthquake and tsunami. In the days of incredible, crushing grief that followed, they read about the practice of a “second line” in the serialization of our dialogue in the Seikyo Shimbun. This is a custom in New Orleans, the home of jazz, originating in jazz funerals, in which people celebrate lives of the departed. The couple, determined to take the first step to recover from their grief, decided to hold a musical performance in memory of their daughter, who always used to say that she wanted to be a happy, smiling person. Held a half-year after the disaster, the concert fulfilled the couple’s wish of encouraging and renewing the will to live among those who attended. The heartfelt performances of local musical groups and choruses gave courage and hope to the audience members, helping them see a way forward. A woman living in temporary housing told them after the concert that before she hadn’t wanted to go outside, but since the concert that was changing and she was now volunteering.

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The couple spoke of their determination to lead a life of mission, with their daughter in their hearts: “We made a decision. We would become the sun for someone, the sunflower for someone. That was what our daughter would have wanted. We are our daughter’s successors.” Adopting this attitude and moving forward, even if just a little—I believe that, in line with Buddhism’s profound philosophy of life and death, that will certainly bring joy to the deceased as they happily watch over the surviving relatives. We strongly wish to exert ourselves to build, as you said, a society of compassion and peace, in which we all support one another fully so that, like the “gutsy sunflowers” now growing in various parts of Japan, all those living in the affected areas without exception can accomplish their spiritual recovery, shining together with indomitable courage.

Notes 1  The Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting (PALM) is a Summit-level meeting of Pacific island countries hosted by Japan every three years since 1997 to address common challenges, build cooperative relationships, and forge bonds of friendship. Leaders from seventeen countries (Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu) take part. 2  Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (New York: Viking, 2009), p. 6. 3  See Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2005), p. 228. 4   Jazu to buppo, soshite jinsei o kataru (Soul Freedom―Conversations on Jazz, Buddhism, and Life). The English-language edition was published in 2017 under the title of Reaching Beyond: Improvisations on Jazz, Buddhism, and a Joyful Life).

7 EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN: THE FOUNDATION FOR TRANSFORMING OUR TIMES

The women’s suffrage movement Ikeda:   The courageous voices of women have unlimited power to break through any difficulty and to impart courage to and transform people. The beacon of hope with which women illuminate society dispels the dark clouds of the times and shines with life. For many years I have insisted that the twenty-first century must be the century of women, in which this power of women is manifested in every area. New Zealand has an exceptional record in responding to this historic challenge of women’s empowerment. It was the first country in the world to adopt women’s suffrage, which it did in 1893. Women only gained the vote in the United States in 1920, and in the United Kingdom in 1928. Women were allowed to vote in Japan only after World War II, in 1945. All of this demonstrates how pioneering New Zealand was in this area. Kate Sheppard (1847–1934) was a central figure in the movement for women’s suffrage in New Zealand. Sheppard and her fellow activists, while fulfilling their household and employment duties, held local study groups in a consciousnessraising effort for women’s suffrage. Though they faced a whirlwind of cruel and unthinking criticism and abuse, they remained undeterred. After a bitter struggle lasting seven years, they gathered signatures from many women in New Zealand and won the right to vote. I have mentioned the story of the struggle for women’s suffrage in New Zealand in speeches on more than one occasion. I have recounted the story of Sheppard’s efforts because I believe that there are aspects of Sheppard’s life that overlap with the attitudes of the women of the SGI, who are dedicated to building a better society through their movement for peace, culture, and education, which they participate in while fulfilling their responsibilities in their home and in their

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career, and that Sheppard’s example will serve as a form of encouragement for them in their efforts. In presenting the case for the importance of women’s suffrage, Sheppard cited ten reasons they should be given the vote. For example, in the calm and quiet of the home environment, women are less likely than men to be swayed by mere partisanship, and are inclined to attach great value to uprightness and rectitude of life in a candidate. Another of her reasons was that women are endowed with a more constant solicitude for the welfare of the rising generations, thus giving them a more far-reaching concern for something beyond the present moment. Yet another was that women tend naturally to exercise more habitual caution, and to feel a deeper interest in the constant preservation of peace, law and order, and especially in the supremacy of right over might.1 Today, even more than 120 years later, these are statements that deserve our attention. Clements:   I am very glad that you have chosen to mention the achievements of Kate Sheppard in relation to a vision of the century of women. She was an important role model for me and certainly for New Zealand women in the 1960s and 70s. She was an excellent example of a woman with strong values and conviction who was able to turn these into nationwide social and political movements. She certainly figures in New Zealand history and social studies classes at intermediate and secondary levels, but there are no specific curriculum areas focusing specifically on the role and significance of Kate Sheppard or the women’s suffrage movement. It is unfortunate that people as significant as Kate Sheppard are now seen by many in generations X and Y just as a face on our $10 bill or a minor footnote in nineteenth-century New Zealand history. It’s curious how people who make important historic and pioneering contributions to justice and peace are taken for granted by later generations. Yet their visions have improved the lot of everyone in very fundamental ways. Kate Sheppard, like many New Zealand social reformers, had a very clear moral basis for her political work. Her uncle was a minister in the Free Church of Scotland and she lived with him for some time. He taught her all about the significance of a “social gospel.” “Social gospel” means a Christian faith that manifests itself in social and political action. I believe that it has something in common with Nichiren’s stress on “engaged Buddhism,” Buddhism that contributes to the well-being of society. It was this commitment deriving from her “social gospel” that gave Kate Sheppard her strong sense of public and moral duty. When she migrated to New Zealand, she was particularly struck by New Zealand’s drinking culture and the way in which alcohol was at the root of many family breakdowns, domestic violence, and other preventable accidents. She started her political career, therefore, in the Women’s Christian Temperance movement, and it was out of this that she became a suffragette. It is interesting that my father, in the Methodist Church, was an active member of the Temperance Movement as well. These religiously inspired movements gave

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people experience in political organizing and prepared them for a large number of different campaigns for justice and peace. Kate Sheppard wanted women to have the vote as a matter of right, but also so that they could vote for the prohibition of alcohol. Her political interests, however, were very broad. Like most of the people who have had an influence over my own life, she was a committed egalitarian and was opposed to any unequal treatment of people on the basis of gender, race, or class. She said in the late 1890s that “all that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome.”2 It was this commitment that fueled her passion for women’s rights, and she succeeded in her mission. Immediately after women’s suffrage was adopted, she devoted herself to establishing the National Council of Women of New Zealand. This organization still exists and lobbies for women’s equality not only in the political realm but all areas of life. Ikeda:   New Zealand’s achievement as the first country in the world to guarantee women’s suffrage has had a huge impact on women around the world, boosting the movement for women’s right to vote in many other countries. A Buddhist scripture contains the phrase, “One is the mother of ten thousand,”3 expressing the sure formula for transforming the age—that the courage of a single individual can reach out to encourage a second and a third, and eventually, a great many people, causing them to take action with the same commitment. The Soka Gakkai, in support of the 2005 UN World Programme for Human Rights Education, produced the “Human Rights in the 21st Century” exhibition, which was held throughout Japan starting in November of that same year. In one section of the exhibition, dedicated to women, the achievements of Kate Sheppard were presented in considerable detail. The exhibition also featured letters written by Mahatma Gandhi, the champion of the nonviolence movement, while he was in prison, as well as letters by Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), who was pivotal in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among other exhibits. It was our intent in this exhibition to focus on individuals and their contributions to human rights. Buddhism describes the fundamental principle of the sanctity of life and teaches that “The Law [the Buddha’s teachings] does not spread by itself: because people propagate it, both the people and the Law are respectworthy.”4 The same can be said, in a sense, about spreading the cause of human rights, which is why we chose to spotlight individuals in the exhibition. In other words, the fact that they are enshrined in law is not what makes human rights noble. Human rights shine because the praiseworthy actions of people who stood up to engage in the struggle to win human rights serve as the spiritual foundation of the law, and others inherit their philosophy and spirit and follow in their footsteps in the effort to courageously protect the sanctity of human life. In 1897, four years after women won the right to vote in New Zealand, there was a rice riot led by women in Japan. Women, who are most directly affected by

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the hardships of daily life, took the initiative to lead the movement and protested against the extraordinary rise in rice prices caused by unfair cornering of the rice market. Rice riots broke out again and spread throughout the country in 1918. The anger of the people at the oppressive militarist government’s attempts to suppress those riots led to the first government by political parties in Japan. Zhou Enlai (1898–1976), who was studying as a foreign student in Japan at the time, credited the rice riots of 1918 as an important turning point in Japanese society. While the rice riots differed in significant ways, naturally, from the women’s suffrage movement in New Zealand, they have the point in common that ordinary women rising up in protest were an important driving force behind both. In that context, I’d like to ask you what you think were the causes behind the support for the movement for women’s suffrage that manifested themselves in New Zealand quite some time before anywhere else in the world. Clements:   I think that more than anything, the way in which the nation of New Zealand came into being was a deeply influential factor. The first colonists to New Zealand were determined to ensure that the class divisions of England would not be reproduced in their new land. The workers on the very first ships to reach New Zealand in the 1840s struck for the eight-hour working day and the forty-hour working week. They did not want to perpetuate the exploitative conditions of industrial England. On the contrary they wanted to ensure that “Jack was as good as his Master,” and that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect in their new country. Since there was a conscious desire to eliminate the old distinctions of class and the snobbery associated with them, there was a similar willingness to extend equal rights to women as well. It is sobering that this enthusiasm for equality did not extend to issues of race. New Zealand’s colonial history perpetuated the paternalistic, exploitative, and colonial view of indigenous peoples. Women, on the other hand, were valued for the fundamental contributions they made to the life of the new colony. The early colonial women in New Zealand endured enormous deprivation as they helped their husbands and others settle and farm the new country. Even if there was a big gulf between male and female rights in the law and in terms of educational opportunity and so forth, men could not ignore their contribution to family life, medical services, social work, education, and the care of the poor. Women were the glue that held many fragile settlements and communities together as the colonists developed a nation in parallel with and on top of all the pre-existing Maori communities and institutions. They were also critical to the evolution of New Zealand churches, social welfare and educational institutions. Women succeeded in getting recognition of their political and social rights in New Zealand because they were valued for their contribution to family and nation building and because they were well organized and capable of mobilizing large numbers of supporters for their different causes.

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The suffrage movement succeeded also because there were many prominent Members of Parliament who were active in reform-minded churches, who supported the efforts of the Temperance Movement, and because they could not fail to acknowledge the central role of women in the development of the New Zealand nation. In addition to these factors, it must also be said that the women’s movement in New Zealand has always been served by courageous and gutsy women who have not balked at giving voice to the needs and interests of women. Ikeda:   So, the desire of the colonists to sever the chains of a class-dominated society and to build a new country, as well as the magnitude of women’s contribution to society, were the underlying context for the success of women’s suffrage in New Zealand. The Japanese geographer Shigetaka Shiga (1863–1927), who contributed a foreword to The Geography of Human Life, authored by President Makiguchi, traveled to New Zealand, Australia, and other Pacific destinations in 1886. He reported that in Japan’s pursuit of modernization there was much that it could learn from New Zealand. I believe that there is much that Japan could learn from New Zealand today as well. At the World Economic Forum held in October 2013, the Global Gender Gap Index 2013 was announced. The index rates national gender gaps based on economic, political, education and health-based criteria, and of the 136 countries surveyed in the index, New Zealand rated seventh and Japan 105th. The reason for Japan’s low ranking is apparently the paucity of Japanese women in government and the workplace. In New Zealand, one third of parliament members are women, while women occupy about half the positions on the local government level.

Women heads in the three branches of government Clements:   Yes. It is indeed true that New Zealand is advanced in terms of gender equality. In terms of women politicians, when Helen Clark (the current Administrator of the UNDP) was [a three-term] Labour prime minister, her government made a deliberate point of appointing women to all the top executive, legal, and representative positions in the country. This was accompanied by a push to ensure that women could break through the glass ceilings imposed in the corporate world as well. Even though New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the vote, in roughly every decade of New Zealand’s post-colonial history, movements for women’s rights were reactivated, and this undoubtedly created the present positive climate for gender equality. New Zealand pioneered medical support for the care of women and children in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the first Labour government

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(1935–38) gave very particular recognition to the rights of women and their equal treatment in social security legislation. This has continued to the present day. So the historical significance of the suffrage movement of the 1890s and the diverse women’s movements of the twentieth century is that there is now widespread acknowledgement of the equality of men and women in the workforce and in private and public life. There is a low tolerance for gender-based discrimination and sexism in New Zealand, and there are many organizations and movements aimed at tackling intimate partner and domestic violence in the country. There is a separate Ministry of Women’s Affairs, which is tasked with improving conditions for women in a wide variety of different sectors. The year 2013 marks the thirtieth anniversary of its establishment, but much remains to be done. There are still significant differences in gender pay gaps, and women are underrepresented in private sector board rooms and in other leadership roles. Women of color, whether Maori, Pasifika (Pacific island peoples), Chinese, or Indian, are also somewhat overlooked in terms of designing action plans for women that address ethnic and class as well as gender differences. Kate Sheppard’s old organization, the National Council of Women, remains one of the most constant organizations promoting the status of women in the community. I think New Zealand has made enormous progress on blurring these distinctions, but further efforts are necessary to prevent dividing the world into two sectors, assigning the public sector to men and the private sector to women. Everywhere around the world, improving the status and power of women anywhere is a never-ending effort. Ikeda:   In 2010, an organization called UN Women,5 bringing together various women’s organizations, was established at the United Nations, but there are still many strongly rooted social evils and prejudices that obstruct the effort for gender equality and the empowerment of women. In a dialogue we conducted, Dr. Sarah Wider, former president of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society in the U.S., who has taught women’s studies at the university level, had the following to say about the social factors preventing or suppressing the full development of the potential of women: Many of those obstacles are institutionalized, certainly in the workplace. Some are ingrained attitudes that create a severely limited understanding of women’s capacity. Even in this day, women are all too often characterized as “weak” or “lesser” or “dependent.” […] Worldwide, women’s experiences are still silenced. Poverty disproportionately affects women, and women’s capacity for productive work is poorly understood and often abused.6

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The perpetuation of this situation not only harms the dignity of many women but also terribly warps the structure of society, with the inevitable result that the future of society as a whole is eroded. Only by avoiding this situation and building an age in which the rights and dignity of women shine can the current for peace and happiness swell and society increase in vigor and dynamism. In May 2008, during a visit of former Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his wife Jeanne Abdullah to Japan, Mrs. Abdullah, who is also the chancellor of the Open University Malaysia, said to students at Soka Women’s College: Even when we [women] are faced with many challenges, we persevered and proved that we could even be leaders and excel in our chosen fields…. [Women] have demonstrated their ability to rise above self-interest for the common good. I agree completely. At a ceremony attended by Chancellor Abdullah the following year (February 2009), when she visited Japan again, I referred to what she had said and expressed my wish to the women present that they continue to move forward proudly and cheerfully, united in the determination to revitalize and contribute to society. Clements:   Hearing those words of Chancellor Abdullah, I am reminded of the research of my mentor Elise Boulding. In her book The Underside of History, she documented the major role of women throughout recorded history in keeping communities together in the face of astonishing adversity. Elise, as you know, spent a great deal of time servicing the needs of her children and family, but she was concerned that the voices of women were not sufficiently represented in discussions of the subjects of war and peace, as well as the structure of society, and at the age of forty-eight she decided to become a peace scholar and returned to her academic studies. As she began to pursue her career in this field, she stated what was at the time a completely novel perspective—that the family is extremely important in building peace. The family, she suggested, is crucial to the larger social structures for building peace, and women in particular are absolutely critical, because they promote the creation of cooperative, harmonious relationships in the family and are a powerful force for fostering social relationships. In that sense, she was the first in peace studies to clearly express the idea that women have the power to play a major role in contributing to peace. Ikeda:   Yes, she was a very great individual indeed. In my dialogue with Dr. Boulding, when I noted that Betty Williams, who dedicated herself to ending the conflict in Northern Ireland, described her motivation as the desire to preserve a peaceful homeland for children, Dr. Boulding responded that women have that inherent strength and gentleness, and need to develop it on a wide scale throughout local communities.

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At the start of the twentieth century, the founder of Soka education and first Soka Gakkai president Makiguchi expressed the highest hopes for the unlimited power of women and strove to find ways to draw out their infinite potential. More than a century ago, he established a correspondence course for the education of women. He took the initiative through concrete action to provide women opportunities to receive a complete education, just like men, because he believed that women are the creators of the ideal society of the future, the producers of the value of peace. Previously in our dialogue we touched upon the actions of the young Pakistani girl Malala Yousafzai. As her story testifies, it cannot be denied that there are still many countries where women are not guaranteed the right to an education. According to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2013 on the degree to which the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been achieved, though considerable gender equality has been achieved in primary education, the gap still remains very large at the junior and senior high school levels, and gender parity at all levels has only been achieved by two of the 130 countries for which data is available. There are features of New Zealand’s educational system that can provide an example for Japan. Many universities and colleges in New Zealand, in addition to providing full childcare facilities, also permit women to bring their children with them to class. In addition, community colleges offer training courses that assist women who have found it necessary for various reasons to leave the work force temporarily to find new employment.

Social engagement of women promotes culture of peace Clements:   Yes, that’s true. It is absolutely vital that facilities are provided to enable women to get higher education while raising their families. Similarly, if they have experienced significant hardship by withdrawing from the workforce to have children, it is important that programs are developed to enable them to reenter the work force without significant disadvantage. Gender-specific policies and programs addressing these sorts of issues are making a positive difference to the status and role of women. Unfortunately, many of these programs have been challenged in the wake of the global financial crisis. But I have no doubt that they will and must be reactivated when economic prosperity returns. Women remain a formidable political force in New Zealand and they will not allow any significant erosion of their position through time. The fact is that New Zealand has to create conditions for lifelong learning if we are to develop the innovative skills for survival into the twenty-first century. This is a necessity for every country seeking to build its social and political capital. It is important that women are at the heart of these policies and social structures—in other words, gender mainstreaming—for all the reasons canvassed above.

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Ikeda:   Gender mainstreaming has come to be seen as important since the Fourth World Conference on Women (convened by the UN) in 1995 in Beijing, hasn’t it? It first emerged in a United Nations Security Council resolution in Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000. Resolution 1325 expressly calls for the increased participation and involvement of women in all aspects and steps of the peace process. I have spoken of the historic significance of this resolution with former UN Under-Secretary-General Anwarul K. Chowdhury, who played a crucial role in its adoption. As Ambassador Chowdhury has stated: Adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 opened a muchawaited door of opportunity for women who have shown time and again that they bring a qualitative improvement in structuring peace and in postconflict architecture. Women and many men all over the world have been energized by this resolution.7 The involvement of women, he said, strengthens the roots of a culture of peace, and “promoting anything that will be good for the future of society advances the culture of peace. That is what Resolution 1325, in the broader interpretation of its focus, would ensure.”8 In my peace proposal for 2012, I discussed the significance of the resolution and called for the concept of peace building expressed in Resolution 1325 to be explicitly expanded to include disaster risk reduction and recovery, or for a new resolution to be adopted with a focus on the role women can play in these areas. Ambassador Chowdhury, too, stressed that we should never forget that when women are marginalized, there is little chance for our world to get peace in the real sense.9 I believe that the same can be said about disaster risk reduction and recovery. When disasters strike, more women die than men, and not only are women forced to deal directly with the problems of daily life following a disaster and shoulder an excessive burden, but it is said they are also exposed to greater threats to their human rights and dignity. At the same time, there is a growing recognition of the need to pay more attention to and reflect in disaster-control measures the inherent capabilities of women to contribute to disaster prevention and recovery efforts. Instead of allowing women to remain the greatest victims of disasters, we need to create an environment in which women can become major agents of change and make positive contributions to disaster control and recovery efforts, in the same way that their unique abilities are employed in conflict resolution and building peace. In June 2012, the Basic Act on Disaster Control Measures in Japan was revised, clearly empowering women as major players in disaster prevention and recovery. As a result, more women have been appointed to local disaster management councils and, recently, women members are to be found on councils in every prefecture and metropolitan area in Japan. I earnestly hope that in the future, as these and various other steps in this direction are augmented, disaster prevention and control measures will come to fully reflect the perspectives of women.

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Clements:   I strongly support your proposal to expand the spirit of Resolution 1325, which stresses the role of women in peacebuilding, to the processes of disaster control and recovery. When I was Secretary General of International Alert, my Gender and Conflict team worked very closely with Amnesty International and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in the development of the resolution and, along with celebrities like Glenn Close, I had the privilege of helping launch it at UN Headquarters in New York. Looking back through history, the twentieth century was one hundred years of widespread slaughter, most of which was caused by and produced by men often against the entreaties of women, although it also has to be said that women are not immune to patriotic appeals and after war is declared are often complicit in sending their sons, brothers, and partners into battle. Overall, however, I think it fair to say that women are more disposed toward peaceful settlement of disputes than men. If we are to build a century of peace and expand compassionate communities, we need to first and foremost elevate women to positions of decision-making responsibility to the greatest extent possible. A major way of doing this is to promote the increasing participation of women, from community, prefectural, and regional levels on up to the national government level, in all decision making—as you have said is now taking place in Japan. The research of Terrell Northrup from Syracuse University confirms that women, unlike most men, know inherently that their safety, security, and resilience rely on the quality of human relationships and the kinds of communities that they live in, and that strengthening social relationships makes an important difference to levels of peacefulness. Precisely because of the structurally unstable circumstances that persist in areas afflicted by conflict or disaster, women’s special qualities, their inherent wisdom, and survival skills have major significance in bringing security to the community. Postwar or post-disaster reconstruction is an effort to rebuild society and community so that people can lead normal lives and respond to disasters with resilience. In terms of the reconstruction process in communities, it is important to make sure that there are ample opportunities for women’s input and that their voices are reflected at the time of reconstruction. I’m not making an essentialist argument here that women are automatically better than men. It’s just that on a basis of research, women are indeed able to respond to problems more lovingly, more compassionately, and more empathetically than men, and are willing to incorporate the needs and interests of others in decision making with more neutrality and a commitment to community. Ikeda:   The data you cite is supported in every respect by my own personal life experiences. I have composed poems praising the noble powers of women on several occasions. In one of them I offer these words of encouragement and approbation to women:

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Women themselves are peace. Women themselves are culture.

............... My friends, caressed by a great golden wind waving innumerable meaningful banners may you triumph in all things! Live out your lives making everything into your own personal drama of happiness! Because in that spirit new flowers new life new constellations the glory of a new future awaits. The sun of hope for the future rises vigorously in a society illuminated by women’s smiles. Building a century in which the dignity of women shines is the pressing issue in which all counties should unite in grappling with.

Notes 1  Research and Publishing Group of the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, “Ten reasons why the women of New Zealand should vote,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/ media/photo/ten-reasons-for-vote (accessed June 8, 2017). 2  Melanie M. Hughes, Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective (California: SAGE Publications, 2007), p. 47. 3  Nichiren, The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 1999), p. 131. 4  Translated from Japanese. Nichiren, Nichiren Daishonin gosho zenshu (The Complete Works of Nichiren Daishonin) (Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 1952), p. 856. 5  The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women, is a UN entity working for the empowerment of women, which became operational in January 2011. It was created through the merger of the UN’s Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW); the International Research and

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6  7 

8  9 

Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW); the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI); and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Sarah Wider and Daisaku Ikeda, The Art of True Relations (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Dialogue Path, 2014), p. 62. Translated from Japanese. Anwarul K. Chowdhury and Daisaku Ikeda, Atarashiki chikyu shakai no sozo e—heiwa no bunka to kokuren o kataru (Creating a New Global Society—A Discourse on the United Nations and a Culture of Peace) (Tokyo: Ushio Publishing Co., Ltd., 2011), p. 132. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid.

8 BUILDING A CULTURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY

Respecting indigenous peoples Ikeda:   Over the years, the SGI has supported the educational initiatives endorsed by the United Nations in various ways. As well as such efforts to raise awareness of a culture of peace and sustainable development, we have also stressed the promotion of a culture of human rights. The concept of a culture of human rights gained wide currency at the time of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education, 1995–2004. It represents raising individual consciousness about human rights as well as building broad social support for human rights and establishing them as a culture universal to all humanity. The educational initiatives of the UN have been realized through the strong advocacy and backing of NGOs. Underlying their efforts is the awareness that the tragedy of the violation of the dignity of human beings will be repeated unless, along with implementing legal protections of human rights and establishing remedial measures for dealing with human rights violations, we directly confront the root causes of those violations and engage in efforts to change the social conditions from which they arise. In light of the importance of this issue, the SGI has joined with numerous NGOs in calling for the continuation of these educational frameworks. At the same time, we have engaged in awareness-raising efforts at the grassroots level, for example sponsoring the exhibition “Toward a Century of Humanity: Human Rights in Today’s World” (1993), which has been shown in some forty cities around the world. With the support of government representatives and many NGOs, the United Nations World Programme for Human Rights Education was initiated in 2005. The third phase of the program, which will start in 2015, will reinforce the human

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rights education initiatives that took place in the first two phases, which focused respectively on primary and secondary and higher education. In addition, in 2013 the United Nations Human Rights Council decided to place emphasis on education and research on promoting equality and eliminating discrimination, with the aim of fostering respect for diversity by targeting the media and journalists in particular with regard to overcoming stereotypes and violence. In recent years, with the rapid process of globalization, many nations are experiencing an influx of people from other cultures, which has resulted in a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment and hate crimes directed at certain peoples and religions. Hate speech and spreading hate through the Internet have been recognized as problems in Japan recently as well. What is the situation in New Zealand? Clements:   In New Zealand, any individuals or groups that are overtly racist will be chided and sanctioned by the Race Relations Commissioner, and if the behavior is violent they will be subject to criminal investigation by the New Zealand police. There is zero tolerance of prejudice and discrimination on grounds of race, religion, or creed. Of course, there are always reactionary minorities who are not hospitable to outsiders, but by and large New Zealanders welcome foreigners to the country. As an island country we extend hospitality to all who choose to sail or fly to our shores. It’s my impression that the younger generation is more tolerant toward migrants than the older generation. They understand that the world of the twenty-first century is highly mobile and people are moving all over the world in search of work, education, or a better life for themselves or their children. Our peace and conflict students at Otago University are concerned with issues of social and economic justice and how to move toward a just and peaceful society nonviolently. There is a very specific focus on ways of generating peaceful relations between Maori and Pakeha—those of European descent—and between New Zealand and our neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region. There is a growing interest in how to ensure that the fastest growing communities in New Zealand— the Chinese and Indian communities—are welcomed and incorporated into New Zealand’s social and political life. New Zealand has a bicultural foundation document. The Treaty of Waitangi carefully balances the rights of Maori and Europeans under the rule of law. The treaty was established in 1840 between England and the native Maori peoples, and this tradition of biculturalism exemplifies the historical impetus in New Zealand for constantly striving for ways to preserve fairness and justice in relations between the majority and the minority. Unfortunately, however, the 1950s, when I was a child, was not a very enlightened decade regarding Maori-Pakeha relations. There was a lot of unintentional and intentional discrimination against the Maori at this time. They were losing their language very rapidly and there was a policy of assimilation of the Maori rather than a policy of integration. That was before the Maori renaissance of the 1970s and 80s, which revived Maori language and Maori culture.

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Ikeda:   Speaking of the Maori renaissance, several years ago (July 2007) I sent a message to a ceremony celebrating Maori Language Week: The tradition of wisdom embodied in Maori culture is an invaluable source of insight and spirituality to restore humanity to its original brilliance, faded and undermined by the trying realities of contemporary society. The Maori people have a proud tradition of struggling courageously for the cause of human dignity, propelled by a powerful love of peace, upholding the noble spirit of nonviolence. Your efforts have made you pioneers in a global endeavor to create a new community of peace and humanism. Through this message I sought to convey my deeply held conviction that we have a great deal to humbly learn today from the wisdom of Maori culture, as well as my strong solidarity with and support for the Maori people. The ceremony was conducted by Chris McKenzie, Education Services Director of the Raukawa Trust Board, who has visited Soka University and the Soka Junior and Senior High Schools. As you know, the Raukawa Trust is an organization of the Maori people, who make up 15 percent of New Zealand’s population. Mr. McKenzie performed a traditional Maori dance, the haka, and sang at the entrance ceremony at the Soka schools. The song said, in effect: Here, look at me. Raukawa is here. May the water from the rivers that flow down our mountains and runs into the sea mingle with the waters of the riverbanks of your land and become one, uniting our hearts. Join our land. Now all the mountains of the world are one. We can achieve our goals if we work hard. We must strive our hardest. Let us work together to fight against evil. He then introduced the New Zealand proverb “There is strength in unity, defeat in anger,” and added, encouraging our students: “By working together, by always giving our best and by standing firm to our principles, we will be able to overcome any obstacles in our way.” The students were deeply moved by his sincere and caring message. Clements:   I am always moved by Maori singing and dancing. There is so much life and culture imbedded in these living art forms. I am very glad that young Japanese had that opportunity to experience traditional Maori culture and interact with Maori people. I first became aware of Maori people in Invercargill. My father was chaplain to the local borstal (youth detention center). There were a disproportionate number of Maori inmates in the borstal, and my father would talk to me about the disadvantaged backgrounds that were often responsible for these individuals getting embroiled in criminal activity. I would have been about six or seven years old at the time. My mother also gave me a book on Maori myths and legends as a child, which was another important introduction to Maori culture and history.

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When I was in school, in the 1950s, not much attention was paid to Maori history in class. My history and social studies curricula were focused more on British national and imperial history. My grandchildren have a much more balanced education. They are given instruction in Maori language and are introduced to Maori culture and history as a central part of the curriculum. Ikeda:   Clearly, your father’s empathy and your mother’s open-mindedness were a foundation that cultivated a correct view of Maori culture and history in your mind as a boy. In Japan, too, the Ainu, the indigenous inhabitants of present-day Hokkaido, were discriminated against for a long period of time in the past. The resolution seeking to recognize the Ainu people as an indigenous people was only adopted in Japan in 2008, the year after the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.1 The resolution states that Japan must gravely recognize the historical truth that countless individuals of Ainu ethnicity, though they were also citizens of the nation, were discriminated against and reduced to abject poverty in the process of the country’s modernization, and that their unique language, religion, and culture, as well as their identity as a people, must now be fully recognized, and appropriate steps must be taken to ameliorate this history of discrimination in the light of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 2013, five years after the resolution’s adoption, the Japanese cabinet conducted its first public opinion survey about its policies toward the Ainu. Though 95 percent of the respondents were aware of the existence of the Ainu, only 68 percent knew that they were a native people, and just 38 percent were aware of the history of their impoverishment in the process of developing and settling Hokkaido, highlighting the fact that basic knowledge about the Ainu people had not advanced. In a multiple-choice question concerning how they had learned of the Ainu people, 51 percent replied it was through television and radio and 43 percent from classes at school, while only 11 percent answered that they had learned of the Ainu through friends or family members, and 7 percent through direct interaction with Ainu people or events promoting Ainu culture.2 In other words, relatively few had any direct contact with Ainu people. In his teens, President Makiguchi spent a period away from his birthplace in Niigata, studying as he worked as an errand boy at a police station in Otaru, Hokkaido. A leading expert on Makiguchi’s thought, Soka University Honorary Professor Shoji Saito (1925–2011), believed that Makiguchi’s experiences as a young man in Otaru—witnessing how the livelihood of the Ainu people, who depended on fishing and hunting, was destroyed by the government’s Hokkaido development policy—fostered a skepticism about government policies that became an important influence in his later thought. Dr. Saito analyzed the language used in Makiguchi’s The Geography of Human Life, noting that the Japanese word for “development” (kaitaku; also translated

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as “reclamation” or “exploitation”) appears only four times, while the word for “enlightenment” or “education” (kaimei) is very frequently used. Based on this, Dr. Saito concluded that the language of The Geography of Human Life represents Makiguchi’s critical attitude toward the Japanese government’s unjust and exploitative Hokkaido development policy.3 Clements:   The difference in perspective suggested by the employment of kaimei over kaitaku is certainly very illuminating. It is indeed true that there is great value to actually meeting and interacting with indigenous peoples rather than just gaining an indirect knowledge of their culture and history through television and the media. I organized a meeting in 1978 on development and underdevelopment in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, bringing together a large number of academics and indigenous peoples from all three countries. I designed a process where we would spend the first twenty-four hours in a Maori meeting house (marae), and the Europeans from all three countries were asked to say nothing for the first twenty-four hours, but just listen attentively to the needs, concerns, and histories of indigenous peoples. We all lived and slept in Te Rangimarie, a traditional Maori meeting house in Christchurch. We listened to the tales of pain and anguish as New Zealand Maori, Australian Aborigines, and Canadian Métis talked about the ways in which they had been displaced in their own lands by white settler colonialism. It was hard for the Europeans to stay silent for twenty-four hours, and some decided to go back to the university. Those who stayed, however, learned something of the anguish generated by insensitive nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialism. We did this learning in the warmth of a traditional meeting house, with the generous hospitality of our Maori friends and colleagues. This was a very catalytic moment for many of us, as we realized that we all had to work very hard to generate the right relationships between Maori and Pakeha and to begin the long process of postcolonial reconciliation. Ikeda:   I am sure that was indeed a precious experience. I am deeply moved by your awareness that listening sincerely to the accounts of the pain and suffering of the indigenous peoples, etching them in one’s heart, is an indispensable prerequisite for opening the way to reconciliation and harmonious coexistence. Maori culture is famous for its long oral tradition, reaching back nearly 1,000 years. Oral tradition and oral literature also flourished among indigenous people in Africa and other places, and I have often stressed the great importance of learning from that rich spiritual heritage and wealth of wisdom in reexamining the problems we face in our contemporary world. In this regard, I am reminded of the remarks of former Vice-Chancellor Philip Muinde Mbithi of the University of Nairobi, which has a history of exchanges with Soka University, to the effect that oral literature is the cultural expression in

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words of our hopes, our aspirations, our relations to society, and our connectedness to the natural environment around us. In addition, when I met with Dr. Henry Indangasi, chair of the Writers’ Association of Kenya, he said, reflecting on his childhood experiences, that he had especially fond memories of his grandmother, who used to gather her grandchildren around the hearth and tell them stories. Not only did he love his grandmother, but the stories were very exciting, and he used to listen to them eagerly. They were, he said, his introduction to the world of literature. Can you share any particularly memorable anecdotes about your interactions with Maori people?

Turning a blind eye: another form of violence Clements:   As you have noted, the Maori have very rich oral traditions. They know their kinship genealogy well, and can relate it orally. Their whanau (family), hapu (kin group), and iwi (tribe) are the source of psychological and social well-being. Individual identity is very firmly rooted in collective identity, and this collective identity is linked to very specific places in New Zealand. This means that Maori have a very strong sense of their turangawaewae (place)—where they are and where they belong. It is this sense of place and social location that enables Maori to be so resilient and strong. This tradition of establishing strong links back to ancestors is very different from most European cultures, which rest on more atomized nuclear families. Pakeha New Zealanders are beginning to make sense of their own whakapapa (kinship genealogy) as well. This is one very important feature of Maori culture and society that enables individuals to locate themselves in long historic and living traditions. I had a deep experience of this solidarity when I was at a Hui on an Auckland Marae in the 1980s. We were talking about the spiritual basis for our connections across cultural and ethnic divisions and a Maori woman told me that she could intuit my “wairua” spirit from what I said and did and she could see that I wished to have a deep and respectful relationship with Maori. She embraced me and we talked about fishing for each other’s wairua/spirit so that we could understand and engage the other in a positive relationship. This was a very important encounter for me and made me mindful of the necessity to look for the “divine,” the “eternal” spark in each individual, no matter what the differences of race, culture, and tradition. Only by reclaiming their language, culture, and traditions have the Maori been able to equalize relationships between the majority of European descent and the 15 percent of the population that are Maori. Since the Waitangi Tribunal was established in 1975, it has investigated several claims concerning the rights of the Maori guaranteed in the Treaty of Waitangi. Some land has been restored to the Maori, the Maori language has been officially recognized, and various settlements and compensations have been awarded to

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them. These treaty settlements have been absolutely critical to the Maori regaining some mana (dignity, power) in the twenty-first century. Cultural violence is as traumatic as physical violence. Not being able to speak or being discouraged from speaking your native language and having to repress traditional cultural traditions generates a slow death in the peoples who are subject to that kind of interference. The majority of New Zealand’s white settlers did not think twice about imposing English, Western education, law, and religion on the Maori, or what it would mean for them as a people. But we can never forget that such cultural subjugation has caused tremendous short-term, mid-term, and long-term damage to the Maori people. Ikeda:   Generally, when we speak of violence, we think of the use of force to harm or take life—from acts of aggression and murder up to the mass killing of war—in other words, physical violence. But as you point out, Dr. Clements, that is not the only form of violence that can cause harm to people’s sense of dignity and worth. Violating people’s rights through discriminative language and an oppressive manner, including the cultural violence you speak of, even if it inflicts no direct, physical harm, is an act of violation. It is important for society as a whole to pay even greater heed to such “passive violence,” precisely because the depths of its scars are not visible to the eye. This reminds me of the words of Mr. Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and a staunch advocate of the spirit of nonviolence. He explained that passive violence is indirect, and people may find themselves a party to it without even being consciously aware of it. It may involve pressure, coercion, oppression, and discrimination. Since it is not physical, he noted, it tends to be overlooked. Mr. Gandhi said that his grandfather had taught him that to overlook or pretend not to see evil is itself a form of violence. Passive violence not only inflicts unendurable pain and suffering on others. If it is left unchecked, it can erupt at times of crisis in the form of physical violence, resulting in one group of people attacking and seeking to eliminate another, with a social climate that encourages the acceptance of that violence as somehow reasonable or justified. As we noted earlier, in recent years hate crimes and hate speech have become recognized as a social problem in many countries. Though there may be a distinction between the two in that hate crimes are physically violent and hate speech is not, they spring from the same root in the sense that both arise from the intentional desire to inflict harm on others based on malice. The escalation of hatred as represented by the so-called “pyramid of hate” that has become familiar through hate crime research outlines the relationship between hate crimes and hate speech.4 Social division and conflict do not arise suddenly, but escalate through the five stages of prejudiced attitudes, acts of

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prejudice, discrimination, violence, and genocide. As the vortex of violence escalates, irrevocable tragedy is spawned. The key is to suppress within oneself and also urge others to control their participation in actions at the bottom of the pyramid—in other words, to put a stop to even the first signs of hatred. I discussed this issue in my peace proposal for 2014. I noted that Martin Luther King had warned that the three greatest stumbling blocks to the attainment of freedom were not the direct attacks of bigots but people who are “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice,” “the appalling silence of the good people,” and “the ‘donothingism’ of the complacent.”5 I argued that the true significance of a culture of human rights is not exhausted in the act of warning against those attitudes that have the effect of promoting social evils. It resides in creating a society in which each of us is empowered to bring forth our inner goodness and to strive proactively to protect the rights of all. Together, I suggested, we can work to promote and strengthen the enjoyment of human rights throughout society. Clements:   As you say, in order to avoid becoming unknowing accessories to prevailing social evils, we must always think carefully about the meaning of our actions, as well as our failures to act, and cultivate imaginative empathy for the sufferings of others. Human beings who make a positive difference in the world, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King whom you mentioned, President Ikeda, as well as South African President Nelson Mandela and Czech President Václav Havel (1936–2011), who both fought for human rights and peace, have all stressed that good relationships, positive relationships, rest on a willingness to suffer and absorb pain rather than a willingness to inflict it. The Maori people have a greeting called hongi in which they rub noses with one another. This social ritual symbolizes, I believe, a sharing of one another’s souls, spirits, and breaths. It is also an act symbolizing that we share in a common vulnerability, and just as I can be easily harmed, so can others. No matter what differences we may perceive between ourselves and others, we live together in the same communities and breathe the same air. As such, I think it is important not to categorize and judge one another as groups but through actual, personal, one-on-one interaction, try to discover our commonalities. When I was a student I was strongly influenced by John McReary, who taught me in the subjects of sociology and social work. He had been a conscientious objector with my father during World War II and, when I was at university, was deeply immersed in working with Maori and Polynesian colleagues on getting the Pakeha-Maori-Pasifika relationships fair, just, and right.

Fostering humanity: The core of education for global citizenship Ikeda:   We cannot rely on mere sloganeering to protect human dignity. We need to establish within society a climate of a strong awareness of the vulnerability of

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each individual, as well as the precious dignity and worth of the individual—symbolized, as you noted, by the traditional Maori greeting you mentioned. Though he worked in a different region of the world, my friend the poet Thiago de Mello embodied the same spirit as your respected teacher Dr. McReary. Mr. de Mello, a great champion of the human rights movement, has dedicated his life to protecting the dignity and the rich cultures of indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin. When there was a military coup d’état in Brazil in 1964, freedom of speech was suppressed and Mr. de Mello was imprisoned and forbidden to publish. Later, while in exile in Chile, he was nearly assassinated. Subsequently, he traveled in Europe and finally, after many long years of life in exile, was able to return to his homeland of the Amazon. To this day he continues his struggle through words for his convictions. He is a true champion of conscience. I have etched these words of Mr. de Mello deeply on my heart: The indigenous peoples of the Amazon may not be able to spell the word Utopia, but it is among them that we can discover a society of beautiful, democratic, brotherly love. They live in seamless harmony with nature, they are friends of the sun and follow the conversations of the stars. In April 1997, Mr. de Mello visited the Kansai Soka Junior and Senior High Schools in Katano, Osaka, where he spoke to the students: Today, some 800 million children and adults are threatened by starvation. Hundreds of millions cannot read. I want each of you to be aware of just how fortunate you are. To possess good fortune means to have a responsibility to others. The purpose of your studies is not simply to receive a diploma, find a good job, and live a comfortable life. You mustn’t be so selfish. I have a request for all of you: Please grow into upstanding adults and be active as exemplary world citizens. Make sure that in the twenty-first century not a single child has to lie awake at night unable to sleep for hunger. Make sure that not a single adult is prevented from grasping the light of wisdom because he or she cannot read. I want all of you to make an effort to serve humanity. In my peace proposal for 2014, I suggested the initiation of a new UN educational program for educating global citizens. It is my strong belief that the fostering of humanity urged by Mr. de Mello should be the core of education for global citizens. It will also be the starting point for human rights education. Clements:   I agree completely. As I said earlier in our dialogue, I find it utterly astonishing that almost no universities anywhere in the world make the importance of empathy, love, compassion, and tolerance a major part of the education they offer, and that it is a situation that urgently needs to be rectified.

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I would think that the UN educational program for fostering global citizens that you have proposed would be an important opening toward resolving that egregious shortcoming. Ikeda:   Thank you. In envisioning the building of a culture of human rights and considering respect for diversity as its foundation, the image of a night sky filled with shining stars comes to mind. Each star sparkles with its own light, and each shines beautifully in its assigned place, but they also join to form constellations in the heavens. With the other constellations, they create a magnificent, varied scene, combining as one beautiful and rich picture of the heavens. A similar image appears in Buddhist scriptures—the net of Indra. The palace of Indra, who symbolizes the power of nature, is draped with a giant net. A brilliant jewel is attached at each knot in the net, each one shining with many colors. None of the jewels is dominant or central. Each is different, each is unique, and each shines as if it were the very center of the net. Each jewel also reflects the light of every other jewel, which makes every jewel shine even more beautifully, creating a magnificent realm of harmony. The reality of our world, according to this image, is the interconnectedness of our dignity and worth, as symbolized by the magnificent net of Indra. If each jewel represents the cultures of various regions and peoples, the light with which they shine not only nourishes the spirit that lives in that culture but also sparkles with the lives of people trying to be the best they can. Clements:   I too am very interested in Indra’s net. In particular I think it’s a wonderful statement of our interdependence and of the ways in which all social systems demand a complex, empathetic, and compassionate division of labor between all their members. But more importantly for peace and conflict studies, the net of Indra is an invitation to create virtuous circles to replace vicious and destructive dynamics. In particular the metaphor is an invitation to think and act holistically. Modern systems theory exemplifies the wisdom of this metaphor. Compassionate and constructive interventions anywhere in the system will—eventually—produce ripple effects of virtuous and beneficial actions in other parts of the system. I like the idea of compassionate and empathetic resonance and I think it’s absolutely vital for all that we are talking about that we focus attention on ways of understanding and strengthening interdependent relationships. On the other side of the equation, negative and violent actions damaging one strand of the web will damage others and generate vicious and violent behavior in other parts of the system. This is an important piece of moral, spiritual and political wisdom from Buddhism to other world religions. Ikeda:   Thank you for mentioning a very important perspective. One of the main goals that I would like to see realized through the program for fostering world

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citizens is to bring a decisive halt to the tendency for differences to act as signals of exclusion and sweep people into a vortex of hatred and violence, and to build a society in which each individual is committed to the pledge to protect their mutual dignity and worth, whatever their differences might be. I met with President Václav Havel, whom you mentioned earlier. President Havel once declared that in the twenty-first century, the single most important challenge facing Europe was to be its “best self”—in other words, to revive the best of its spiritual heritage and, through it, make a creative effort to realize a new form of harmony on a global scale. By replacing “Europe” in that statement with “the countries of the world” or “the peoples of the world,” the image of the pathway leading to a global society of peace and harmonious coexistence that should be our goal in the twenty-first century is evoked. In that context, education for global citizens would not be a process of enforcing an often oppressive uniformity, as we have seen in the economic globalization that has occurred so far, but instead must be based on a foundation of full respect for diversity, in which each individual taps the best and richest elements of the spiritual legacy that has been fostered within their respective ethnic groups and cultures, and, manifesting the best self, becomes a wellspring for engendering the values of peace and harmonious coexistence.

Notes 1  See OHCHR, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/docs/ngos/ARCJapan94.doc (accessed June 8, 2017). 2  Cabinet Office, “Ainu seisaku ni kansuru yoron chosa” (Public Opinion Poll on Ainu Policy), October 2013, https://survey.gov-online.go.jp/h25/h25-ainu/2-1.html (accessed August 22, 2018). 3  See Shoji Saito, Saito Shoji chosaku senshu (Selected Works of Shoji Saito) (Tokyo: Yasaka Shobo, 2006), vol. 4, p. 390. 4  See Anti-Defamation League, “Pyramid of Hate,” http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/­ education-outreach/Pyramid-of-Hate.pdf (accessed June 8, 2017). 5  Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963, http://okra. ­stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/undecided/630416-019.pdf (accessed June 8, 2017).

9 SOCIAL SECURITY: PROTECTING THE DIGNITY OF LIFE

New Zealand’s development as a pioneering welfare state Ikeda:   Thank you for all your efforts as the facilitator at the workshop on Northeast Asian peace held in South Korea in March 2014. I have heard that the workshop was a very meaningful event that explored ways to promote dialogue and foster mutual trust in Northeast Asia in depth and from a variety of angles, transcending the present political situation in the region. As Secretary General of the Toda Institute and Director of the New Zealand National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, your leadership of the workshop, encouraging impassioned discussion, contributed greatly to its success. Clements:   Thank you. I designed these workshops to be interactive, analytical, collaborative, and problem solving. Rather than simply presenting papers describing their research, the participants in the workshop are encouraged to express their personal opinions, deepen mutual understanding, and engage in conversation and dialogue in a fresh and vigorous manner. I am deeply grateful to the participants who made the workshop so meaningful, and to you, President Ikeda, for your support. We have now conducted several of these workshops, and our next one will, hopefully, be in China itself. I am pleased that they are eliciting quite positive reactions in Japan. I am committed to working with academics and policy makers from all three countries in order to develop a deep empathetic consciousness of all that divides these three important countries in Northeast Asia. I am doing all I can to make these a success and hope that they might have some positive impact on key policy makers in all three countries.

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Ikeda:   I deeply respect your strong commitment and your tireless efforts for peace. I hope this dialogue will serve as a roadmap toward the resolution of the many crises and problems facing our world today. The year 2014 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the United Nations General Assembly. The states that are parties to the convention agree to recognize every child’s inherent right to life as well as to ensure “to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.”1 In line with this goal, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals include the target of reducing the mortality rate of children under five by twothirds by the year 2015 from the 1990 level.2 Yet even though the efforts to reach that target have significantly reduced the mortality rate, 6.9 million children still died in 2011, mostly from preventable diseases, making the goal’s achievement quite problematic.3 It is also regrettable that efforts to prevent deaths in the period during which children are most at risk—from birth to the age of one month—are lagging. According to the most recent report of the NGO Save the Children, in 2012, 2.9 million babies died within twenty-eight days of birth. Of them, 1 million died within the first twenty-four hours.4 Faced with this situation, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed a draft of a global action plan to save the lives of newborns, and the final draft is scheduled to be presented to member states at the World Health Assembly in May 2014.5 The Save the Children report stresses that many infants’ lives could be saved if mothers and newborns had access to basic healthcare and to experienced midwives and healthcare workers during the birth process. I strongly hope that the new global action plan would encourage member states to strive jointly to improve conditions. This issue is intimately linked to social insurance policies, reminding one of the postwar British welfare policy often identified with the slogan “from the cradle to the grave.” The principle that the nation has an obligation to protect the dignity of life of each individual from the cradle to the grave derives from a report prepared by the British economist William Beveridge (1879–1963) during World War II.6 In his report, Beveridge praised the social insurance policy adopted by New Zealand in the latter half of the 1930s. New Zealand has been a pioneer in adopting many groundbreaking policies and programs in the areas of social welfare and human rights, serving as a model of a welfare state. What do you think are the reasons for New Zealand’s leadership in these areas? Clements:   I would be happy to reply to that. Even though recently there have been efforts to restrict state welfare provisions that we enjoyed up to now, New Zealanders still think of the welfare state with its

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emphasis on public health, education, and housing, and its commitment to looking after every citizen from childhood to old age, as a defining part of New Zealand’s national identity. Most of the early colonists to New Zealand left the United Kingdom with the explicit intention of creating a more just, egalitarian, inclusive, and participatory society than the one they had left. The Women’s Christian Temperance Movement and other women’s movements, for example, joined forces with the early New Zealand Trade Union movements to ensure that people did not suffer unnecessarily if they fell on hard times, got ill, or had made no private provision for old age. In the absence of a wealthy elite, most of the efforts of these different reformoriented groups were directed toward the state provision of welfare. There was a strong “liberal” preoccupation with creating a civilized society with “womb-totomb security.” This manifested itself in women’s franchise, a nineteenth-century old-age pensions scheme, labor regulation of work and conditions and the provision of cheap land for housing, farming, and development. In the nineteenth century, however, these provisions were still based on perpetuating the idea of a “deserving and undeserving poor” with generous state provisions for the deserving poor and quite strict restrictions on those thought of as vagrants or criminals. These distinctions were replaced by more universal policies in the late 1930s. In both the nineteenth- and twentieth-century legislation, however, it was severe economic depression and the hardship that followed which generated a strong desire for the state to intervene to mitigate the more negative impacts of unbridled capitalism. But the policies themselves would not have emerged were it not for a very well organized Trade Union and political Labour movement prepared to utilize state institutions to generate socioeconomic equality and social security for the vulnerable. These movements were driven by a very strong urge to avoid the evils of British industrialism and create economic and social conditions that would enable people from all classes to realize their full potential. The Social Security Act of 1938, for example, was accompanied by a wide range of progressive educational measures giving everyone free and compulsory education to the age of fifteen—and beyond if you were academically successful—and relatively free access to tertiary education as well.

Human security must be the basis of welfare policy Ikeda:   I believe that New Zealand’s Social Security Act was the second to be adopted in the world, preceded only by that of the U.S. It is known for its highly inclusive policies, providing health and medical services to the aged, the infirm, widows, orphans, and the unemployed, and also for supplying welfare retirement benefits and stipends. In the same year, 1938, Japan adopted its National Health Insurance Act, but one of the main reasons for its enactment, it is said, was to promote Japan’s war effort. In other words, it was based on the need to promote the health of the

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populace in order to strengthen Japan’s military power during wartime, and public health care was expanded and financed by the state from the viewpoint of national security concerns. These differences between the histories of the establishment of social welfare programs in Japan and New Zealand, it seems to me, highlight how important it is that social security policies be based on the principle of preserving individual life and dignity. Dr. Mahbub ul Haq (1934–98), former Special Advisor to the UNDP, defined the concept of human security as founded on human dignity. Dr. Haq strongly supported the activities of the Toda Institute from the time of its establishment. I will also never forget his insistence that human security must be realized through concrete actions to protect lives and human dignity in everyday life, such as preventing a child from dying of preventable causes or stopping the outbreak of epidemics. The minimum social security that we must establish equally for people throughout the world in the twenty-first century—in other words, the social protection floor—must be based on that principle. As long as human security is based on national interests or economic perspectives, there is always the risk that absolutely crucial benefits for preserving human life and dignity will be discarded. Instead we must build social welfare policies based on the principle of human security, focusing on the circumstances of society’s underprivileged and disadvantaged, so that even should economic conditions seriously deteriorate, they can still lead lives of dignity. Clements:   Yes, that’s absolutely true. New Zealand set forth on the pathway to becoming a welfare state through the leadership of two prime ministers, based on their most deeply held political ideals: Richard Seddon (1845–1906), who served as prime minister from the end of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, and Michael Joseph Savage (1872–1940), who was prime minister in the late 1930s. Both promoted legislation aimed at establishing social security for all. Even though they didn’t frame their policies as promoting human security, in fact this is what they did. They understood the importance of respecting and protecting every single human being’s dignity in childhood, adulthood, and old age. They were both appalled by the poverty and misery created by economic depressions and were committed to ensuring that no citizen would or should live in poverty or suffer premature death as a result of ill health, old age, or economic catastrophe. They initiated legislation that promoted the welfare of children and social security for the elderly, and worked to ensure that the negative consequences of unemployment were mitigated by the state. They wanted to guarantee that each individual citizen did not need to fear adversity from birth until death and were committed to providing the “womb-to-tomb” security that I mentioned earlier. Prime Minister Michael Savage, in particular, established fully public health, welfare, and education systems, and in 1938 initiated the legislation of the Social

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Security Act. He was also a well-known pacifist in World War I, and opposed conscription. Savage and Seddon were populist leaders and committed egalitarians. They made major contributions to social, economic, and political justice in New Zealand. Their governments created equality of opportunity and enshrined fairness and justice as important national values. The welfare state that they created has been challenged in recent times by a swing to neoliberal market principles, but there is no doubt that each one used his political position to ensure that New Zealand would become a decent, fair, and relatively equal society. Savage, in particular, has always been identified as the political father of New Zealand’s welfare state. As a private citizen, he was also committed to helping those in need and was always personally generous with his time and money. After passing legislation, for example, to establish state housing for those on low incomes, Savage personally helped move the furniture of the first family to benefit from this scheme into their own house. He was and is still much loved for acts of personal generosity such as this, as well as for catalyzing a system where the state served its people by ensuring that they had all they needed to live healthy, welleducated, and fulfilled lives. Like Prime Ministers Seddon and Savage, by and large the people who have made major contributions to the life and well-being of New Zealanders have been people with strong values and principles and a vision of how to change institutions and processes so that they serve the public good rather than sectional interest. Ikeda:   The story of Prime Minister Savage helping a family move and even carrying their furniture for them vividly communicates his strong commitment to the principle of social welfare. The spirit of putting the people first displayed by Prime Ministers Seddon and Savage should be the foundation of government in every age. Though laws and policies are important, I believe it is the preservation of the philosophy that serves as the spirit and foundation of those who strove so arduously to make the laws and policies a reality that acts as a sustaining force for truly protecting the lives and dignity of the people. Inazo Nitobe (1862–1933), Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations and a friend of the founder of our SGI movement, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, offered this keen insight: “When speaking of movements and actions, the common error is to regard them as occurring spontaneously or mechanically and lose sight of the fact that individuals are the driving force behind them.”7 In that context, your portrayal of two actual individuals in explaining how New Zealand became a pioneering welfare state is very instructive. Clements:   In fact, the process of reexamining in this fashion the historical beginnings of New Zealand’s welfare state is, I believe, extremely beneficial in considering the issues that many nations today are facing. The reason being, in quite a

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few countries around the world, social welfare policies have either remained static for many years or are regressing. New Zealand is no exception. For example, the Employment Contracts Act of 1991 has radically changed the situation of workers. Under the late-1890s labor legislation, which resulted in the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act (1894), efforts were made to balance relationships between labor and capital. But the 1991 Employment Contracts Act gravely diminishes legislative backing for unions and tries to establish more direct links between employees and their employers. It has decimated the movement that agitated for much of the progressive legislation I mentioned earlier. Union membership has almost halved since the Employment Contracts Act, and now only a small minority of the workforce is covered by multi-employer collective employment contracts. More people are employed on flexible contracts— an arrangement that favors employers rather than employees. Ikeda:   In Japan, too, unemployment among young people remains high, and irregular or flexible employment predominates, with more and more workers suffering from low wages and inferior working conditions. According to a Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications survey on employment conditions conducted in 2013, the number of regular employees continues to shrink, while irregular employees such as part-time workers, temporary workers, dispatched workers from temporary labor agencies, and contract employees have risen to over 19.06 million, an increase of 930,000 over the ­previous year.8 In other words, today one-third of all workers in Japan are not regular employees, and it is believed that this trend is even more prevalent among younger workers. Among young men from the age of fifteen to twenty-four, 40 percent are part-time or temporary workers, and that figure rises to 50 percent for young women in the same age bracket. In recent years, some have called for a relaxation of employment rules to increase economic competitiveness, but as this is an issue deeply affecting the lives, livelihoods and dignity of the vast majority of the populace—all those who work for a living—I think it is a mistake to be too ready to engage in revising these regulations based solely on such criteria as economic productivity and efficiency. Clements:   I certainly understand your concern. In New Zealand as well, since the adoption of the Employment Contracts Act there have been some positives in terms of total employment growth, but most of this employment has been in the casual and flexible labor sectors. The act has generated higher levels of inequality between employers and employees, and has had very negative effects on Maori and Pacific Island employment. Instead of celebrating the role of organized labor in the development of the welfare state, this new legislation has challenged and undermined organized labor, with the result that safety conditions have deteriorated in different work

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places, people are hired at lower rates of pay than before, and inequality overall has expanded. I think that the balance needs to be shifted back more in labor’s direction.

Establishing a society in which youth fully exert their ability Ikeda:   In that regard, the call of the International Labour Organization (ILO) for a guarantee of “decent work” has become an issue of increasing urgency, I think. In recent years, though the global economy is on a slow path to recovery, many nations are still suffering from difficult employment conditions. The global number of unemployed is estimated to be more than 202 million, for an unemployment rate of 6 percent. Even among the employed, “informal” employment is widespread in the developing nations, and the pace of improving the quality of work is slowing down. Those under twenty-five face especially difficult employment conditions, with a global youth unemployment rate of more than 13 percent, leaving 74.5 million young people without work.9 Lack of employment greatly undermines the foundations of any individual’s life. It not only causes economic hardship but makes one feel as if one isn’t a productive member of society and engenders feelings of anxiety about the future, sometimes leading to the destruction of one’s sense of hope and optimism about life. Even those who have employment may find their human dignity fundamentally violated by being forced to accept harsh working conditions that can cause mental or physical harm, or feel a state of anxiety resulting from uncertainty about how long one’s job will last, making it impossible to plan one’s future. Such harsh employment circumstances are exerting a grave effect on young people, and in the peace proposal I presented in January 2014 I cited the guarantee of decent work as a high priority in ameliorating this problem, calling emphatically on every nation to engage in serious efforts on this front. Concretely, at this point in time, when a follow-up to the MDGs is under consideration, I have proposed that one nexus for cooperative international efforts should be a program that, focusing on youth, clearly incorporates the aims of improving their employment conditions, including such points as long-term unemployment, poor compensation and working conditions, unstable employment situations, and gender discrimination. The year 2014 marks the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. The Austrian author Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), who observed the senselessness and tragedy of conflict between nations, wrote: “And so we are no longer willing to judge a country by its industrial, financial, and military strength, but rather by its peaceful way of thinking and its humane attitude.”10 I would like to urge that, reflecting upon our world today, we add to these criteria the spirit of treasuring and caring for our young people. No matter how much military might or economic power a society boasts, if its young people feel no sense of prospects or purpose, that society has no future. Only a society that has complete faith in the potential of its young people and

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enables them to exhibit their powers to the fullest has the power to create hope in the face of any challenge. Clements:   That is an extremely important perspective. I read your 2014 peace proposal with great interest. I was especially impressed by the three challenges you presented as the driving force for increasing our resilience in the face of threats and for building a sustainable society: (1) value creation that always takes hope as its starting point; (2) value creation of people working together to resolve issues; and (3) value creation that calls forth the best in each of us. I have long been an advocate of the centrality of love (or as it is thought of in Buddhism, compassion), courage, and hope as prerequisites for personal wellbeing and happiness and for social and political transformation. These qualities are embodied in the three dimensions of value creation outlined in this proposal. Love or compassion is critical to the good life and to the construction of sustainable communities. Certainly in my line of work―peace and conflict studies―I have found that those who have not experienced love, or worse, have experienced broken or intermittent love and the pain of isolation and loneliness, are more inclined to be aggressive and hostile than those who have known love and positive relationships. Courage, the second prerequisite for personal happiness or well-being, flows from love and compassion. It is in loving and from being loved that courage is generated. It takes courage to commit yourself to another human being. It takes courage to stand up for those who are marginal and voiceless. It also requires courage to stand up against injustice and orthodox opinion. The third prerequisite, hope, is a bit more difficult than either courage or love. It involves a belief that good outcomes are more likely than bad and that even in adversity events will turn out for the best. It is a much more positive concept than optimism, because it is linked to both imagining positive futures and doing something to realize them. At the graduation ceremony held at Otago University in May 2013, I quoted these words of yours on the subject of hope in my graduation address: Hope changes everything. It changes winter into summer, darkness into dawn, descent into ascent, barrenness into creativity, agony into joy. Hope is the sun, it is light. It is passion. It is the fundamental force for life’s blossoming. Thanks to your inspiration, I was confident that I would give a good, stirring speech. It was very well received. After the ceremony, I flew to Sweden for work, and on my way, at the airports in Dunedin, Christchurch, and Auckland, I was accosted by strangers who had been at the ceremony who told me how much they were inspired by my address. I am sure that your words about hope were an important contribution to the speech’s impact.

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Ikeda:   You are too kind. I am honored that you saw fit to quote my words in such an important speech. With regard to the improvement of employment conditions that we were discussing earlier, the ILO and WHO have taken the lead in calling upon the world’s nations to establish a social protection floor to enable all people to lead lives of dignity. Today, many people around the world lack the minimum social protection to lead a really human existence and are suffering from terrible privation in their daily lives. But as is clearly stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all people deserve “the right to social security” and “the right to a standard of living.” The social security essential to human dignity and the free development of the individual and the guarantee of a standard of living enabling people to lead a fully human life are indeed essential human rights, which international society as a whole must strive to ensure. In order to extend this social protection floor around the world, in 2009 the UN took up the Social Protection Floor Initiative (SPF-I). It urged all nations to gradually put in place the fundamental social protections adopted by the ILO at its 2012 general meeting, which can be summarized as follows: (1) access to essential health care; (2) basic income security for children, providing access to nutrition, education, and care; (3) basic income security for those of working age, including in cases of sickness, unemployment, and disability; and (4) basic income security for the elderly persons. In my peace proposal for 2013, I stressed the importance of this social protection floor and proposed that it be established in all nations of the world by 2030. I wrote: Providing a Social Protection Floor for people throughout the world would be a significant challenge. However, according to estimates made by the relevant UN agencies, it should be possible for countries at every stage of economic development to cover the necessary costs for a basic framework of minimum income and livelihood guarantees. In fact, some thirty developing countries have already started implementing such plans. What are your thoughts on the Social Protection Floor Initiative? Clements:   I am very much in favor of a United Nations Social Protection Floor for the entire world. Such a concept is critical, not only in terms of human rights but also to the promotion of human security in international society. It also provides us with another criterion for determining whether or not states are acting in a civilized fashion, providing care and protection for all their citizens without favor. Unfortunately, there are too many predatory states around the world who think that their role is to create the right conditions for capital and then cream off a portion of that wealth for personal gain rather than ensuring that it is distributed for public benefit in the form of health, education, and welfare.

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The recognition of human equality is critical to the development of an ethics of care and responsibility. This is why it is important to know what states, societies, markets, and individuals are doing to advance equality. Most advanced industrial states have educational, health, and social policies that create safety nets below which citizens are not allowed to fall, but they lack explicit objectives in favor of equality. Ikeda:   It is interesting that you mentioned the term “safety net.” The concept of a social protection floor was engendered by the recognition of the need to rethink the former concept of the “safety net.” A net has holes, making it possible for some individuals to slip through it. As a solid foundation, however, a floor is designed to hold everyone and firmly support a dignified life for all, without exception. Clements:   Yes I agree; there are far too many holes in a safety net. A solid social protection floor provides much more reassurance and stability to those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to make ends meet on the wages they are able to earn. Ikeda:   With this in mind, in my peace proposal for 2014, I referred to the work Pour sortir de la societe de consommation by the economic philosopher Serge Latouche. In it, Latouche suggests that to restore human dignity to those left behind by the fierce economic competition of modern capitalism, we must seek to establish “a decent society” (une société décente) with the value of conviviality— sharing the joys and happiness of others—as its axle. Pointing out that this value of conviviality resonates with Buddhist thought, I suggested in my peace proposal: The vision that we must place at the heart of contemporary society is one in which, through the sharing of joy, we create a world more noted for the warm light of dignity than the cold gleam of wealth, a world of empathy marked by the resolute refusal to abandon those who suffer most deeply. As such, I am in strong agreement with your remarks about the importance of evaluating the actions of nation-states. When national and economic interests are the sole priorities, the lives, livelihoods, and dignity of individuals—that which most deserves protection and respect—can be threatened, and this situation can spread unchecked. That, in turn, erodes both the nation and the economy, desiccating and laying waste to society. Latouche argues that we must find a way to resist such desiccation and destruction, and that is the role of philosophy. I believe that the philosophy we need must not be spun in the single thread of monologue, but woven in the fabric of dialogue. That dialogue must also be one that wins the consensus of all peoples and offers them a source of strength. I am eager, Dr. Clements, to deepen our dialogue as we seek out the path to a global society in which all people can shine with human dignity.

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Clements:   I am too. When you were writing about conviviality I was reminded of the Catholic Theologian Ivan Illich (1926–2002), (whose dissertation was on your old friend the British historian Arnold Toynbee [1889–1975]) who wrote a book called Tools for Conviviality. In this book he lamented the fact that individuals were becoming automatons in modern industrial societies and were losing their ability to be human. To re-humanize industrial relationships, Illich suggested that we needed to pay much more attention to all those dimensions of life which sustained conviviality, friendship, love, connection, and community. Only by focusing on Tools for Conviviality would we rediscover all that makes life worthwhile. Like you I also hope that we can rediscover all those different dimensions of being, living, and learning that enable us to lead dignified, compassionate, and caring lives. If we do not discover these essential life skills, I fear for the future of the species.

Notes 1 UN General Assembly, Resolution 44/25, “Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Article 6, November 1989, http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc. aspx (accessed June 8, 2017). 2 UN, “The Millennium Development Goals Report 2013,” p. 24, http://www.un.org/ millenniumgoals/pdf/report-2013/mdg-report-2013-english.pdf (accessed June 8, 2017). 3 Ibid. 4 Save the Children, “Ending Newborn Deaths: Ensuring every baby survives,” p. iv, http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/sites/default/files/images/Ending_Newborn_ Deaths1.pdf (accessed June 8, 2017). 5 WHO, “Every Newborn: An Action Plan to End Preventable Deaths,” June 2014, http:// apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/127938/1/9789241507448_eng.pdf?ua=1 (accessed June 8, 2017). 6 Lord Beveridge’s report, Social Insurance and Allied Services, also known as the Beveridge Report, was completed in 1942. 7 Translated from Japanese. Inazo Nitobe, Tozai aifurete (At the Crossroads of East and West) (Tokyo: Tachibana, 2002), p. 247. 8 Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Statistics Bureau, “Annual Report on the Labour Force Survey 2013,” http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/ report/2013/pdf/summary2.pdf (accessed June 8, 2017). 9 ILO, “Global Employment Trends 2014,” http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/­public/— dgreports/—dcomm/—publ/documents/publication/wcms_233953.pdf (accessed June 8, 2017). 10 Stefan Zweig, Brazil: Land of the Future, trans. Andrew St. James (New York: The Viking, 1941), p. 12.

10 SOCIAL CAPITAL AND THE IMPORTANCE OF ENGAGEMENT IN SOCIETY

Sir Edmund Hillary’s challenging spirit Ikeda:   The renowned New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary (1919– 2008) said something that has made a profound impression on me: “As I get older and less physically capable, I find other challenges have grown up and become just as important to me.”1 More than sixty years have passed since Sir Edmund made the first successful ascent of Mount Everest (Chomolungma) in May 1953, but his indomitable spirit remains a source of great inspiration and encouragement. I have seen the Himalayas on one occasion, gazing up at mountains bathed in the beautiful colors of the sunset as I stood on a hill on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal. Sir Edmund’s ascent of Mount Everest was an incredibly demanding feat, but he did not stop there, continuing to seek out one new challenge after another in his later years. After climbing Mount Everest and subsequently traveling to both the South and North Poles, he dedicated himself to the improvement of living conditions for the Sherpa people—who played a crucial part in the conquest of Mount Everest—assisting in the construction of many schools and medical facilities for them. Sir Edmund continued his efforts to make a positive contribution to society into his final years. He once presented me with several books, one he had written, another to which he had contributed a preface, and a third about the history of Mount Everest. In one of his autobiographies, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win, he wrote: “Most of all I am thankful for the tasks still left to do.”2 This untiring spirit of challenge illuminates our lives.

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Shakyamuni, who is lauded as the “teacher of humankind,” was born in Lumbini, in what is now southern Nepal, and grew up no doubt gazing up at the lofty peaks of the Himalayas. Shakyamuni once said: “The good shine from far away, like the Himalaya mountains.”3 In these words, I feel I can hear him urging us to build a bold and shining character, as imposing as the Himalayas, and to lead a life unshaken by all storms and stress. Clements:   Sir Edmund was a childhood hero of mine as well. My father knew his brother Rex, who was both a beekeeper and a fellow pacifist detainee during World War II. Ed Hillary was a pacifist initially but decided to enlist in the air force after the war began. I like Ed Hillary’s quote “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”4 I always found this paradoxical as a child and young adult, but I have come to appreciate it more and more as I have got older. As we come to terms with who we are as human beings—our strengths and our weaknesses—we can work to enhance the former and diminish the latter so that we realize our full potential in collaboration with others. Like Hillary, I have always been a dreamer and a visionary, and although I can’t count an achievement as momentous as climbing Everest, I have often tackled problems and tasks which have seemed daunting at the beginning but which worked out well in the end. It is this adventurousness of spirit and readiness to face difficult problems that truly distinguishes those who will or will not make a contribution to individual and collective well-being. We need to be adventurous spirits to realize our common humanity. Ikeda:   That adventurousness of spirit and readiness to face difficult problems is the key to improving, strengthening, and tempering ourselves, the source of the power that makes us wise; above all, it is the special privilege of the young. Speaking of young people, the Soka Gakkai youth division is now engaged in a campaign for peace and culture called “SOKA Global Action” in communities around the world. In March 2014, as part of that campaign, Japanese youth division representatives traveled to the United States, where they met and spoke with former UN Under-Secretary-General Anwarul K. Chowdhury and the American historian Dr. Vincent Harding (1931–2014), who was active in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement—precious opportunities that provided them with both enlightenment and inspiration. They also had meaningful interactions with young members of SGI-USA who are engaged in their own efforts to prevent violence. In the coming age, it will be increasingly important for young people, inspiring one another and growing together, to expand a global network for peace and amity. In the past, I have related the story of Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Mount Everest to encourage young people to scale the summits of peace and culture,

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calling on them to bravely challenge the Mount Everest of their individual lives and the highest peaks of their youth—words I would once again like to impart to them. Clements:   That is a wonderful message of inspiration for young people. It is very important that young people today get involved in social and political activism for peace, justice, and human rights. It is good that SGI young people are willing to become politically active in the prevention of violence. Far too many of their generation see no point in social or political engagement. I have the highest hopes, therefore, for the success of the SOKA Global Action campaign that is being undertaken by Soka Gakkai youth. Ikeda:   Thank you. During the visit of youth division members to the U.S., they also participated in an international conference on the theme “Humanitarian Reponses to Crisis,” hosted by Kennesaw State University in Georgia. U.S. and Japanese government officials, scholars, and NPO representatives welcomed a report from a youth division leader from the Tohoku area on activities supporting recovery efforts in which he participated immediately following the major earthquake and tsunami that struck eastern Japan in March 2011. One important theme that came up during the conference was the importance of social capital—the indispensable foundation and resource supporting human society, the strength of the ties linking members of society to one another. I also stressed the urgency of rebuilding those ties in my peace proposal for 2014. The human ties representing social capital are weakening and dissipating year by year in Japan and many other countries. As the effectiveness of social capital in its function as a buffer zone weakens, the threats of such natural disasters as earthquakes and hurricanes, as well as the various other problems confronting society, unfortunately place an increasingly heavy burden on the individual. The political scientist Dr. Daniel P. Aldrich offered some interesting analysis of this problem in 2013.5 Dr. Aldrich personally experienced Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and, in addition to data he collected on New Orleans at that time, also studied the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the Great Hanshin (Kobe) Earthquake of 1995, and the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 2004. Regarding the Great Kanto Earthquake, he was able to access data collected by forty local police boxes in Tokyo over more than a decade. The data showed that areas with frequent political demonstrations and other events reflecting social activism and where the voting turnout for elections was high experienced the quickest population rebounds after the earthquake. Similarly, he found that recovery in the nine Kobe wards after the 1995 earthquake was speediest in the wards that had the most NPOs and other civic organizations. After the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, recovery in the forty or so villages along the southeastern coast of India was fastest in those communities with the most recorded weddings and funerals—presumably because the more

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such opportunities existed to take part in public, community functions, the greater interpersonal ties were fortified. In New Orleans, too, in a survey of the city’s 110 zip codes, those areas with the highest voter turnout were the quickest to recover. Of course, there are many other factors deserving of consideration aside from those cited by Dr. Aldrich, but these are very accessible measures in thinking about the deterioration of social capital.

How to prevent the decline of democracy Clements:   That is indeed a very interesting analysis. I have always believed in the value of an active community. Passive citizens help contribute to what is known as the “democratic deficit.” This is a state of affairs where political leaders are able to dominate political space because citizens are politically disinterested or vacate it in favor of professional politicians. Democratic deficits are dangerous to the well-being of democracy. I am sure that this applies to the resilience of communities as well. I would predict that areas in which residents have a high social awareness, high voter turnout, and active social movements will generate more resilient relationships and will undoubtedly be better prepared to withstand and bounce back from natural or manmade disasters. Ikeda:   Yes. The salient point here is that a high social awareness is linked to the strength of the ties that connect the members of the community. New Zealand has long had a nearly 80 percent voter turnout in national elections, with the lowest turnout being 74 percent in the 2011 elections. Compared to Japan, this is a very high voter turnout. Nor are citizens required to vote in New Zealand, as they are in Australia and Belgium, for example. What is the reason, do you think, for this consistently high voter turnout? Clements:   It is true that New Zealand has had very high turnouts in general elections over the years. I think that this can be put down to a number of different factors. The first is the central role of the state in New Zealand’s social, economic, and political development. Citizens realize its importance and therefore want to make sure that their parliamentarians reflect their own specific values and interests. In the New Zealand Social Survey of 2011, people aged 65 years and over had the highest reported turnout (94 percent), followed by people aged 45 to 64 years (89 percent) and those aged 25 to 44 years (77 percent). Fewer than half of 15 to 24 year olds (46 percent) said they had voted, but many were not eligible to do so based on their age—one must be 18 to vote—or other grounds. So age is clearly a significant factor. I think one of the challenges facing us along with many other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in the twenty-first century is that of ensuring that young people become active rather than passive citizens. My generation, like yours, understood the importance of politics and that casting a vote is the one chance we have to exercise individual sovereignty. I have

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always thought of voting as a way of determining that some of my own values will guide national priorities. I am worried that the current generation might be so preoccupied with their own self-interest that they cannot see the public goods which need to be realized if they are to flourish as individuals. Mind you, there has also been a general alienation from politics because of some fairly uninspiring political leaders in recent years. Poverty of leadership is a major challenge to democratic systems. It is a pity that many political debates are now often about solving technical social, economic, and political problems rather than the ideological and value frameworks which should guide the solution of these problems. Ikeda:   The same tendencies can be detected in Japan. The lack of interest in politics among the younger generation is an issue of special concern. In his final years, my mentor Josei Toda stressed that young people must make a conscious effort to keep a strict eye on politics. The loss of confidence and fading trust in government is apparent in every nation, but if young people lose all interest in politics, a society has no future. Martin Luther King aptly warned: “When an individual is no longer a true participant, when he no longer feels a sense of responsibility to his society, the content of democracy is emptied.”6 I believe we need to repeat this message from Dr. King to our youth. Clements:   That’s why the education of our young people is of such critical importance. I believe that coming from a politically active family has a major impact on both political awareness and activity. Families that discuss politics and political issues are more likely to stimulate activism than those that do not. The other big influence on youth politics is social media. If issues are raised on Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other social media sites, there is a higher probability that the eighteen-to-twenty-five-year-old generation will start thinking about the implications of the issues for themselves and the wider community. In addition to the family and social media, I think that creating frameworks that enable citizens to participate in the political process in a variety of ways is also important. In New Zealand in the last forty years, we have established a range of institutional mechanisms to ensure high levels of political accountability and responsibility. We were one of the first countries in the world, for example, to establish an Ombudsman’s Office to hear complaints from citizens against arbitrary and unjust decisions at the bureaucratic, executive, or judicial levels (1962). To ensure that individuals have access to government information that might help them in making complaints to the Ombudsman and others, we also established a Freedom of Information Act (1982). This act enables individuals to apply for government documents explaining the political rationale for different types of decisions.

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In addition, in order to protect human rights, New Zealand has established a Human Rights Commission (1977). Individuals who feel that their rights have been infringed in some way can lodge a complaint with the Human Rights Commission. These complaints can be individual or collective. The existence of this commission reminds people of their basic rights and freedoms and is an important element in ensuring that citizens are aware of their basic civil, social and political rights. All of these mechanisms remind citizens of their rights and how they can be promoted and protected. They are also important reminders to everyone of the importance of treating fellow citizens with respect and dignity. They remind us that our elected representatives are not above the law and cannot infringe our basic civil and political rights with impunity. In New Zealand, these institutions keep the government honest and let citizens know that it is better to be an active rather than a passive citizen. Ikeda:   They are all profoundly significant measures. I can see how they would have played a great role in individual awareness-raising in an immediate, practical way. One of the leading scholars in the area of social capital, Harvard University Professor Robert Putnam, has analyzed social trends in the developed nations over the past several decades and identified the common features of a drop in voter turnout and “the decline in partisan commitment among ordinary voters.”7 He detected a shift from grassroots participation in political campaigns to watching the campaigns on television, noting that many scholars are coming to see the role of the citizen defined more as spectator than direct participant. One consequence, Putnam observes, “may be a reduction in opportunities for direct citizen deliberation and face-to-face encounters among people who do not agree.”8 Citizens’ active participation in the political process is indispensable for preserving democracy. Clements:   I agree completely. It is very hard to stimulate social and political activism when most citizens see themselves as a passive and helpless audience to political debate in legislative chambers and in the mass media. If democratic systems are to survive into the twenty-first century, then we need robust debate about goals, directions, and values. We also need political leaders who have strong moral and ethical compasses so that we understand something of the values that inform their decision making. In that connection, I used to like the old debates between the Left and the Right, because they were about desirable futures that each wanted to realize and the past that they either wanted to conserve or leave behind. During this time (the 1930s to the 1980s), the opportunities for direct citizen debate and face-to-face encounters among people drawn from different political persuasions were still vibrantly present. I worry about a growing “democracy deficit” in advanced industrial democracies. We should not take the rights and privileges of universal franchise for

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granted. We need to ensure that through voting we express our thoughts on the problems society faces and impart direction to the political process, and that both we and our fellow citizens are willing to act politically. Democracy will be and is being challenged by low voter turnout, alienation from political processes, and unwillingness to turn personal problems—such as unemployment, inequality, educational disadvantage, inadequate healthcare, and so forth—into public issues that can be resolved at a political level. I have just been facilitating a workshop on Conflict Transformation Across Cultures for NGOs and policymakers from South Asia. All of them identified governance and mediocre political leadership as major factors behind instability in the region. Rather than acting as an enabling force, politics in South Asia is often a paralyzing and disabling force. Only by citizens insisting on higher levels of responsibility and accountability from political leaders will governance improve. Voting is a first step in this process. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for ensuring good governance. Without a clear understanding of the past or a positive vision of the future, citizens get caught in a paralyzing present. This is very unhealthy for democracy, as it enables political leaders to infantilize their populations and to engage in the politics of fear and anxiety. Ikeda:   “Getting caught in a paralyzing present”—we need to realize that this form of oppression is not restricted to totalitarianism or military dictatorship, but can also take place under democracy. What happens when the influence of such oppression is felt in every corner of society? Václav Havel, who engaged in a courageous struggle of the pen against a society of encroaching totalitarianism, described this situation in concrete detail: For fear of losing his job, the schoolteacher teaches things he does not believe; fearing for his future, the pupil repeats them after him; … out of fear for their livelihood, position, or prospects, they go to meetings, vote for every resolution they have to, or at least keep silent; … fear that someone might inform against them prevents them from giving public, and often even private, expression to their true opinions.9 We must never forget the ever-present threat of the loss of our freedoms, even in a democratic society, if the people relax their vigilance. During World War II, the Japanese government restricted freedom of expression in the name of rallying support for the war, and established a system in which the people were reduced into a means to the ends of those in power. Our first president Makiguchi spoke out valiantly against this tendency of the government and exposed the hollowness of the propagandistic slogans that it bandied about. Discussing the militarist slogan “obliterate the self and serve the state,” he denounced as false the idea that we can or should negate our personal concerns; what is right and true, he asserted, is to pursue happiness for ourselves and for

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others.10 Further, he continued to stress the need to overcome the tendency seemingly inherent in the Japanese national character to unquestioningly accept and follow the wishes of those of superior social or political status.11 Mr. Makiguchi refused to repudiate this position even after he had been arrested for “thought crimes.” For example, in the official transcripts of his interrogations, he is recorded as stating that while there is nothing intrinsically wrong with respecting public opinion, merely following accepted social behavior, being satisfied with the superficial appearance of virtue, in extreme cases doing whatever one wishes as long as it is not prohibited by the secular law can still qualify as “slander of the Buddhist Law”—that is, the violation of the deeper and higher standards of truth and proper human behavior.12 To me, Mr. Makiguchi’s words during his questioning by the authorities reflect the very essence of his thought. “Slander of the Buddhist Law” is a term that means to oppose or reject the correct teachings of Buddhism. He uses it here, I believe, to mean straying from the proper path as a human being or behaving in an unreasonable way.

The boundaries of compassion Ikeda:   Speaking of your father earlier (Chapter 5), Dr. Clements, you said, “He used to say that without the presence of absolute pacifists it is relatively easy for non-pacifists to justify and pursue political and social objectives by violent means.” As the confusion and chaos of the times intensifies, I would like young people to deeply ponder those words and etch them in their hearts. Clements:   Thank you for once again mentioning my father’s words. My father refused to condone war or any social evil that violated the sanctity of human life, but at the same time he always treated with compassion criminals who, through no fault of their own, had never experienced any form of love or kindness in their lives. I remember when I was a child accompanying him to church services in prison, and seeing how he connected with each prisoner. My father was asked to develop prison chaplaincies in all New Zealand prisons. He did this with much success because he understood from personal experience—having been imprisoned for three years as a conscientious objector during the war—how boring and monotonous prison life could be. After seven or eight years in prison chaplaincy work, during which he developed prison chaplaincies across the whole country, he decided that this work was essentially ameliorative, a kind of band aid. He thought of it as the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff instead of the protective fence at the top. What he discovered in his prison work was that most of the prisoners he was working with had come from broken families and often abusive homes. He therefore asked the Secretary for Justice whether he could move from chaplaincy work to develop family and marriage guidance programs for the whole country. This

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was agreed to and he became the first advisor to the New Zealand government on marriage and the family. As a result, a nationwide organization to promote the program was established. From this work he moved to take over a position at the World Council of Churches in Geneva as a secretary of a group called the Division of the Family in Church and Society. During this time he also played a key role in the campaign against capital punishment in New Zealand, and along with many others was successful in getting capital punishment abolished for murder in 1961, and finally abolished for all crimes including treason in 1989. I learned firsthand from my father’s example just how much a single committed individual can accomplish in effecting social change. Ikeda:   That is deeply moving. It sounds as if, from a young age, your father had high ideals and deeply held beliefs and engaged in social work to do whatever he could to ameliorate the suffering of others. I can only repeat my hope that today’s young people, upon whose shoulders responsibility for the future rests, will find the courage to face even the most daunting challenges and, while polishing and perfecting themselves, cultivate a deep humanity. In March 2014, members of the Soka Gakkai student division in the Tohoku region of northern Japan announced the results of their third survey concerning how people’s views had changed since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. They not only interviewed individuals in Tohoku but extended their pool of participants to include students in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The results were announced as part of the events connected to the SOKA Global Action and “Tohoku Recovery of the Heart” campaigns held in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. Of the many interesting results, I was particularly struck by the changes in the attitudes of young people concerning finding employment following the March 2011 disaster. In every region, after the earthquake and tsunami a high percentage of respondents said they wanted to find a job that enabled them to help others and contribute to society. Respondents from the six Tohoku prefectures who said they wanted a job in which they could help others rose more than 19 points, to 49.1 percent, and a similar 20 point rise to 40.5 percent occurred in respondents who said they wanted to contribute to society through their employment. I am certain that many of the respondents lost family members or friends in the earthquake and tsunami, and may have also been forced to live in rescue and relief centers. The fact that so many young people have been able to use their personal experience of suffering to fortify their wish to do something positive for others and for society is, to me, a precious dawn of the light of hope for recovery and reconstruction. Clements:   When I visited Japan in March 2012, I met several individuals who had experienced the disaster, and I was deeply struck by the fact that in spite of

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their own heavy burden of personal suffering, they were committed to encouraging and supporting others around them in whatever ways they could. That experience was extremely valuable to me in regard to a theme that I have been pursuing with deep interest in recent years—how we might all enlarge what I call the boundaries of our compassion. Choice theory in political science stresses the principles of rational self-maximization. In the context of the attitudes of young people toward employment that you just mentioned, this would be manifested by giving priority to maximum earnings and finding employment in a large, stable company. But human beings are not governed solely by self-interest, logic, and reason; in many matters, we frequently follow our hearts and are guided or motivated by our emotions. When people in the fields of economics or social or political science say that such emotional impulses are irrelevant, I think it is fair to ask the following question: “How do you feel when you are ostracized from the group or rejected by your fellow human beings?” In considering the idea of enlarging the boundaries of compassion, I am influenced by the thought of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95), who emphasized that we should treat others as we ourselves would wish to be treated. He said that the best way we could ensure our own individual safety and security and deal with physical, psychological, and moral vulnerability was by accepting unconditional responsibility to and for the welfare of others. The only exception being when those others were themselves causing suffering, in which case we had a responsibility to deal with the suffering first and then restore a relationship where we could respond to their needs. We need to pay close attention to the ways in which specific contexts, relationships, attachments, and belonging—to family, kin, and other groups—help shape compassionate, altruistic, and tolerant capacities and behavior in most human beings. In other words, we need to know something about the sources of empathy, altruism, compassion, and love if we are to have any chance of enlarging them. Wisdom, too, is also the product of an attitude of opening one’s heart widely to others. Only when we embrace that attitude can we discover our personal moral and ethical duty. One source of this orientation is what Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) called “reverence for life.” I remember reading a book and seeing a film about Albert Schweitzer and the way he gave up a privileged life as a theologian, philosopher, and musician in Europe to become a doctor in Lambaréné in the Congo (presentday Gabonese Republic). For a long time I wanted to be a medical missionary and follow in his footsteps. Ikeda:   Schweitzer wrote in his autobiography: At the university, enjoying the good fortune of studying and even getting some results in scholarship and the arts, I could not help but think

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continually of others who were denied that good fortune by their material circumstances or their health.13 At the same time, Schweitzer stressed that he didn’t believe that his own efforts, which had attracted so much attention, were the only important ones: Of the will toward the ideal in mankind only a small part can manifest itself in public action. All the rest must be content with small and obscure deeds. The sum of these, however, is a thousand times stronger than the acts of those who receive wide public recognition. […] Everyone in his own environment must strive to practice true humanity toward others. The future of the world depends on it.14 These are indeed profound words. As Schweitzer says, there are many people who, as much as they want to study at university, cannot do so, for a variety of reasons. Those who have the opportunity to acquire a higher education should, I believe, exert themselves for the sake of others who do not share their good fortune in that respect. I am always telling our university students that universities exist for the sake of those who cannot attend them, urging them to never forget the reason that they are studying. The same is true of work. Many people are simply not able to find jobs in the field or area of their preference. I have witnessed countless noble and admirable individuals who, even though they might not have had their dream job, strove earnestly day after day, illuminating society with their own unique light of value creation, and after work, used the time they had left to make a contribution to others on the community level. I once described my personal feelings by saying that I wished to lead a life, shared with the ordinary folk of this world, that made a difference. Following this credo throughout my life has been my pledge to my mentor Josei Toda, who taught me everything I know about life and the human condition.

Notes 1 Edmund Hillary, November 16, 1991, interview, Academy of Achievement, http://www. achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/#interview (accessed June 8, 2017). 2 Edmund Hillary, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan Inc., 1975), p. 308. 3 The Dhammapada, trans. Juan Mascaro (London: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 78. 4 That’s Life: “Wild” Wit & Wisdom, ed. Bonnie Louise Kuchler (Wisconsin: Willow Creek, 2003), p. 20.

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5 Daniel Aldrich, Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012). 6 Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience (Boston: The Beacon Press, 2010), p. 44. 7 Robert Putnam, Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 403. 8 Ibid., p. 412. 9 Václav Havel, Living in Truth (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), p. 4. 10 See Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Makiguchi Tsunesaburo zenshu, vol. 10, p. 8. 11 Ibid., p. 23. 12 Ibid., pp. 209–10. 13 Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 82. 14 Ibid., pp. 90–91.

11 NEW CURRENTS IN EDUCATION FOR GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

In pursuit of conflict resolution Ikeda:   In April 2014, a new Faculty of International Liberal Arts opened at Soka University. Following the opening of the Faculty of Nursing in 2013, the new faculty means that Soka University now has eight faculties in the sciences and humanities. As one of the requirements of the Faculty of International Liberal Arts, students engage in studies in an English-speaking country starting from the second semester of the first year, and after returning to Japan, have classes in one of three areas—History and Culture, Politics and International Relations, or Economics and Business—which are taught in English. Class size is limited, restricted to less than twenty students. The program is designed to promote an interdisciplinary perspective, embracing the humanities and social sciences, and to foster a deep understanding of other cultures, with the aim of nurturing “global minds” who can contribute to world peace and of cultivating students’ creative problem-solving abilities. Among those accepted for the first class are students from the United States, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Brazil, and France. In April 1974, I was invited to deliver a lecture at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). At the conclusion of my lecture, entitled “Toward the Twenty-first Century,” I warned the students not to allow themselves to be satisfied with merely being “talented animals” dominated by their egos and desires, and urged them, as young people living at an unprecedented turning point in history, to strive to be youthful creators and pioneers and to achieve a great leap forward as human beings, not only intellectually, but spiritually and in their lives as well. As Soka University’s founder, I hope that with the opening of the new Faculty of International Liberal Arts many more global citizens who are prepared to take

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courageous action to eliminate all misery and suffering from the Earth will be fostered. Among the overseas universities at which students of the new faculty will be studying are Goldsmiths, University of London; Griffith University in Australia; and George Mason University and the University of Southern California in the United States. You were formerly Chair and Director of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) at George Mason University, Dr. Clements, weren’t you? Clements:   Yes, for five years from 1994. Before taking that post at George Mason University, I was Head of the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra. When I was living and working there, I got to know and admire Professor John Burton, the main proponent of human needs theory and conflict. This theory is based on the idea that all human beings have some basic needs which, if left unsatisfied will generate conflict and violence. Burton identified three basic needs: (1) the need for recognition/identity needs; (2) the need for security/safety needs; and (3) welfare needs—food, housing, clothing, education, etc. If any of these needs remain unmet or unsatisfied they will generate discontent, conflict, and even violence. He liked the work that I was doing as Head of the Centre, especially the work that I was doing in Asia on the development of regional security architecture. He proposed my name to the ICAR Search Committee, therefore, when they were looking for a new professor and director of that Institute. As I mentioned earlier, I had concentrated on sociology and political science at university, and I consider these fields to be excellent training for work on violent and nonviolent conflict. Sociology is very much interested in what generates nonviolent collaborative and cooperative relationships and their opposite. John Burton, knowing that my main areas of research had been arms control and disarmament and that those subjects informed my studies, thought that I was in an excellent position to bridge the worlds of arms control, disarmament, and state-centered security with those of conflict resolution/transformation and human security. I was also very pleased that George Mason University recognized my efforts in those areas and selected me to succeed Professor Christopher Mitchell in directing ICAR. This appointment gave me the opportunity to work in an excellent environment with an outstanding faculty of theorists and practitioners I inherited from my predecessor. Ikeda:   George Mason University is named after one of America’s founding fathers, who drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights. It is known as an institution with a rich tradition of pioneering and innovation, the first university in the world to offer doctorate programs in conflict resolution and bioinformatics. Provost Peter Stearns, Professor William F. Reeder, Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, and Professor Andrea Bartoli, then Director of the

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Institute for Conflict Analysis, visited Soka University on June 11, 2010, the day before the anniversary of the adoption of the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776. The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing such basic freedoms as religious belief, speech, and a free press, was no doubt a reflection of the persevering efforts of George Mason and others who shared his convictions. Mason is said to have adamantly insisted on the importance of clauses guaranteeing human rights even to first U.S. President George Washington (1732–99)—who was a close friend of his from his youth. Soka University and George Mason University concluded an educational exchange agreement in 2010. I am delighted we are able to take our first step in building an educational network for fostering global citizens with George Mason University, where such noble convictions remain vitally alive as the institution’s spiritual roots. In October 2013, George Mason University and the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue cosponsored a dialogue seminar, “Global Citizenship and Cultural Assumptions About Peace and the Military.” At the seminar, Provost Stearns noted that one of America’s founding fathers, Benjamin Rush (1745– 1813), had proposed the establishment of a Peace Office. Professor Bartoli spoke about how violence is likely to erupt when people feel they are not understood, emphasizing the importance of dialogue as an approach through which we are constantly learning from others––a perspective that resonates deeply with the theory of Professor Burton that you mentioned. All in all, the seminar was a meaningful and productive gathering, I have been told. I hope that we can continue to deepen our cooperative relationship with George Mason University on various fronts. It was, in fact, while you were Director of ICAR at George Mason University that we first met, Dr. Clements. I still have a vivid memory of your remark on that occasion that the foremost quality a scholar needs is humility.

Holding fast to the three pillars of theory, research, and practice Clements:   I am honored that you should remember that. It is something I still believe wholeheartedly. I had many precious and unique experiences during my tenure as Director of ICAR. In the areas of theory and research, I was strongly influenced by my predecessor Chris Mitchell’s structural analysis of conflict. Chris’s work focuses on the nature of the relationship between different types of social structure and social values and how changes in either will generate attitudinal or behavioral changes that will predispose individuals and groups to cooperate or compete, coexist, or fight with one another. He developed a range of theories that explain how different changes in social structures generate incompatibilities that lead to division,

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conflict formation, escalation, and violence. For example, when there is a gap between dominant values about the just distribution of goods and services and their actual delivery, the probability of conflict starts to increase. My former colleague, Michelle LeBaron, fine-tuned this approach in her work on culture and conflict. She is concerned at the ways in which incompatibility over beliefs and values generate conflicts at different levels. But all of my colleagues at George Mason University really helped me understand the ways in which theory should inform practice and vice versa. I was impressed by ICAR’s threefold commitment to theory, research, and practice, and I have utilized this model in all the university centers that I have directed or been asked to develop ever since. Ikeda:   Theory, research, and practice—it would be difficult to find a path toward world peace if any one of those three elements were missing. I am reminded how my mentor Josei Toda used to stress the importance of deepening both our understanding and our faith in further expanding our grassroots movement based on the Buddhist philosophy of peace and human rights. “Understanding gives rise to faith and faith seeks understanding, which, in turn, deepens faith. Deepening one’s faith deepens one’s understanding,” he used to say. Only through this ceaseless interplay between understanding and faith are we able to strengthen our faith. This in turn leads to the realization of happiness for oneself and others. He stressed that this inner transformation of each individual was the source for the energy to expand a network for transforming our increasingly troubled society. In this context, I was deeply sympathetic with the way in which Dr. Stuart Rees, former Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation,1 employed poetry as a part of the peace and human rights curriculum when he was a professor at the University of Sydney. Dr. Rees regarded a passion for peace as an important element of education, even titling one of his postgraduate courses “Passion, Peace, and Poetry.” In our dialogue, Dr. Rees recounted how he had tried to respond to his students’ earnest wishes by creating an opportunity to study peace at the university level, at a time when peace studies was not a regular subject at most universities around the world. When he conferred with the university administration, their first response was that peace is insufficiently academic to be included in the curriculum. The second response, related to the first, was that “peace studies” does not sound like a university subject, and the administration remained steadfast in their opposition to the idea. Yet Dr. Rees refused to be discouraged, introducing the idea that peace is always linked to conflict and that conflict has always been studied at universities. He suggested the idea of “peace and conflict studies,” which the administration deemed acceptable, and at last the students’ dream was realized.

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The year 2014 is the fiftieth anniversary of the IPRA, of which you were formerly the director. How widespread are the areas of Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies in universities around the world today? Clements:   Peace and Conflict Studies are continuing to quietly expand around the world. There are over 500 such programs worldwide. They are now being accepted by serious universities as a multidisciplinary field of rigorous research and inquiry. Oxford University, for example, is currently raising funds for an endowed Chair in Peace and Conflict Studies. If they get one, this will certainly indicate that this field is well and truly established in the academy. It’s important that there be strong links between all 500 such programs worldwide for benchmarking purposes and for mutual solidarity and support. To understand conflict in general and violent conflict in particular requires the best multidisciplinary minds that the academic world can muster. In our center, for example, sociology, clinical psychology, political science, and education are represented. The discipline of Peace and Conflict Studies is also an important reminder to academics of the importance of not just understanding the world for its own sake but of understanding the world in order to change it. Most of the successful programs combine theory, research, and practice in their endeavors. Universities that host lively peace and conflict programs often discover that they become flagship programs for the whole university. This is the case at Bradford, Uppsala, and Otago, where I teach. We have to remind university administrators and academics in traditional disciplines of the central importance of understanding the origins and dynamics of violent conflict and how such conflict might be changed and transformed nonviolently in a shrinking world. Peace and conflict studies are not optional extras but functional imperatives for anyone seeking to build and maintain stable peace at the inter-personal, inter-group, national, regional, and global levels. Ikeda:   I completely agree with your conviction that in order to resolve conflicts and realize a peaceful world we need to muster the best multidisciplinary minds the academic world can offer. One of the important missions of universities in the twenty-first century is, I believe, to be a cradle for producing such minds. When I met Professor Johan Galtung, known as the father of peace studies (in May 1996), he said that peace studies had now entered a second stage, in which the focus was shifting from peace research to peace work. I remember well his emphasis that what is crucial now is actually working for peace and taking action at the actual sites of conflict. Dr. Galtung lectured at Soka University, and on that occasion he stressed that peace is an all-encompassing issue and as such must be studied as an interdisciplinary subject, including not only the social sciences but the physical sciences such

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as physics and chemistry as well as the humanities and the arts. In this regard, I think his approach is in deep agreement with yours, Dr. Clements. Clements:   Yes, that’s true. My interest in peace and conflict grew out of sociology and political science, but it was also profoundly influenced by all the conflict and wars that have gripped the world over the past seventy years. I first began to think deeply about peace as a university student, and the war in Vietnam was a major influence on my interest in the subject. During my years in graduate school, I encountered many professors who were committed to ensuring that their scholarship was socially and politically significant and not restricted to the ivory tower of abstract academics. They were all excellent role models for me in terms of what is now known as engaged scholarship or reflective practice. Looking farther back, there were factors from my childhood that also acted as motivations for following the path of conflict resolution. I was born in Opotiki in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. Opotiki is a very small and largely Maori town. It is located at the conjunction of two rivers, the Otara and the Waioeka. The night I was born these rivers flooded, and my mother, father, and sister had to seek shelter in one of the rare two-story buildings in Opotiki. During the nineteenth century, Opotiki was a site of Maori resistance to colonial occupation and experienced considerable violent conflict. In the 1870s, a Maori Chief by the name of Te Kooti launched guerilla warfare against the military settlers, and in the course of the fighting he left some bullet holes in the local Anglican Church. I remember seeing these when I returned to Opotiki as an older child. It’s interesting to me that the town I was born in was built between two rivers that periodically flooded and that the surrounding region was a site of violently contested terrain. I suspect both of these factors might explain why I have always had a love and fear of fast flowing rivers, and why my working life has been dedicated to dealing with violent conflict.

The key to overcoming the vicious cycle of violence and hatred Ikeda:   That is very interesting indeed. I am reminded of a poem by the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939–2013). He grew up with a river running near his home that divided his community into two neighborhoods, one Protestant and the other Catholic. That upbringing fostered in Heaney a deep understanding of both groups, while giving him a sense of standing, as a poet, in a middle ground between the two sides. Rather than belonging to either one of the opposing groups, he used his experience to find a place for himself at the meeting place of the two sides.

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Heaney described that feeling in one of his poems with the words: Two buckets were easier carried than one I grew up in between.2 In addition to his many original works, Heaney translated Sophocles’ Philoctetes, the story of a Greek who is being called to fight in the Trojan War, which he published as The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ “Philoctetes.” Words from that work were frequently quoted during the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland, playing an important role in their progress: History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that a further shore Is reachable from here.3 Through those words, the people of Northern Ireland, comparing their situation to that depicted in a Greek tragedy, were able to fortify their desire for peace. Clements:   I often quote these lines from Heaney in talks I give on peace and reconciliation. Reexamining one’s own circumstances in the light of historical events is extremely important in helping people overcome seemingly insurmountable mutual hostility and enabling them to understand one another’s feelings and situations. A person whom I respect and admire for his work in promoting peaceful coexistence and social harmony is the Anglican priest Paul Reeves (1932–2011). He became Archbishop of New Zealand and then the nation’s fifteenth GovernorGeneral, and was an important bridge between Maori and Pakeha communities. It was only relatively late in life that he discovered and reclaimed his Maori identity, but he used his new awareness of this cultural heritage to enable Pakeha and Maori communities to understand and appreciate each other in unprecedented ways. Reeves was a great listener who paid serious attention to what others had to say. He was a synthesizer, someone who could bring people together for a common purpose. He was much in demand even in retirement as a mediator in a range of conflicts around the world, for example after the first coup in Fiji,4 and as a

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representative of the Anglican Communion at the United Nations. Every multicultural community needs individuals like Paul Reeves to act as connectors or interveners and to help those in conflict understand some of the deeper drivers of their disputes. One thing is absolutely sure: if we are to resolve conflict and transform conflictual relationships into more harmonious ones, then it is absolutely essential to overcome past antagonisms and to engage in future visioning with those who might have hurt or harmed us in the past. The spiritual wounds and trauma generated in violent conflict are difficult to overcome. But we have to address historic traumas and the memories associated with them if we are to work out ways of moving forward. I always insist that conflicting parties focus attention on what sorts of relationships they would like to have in the future before addressing the painful past that they seek to transcend. This requires compassion and courage to ask those we have hurt in the past to trust us into the future, but it is critical to building lasting peace where there has been violence and conflict. Ikeda:   I deeply understand and share your concern as well. As you say, the surest way to peace is opened only when we courageously face the past and work together to find a shared vision for the future. I too believe that the key to breaking the cycle of violence and hatred and being able to support efforts for peace lies in all sides arriving at the realization that they are not the only group that is suffering or has lost children and loved ones in the conflict. Ancient India of Shakyamuni’s day was a time of many violent conflicts, from intertribal skirmishes over water supplies to power struggles among kingdoms. When Shakyamuni tried to mediate such conflicts, the first step he stressed in promoting peaceful settlement through dialogue was to dispel the ignorance of the people trapped by animosity and hatred. Ignorance is the fundamental delusion of being incapable of recognizing that other people’s lives are just as precious and worthy as one’s own. Shakyamuni described opposing groups as being “like fish, writhing in shallow water.”5 He taught that the first step in resolving conflict is to awaken both sides to the fact that they are alike in that both are experiencing the agony of fear and suffering, and to make them see the cruelty and foolishness of continuing their hostilities. Clements:   I think Shakyamuni’s insight is very perceptive in terms of presentday conflicts as well. I am always sharing these words of my friend, international peacebuilder John Paul Lederach, regarding the model of behavior for a peacemaker to adopt. He suggests that we should all: Reach out to those you fear. Touch the heart of complexity.

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Imagine beyond what is seen. Risk vulnerability one step at a time.6 Fear and mistrust are not forces for positive change. The only path to a peaceful and just world is to act with confidence to create a brighter future, even if there is a degree of risk that it will make one’s own position more difficult. Ikeda:   Once fear and mistrust spread in society, they foster hatred in people’s hearts and create a prevailing climate in which acts of violence toward groups seen as adversaries can become accepted as justifiable, and even unavoidable. To dispel that climate, the torch of the courage to seek peace must be passed from one person to another, illuminating the darkness of fear and mistrust that are casting their pall over society. Betty Williams, President of the World Centers of Compassion for Children International (WCCCI),7 who joined with local women in Northern Ireland to seek an end to the violence there, shared with me her feelings at that time: “Our peace movement emerged from a climate of unfathomable suffering—the suffering of Irish mothers.” Mrs. Williams and her comrades visited Catholic and Protestant families alike, one at a time, asking them to sign a petition for peace. Though some people hesitated to sign out of fear of retribution, the majority agreed with this plea for peace, and gradually the voice calling for peace in the community grew enormously. Listening to Mrs. Williams speak of those times, I asked her what was the essential ingredient for putting an end to the cycle of violence and hatred. She replied by sharing an episode with me: For me, [the key] is to remain true to one’s beliefs and love one’s opponents into submission. This is by no means an easy thing to do…. I remember one situation in which a man was attacking me verbally. He was quite fierce, actually, and was standing so close to me that I thought he might bump me with his head or bite my nose off. But I just stood very still, without saying a word. Eventually, his mouth must have gotten tired. He started speaking more and more slowly, and then he backed away. And I looked at him and I said: “I love you.” About two months later, that man became a peace worker. In other words, while it is true that fear and mistrust can spread and infect people, if awakened people take action they can also steadily spread courage and love throughout society. Clements:   As both Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela showed through their actions, we need to appeal to people’s minds and hearts. Betty Williams’peace movement shows how important it is for ordinary people— especially wives and women—to make their suffering a source of courage and a force for peace.

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When I was a boy, I read the New Zealand writer John Mulgan’s Man Alone. What made this book important to me was that it was about the power of ordinary people facing adversity. The main character in the book is Johnson, who survived the trenches of World War I and then returned home expecting to see the end of all war, a society that honored its people and exhibited mutual respect between all races and classes. But the reality was quite different. Though Johnson was deeply disappointed, he managed to pull himself out of his despair and do what he could to improve society in his own small way. This novel was important for me because it showed the ways in which ordinary people survive in extraordinary times. It is a story of survival, hope, and the importance of friends and relationships as we traverse everyday life and form movements to resist injustice and rectify the wrongs of the past. Ikeda:   It sounds like a wonderful novel. When I was a young man, my mentor Josei Toda instilled in us the lessons of how we should live and the society we should strive to create by having us read great works of world literature, past and present, as well as history. When considering how to promote education for global citizenship and peace studies, two areas that should be the focus of universities in the twenty-first century, of course further development of specialized research is indispensable, but I think that it is also crucial to nourish the imagination, as you stressed earlier, and to cultivate the spirit of courage and love, as well as the importance of taking confident and committed action in one’s own life. Reading great works of literature is a wonderful way to achieve this goal. Martha Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, has warned of the failings to which today’s universities are predisposed: Our campuses educate our citizens. Becoming an educated citizen means learning a lot of facts and mastering techniques of reasoning. But it means something more. It means learning how to be a human being capable of love and imagination. We may continue to produce narrow citizens who have difficulty understanding people different from themselves, whose imaginations rarely venture beyond their local setting.8 Professor Nussbaum also stresses the importance of studying works of literature to foster imagination and reinforce empathy for others: “If we do not cultivate the imagination in this way, we lose, I believe, an essential bridge to social justice. If we give up on ‘fancy,’ we give up on ourselves.”9 In order to solve the various problems that humanity faces, we need to strive through education to foster young people who empathize with the sufferings of others and are prepared to direct their greatest passion and effort to ameliorating that suffering through tireless, positive action.

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For this reason, I hope to continue to strive together with you, Dr. Clements, to promote peace studies and education for global citizenship, especially at universities and other institutes of higher education. Clements:   I also hope that we can collaborate on the important task of building a global civic culture, populated by global citizens with an unshakable devotion to the service of humanity. This is critical to building a sustainable and peaceful planet.

Notes 1  The Sydney Peace Foundation, a not-for-profit organization associated with the University of Sydney, Australia, was founded in 1998 by Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees to promote the ideals of nonviolence and peace with justice. The annual Sydney Peace Prize recognizes individuals and movements from around the world who have made significant contributions to global peace. 2  Seamus Heaney, “Terminus” in The Haw Lantern (New York: Noonday, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989), p. 4. 3  Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ “Philoctetes” (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), p. 77. 4   The Fiji coups of 1987 resulted in the overthrow of the elected government of Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra, the deposition of Elizabeth II as head of state, and the declaration of a republic. The first coup, in which Bavadra was deposed, took place on May 14, 1987; a second coup on September 28 resulted in the proclamation of a republic on October 7. 5   The Sutta-Nipāta, trans. H. Saddhatissa (London: Curzon, 1985), p. 109. 6   John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 177. 7   World Centers of Compassion for Children International (WCCCI) is a not-for-profit organization founded in March 1997 by Betty Williams. It aims to provide education, nurturing, and legal protections for the world’s children. Betty Williams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 along with Mairead Corrigan for their work to bring peace in Northern Ireland. 8   Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 14. 9  Martha Nussbaum, Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), p. xviii.

12 CREATIVE JOINT EFFORTS BETWEEN THE UNITED NATIONS AND CIVIL SOCIETY

Arms control and disarmament Ikeda:   The year 2015 marks the seventieth anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations. You have worked closely with the United Nations over many years, Dr. Clements, so I would like to take this opportunity to discuss with you ways to reform the UN and your thoughts on its future. Clements:   Yes, those are important topics. The literature on the United Nations is vast and extensive. There is not much that scholars do not know about its workings. The real challenge facing the global community is how to breathe new, vigorous life into the institution so that it can continue to play a critical role in relation to the maintenance of international peace and security into the twenty-first century. In that regard, it is important to focus on essential reforms to the organization, but it’s equally important to work out ways in which the people of the world can commit themselves afresh to working with and for a more effective United Nations. Getting the relationship right between the peoples of the world and the UN is crucial to its revitalization. Ikeda:   That’s an important point. As you say, without widespread support from the people, it will be hard to make the UN more effective or to reform its structures. As a result, it will be difficult to cope with ever-changing world events. One of the threats today to human security is the ongoing manufacture of inhumane and immoral weapons spurred by emerging developments in military technology. For example, in May 2014 the first Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Meeting of Experts focusing on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems

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(LAWS) was held at UN European Headquarters in Geneva. These weapons do not require direct human control over such functions as identifying and attacking targets as “killer robots.” Although no nation currently possesses weapons that would make war totally automated, at least seventy-six countries had some form of drones, and sixteen countries had armed ones according to a U.S. government report. Robotic weapons, when given a command to attack automatically go on killing, without the intervention of human will, and accordingly, with no possibility of pangs of conscience or remorse. They present an extremely grave threat, particularly from a humanitarian perspective. The possession of such weapons, just like that of nuclear weapons, is underpinned by the cold logic of the utter and complete annihilation of assumed enemies, with no discrimination between civilians and combatants. As Acting Secretary-General to the Conference on Disarmament Michael Møller said at the Meeting of Experts: “All too often international law only responds to atrocities and suffering once they have happened.”1 There is an urgent need for us to completely outlaw such weapons before any atrocity that would trigger such a response occurs in the first place. To this end, a strong push from civil society is required. In fact, there is a precedent in the adoption, in response to a powerful outcry from NGOs, of an international protocol banning blinding lasers before they were deployed or used. I believe we need to move quickly in establishing a framework that also bans future development or deployment of killer robots. Clements:   I agree. There is a pressing need for the arms control and disarmament community to keep monitoring the development of new weapon systems all around the world and oppose all which infringe the Geneva Conventions, or human decency. It is important to rally the voices of civil society around the world and have citizens press their governments to face and take action upon the issue of automated warfare and the spurious rationale for extra-judicial executions. In April 2013, Human Rights Watch and other NGOs launched an international Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. One of the key factors in resolving this problem is building positive relationships with a wide range of UN Secretariat, diplomatic, and civil society actors. I was struck by the need to build such relationships in all the work that I did in Geneva in the 1980s at the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO). At the time, East–West relations were at a low ebb, and both the U.S. and NATO on one side, and the Soviet Union on the other, were expanding and deploying intermediate-range missiles and nuclear weapons in Europe and other parts of the world. QUNO was deeply involved in a range of off-the-record discussions aimed at facilitating negotiations for a Chemical Weapons Convention. It also played an active role supporting the U.S. and the Soviet Union in their Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) negotiations and focused on conventional weapon and force reductions in Europe as well. Any progress at the United Nations rests on Ministries of Foreign Affairs in national capitals giving positive and progressive instructions to their delegations.

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This is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for any progress at the UN. There will only be forward momentum, however, if state parties are open to civil society initiatives and enthusiasm and if both are supported positively by Secretariat officials. During my time at the UN, when all three sets of actors were united around particular concerns, issues, or problems, relatively rapid policy changes and new directions were successfully generated. When there was disunity between these different actors, sensible and right policy proposals would either be sabotaged by officials or delegations or relegated to inconsequential places on national and global negotiating agendas. Over the past eighty years, in the four main areas on which the Quaker offices in New York and Geneva have focused—disarmament, human rights, development, and humanitarian law and the protection of refugees—a positive and united stance by the UN Secretariat, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of various nations, and civil society has been the foundation for everything that has been achieved. Ikeda:   That is an important observation. After the end of the Cold War, a Mine Ban Treaty was adopted in 1997. As is widely acknowledged, this was realized in response to a public outcry to outlaw antipersonnel landmines. Looking back over the history of war that characterized the twentieth century, large numbers of antipersonnel landmines were planted in many countries and regions as a replacement for long-term stationing of military forces. In a certain sense, antipersonnel landmines can be seen as an ominous predecessor to the automation of war leading to the development of robotic weapons. Landmines, claiming more lives than either nuclear or chemical weapons, have come to be called “delayed weapons of mass destruction.” Once landmines are planted, the distinction between military and civilian is erased, as is that between ally and enemy. They are an indiscriminate killer and, unless they are all cleared away after the conflict, continue to claim innocent lives for a very long time. I’m reminded of the words of Jody Williams, who worked tirelessly to achieve the landmine ban: This treaty proves that civil society and governments do not have to see themselves as adversaries. It demonstrates that small and middle powers can work together with civil society and address humanitarian concerns with breathtaking speed. It shows that such a partnership is a new kind of “superpower” in the post-Cold War world.2 Clements:   The Ottawa Process3 was a powerful combined effort of countries and NGOs supporting disarmament and it played a profoundly significant role in this and related issues. It was one of the driving forces behind the adoption of the Landmine Ban, and was also later a force to be reckoned with in the adoption of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

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After I left the QUNO office and returned to New Zealand, I was appointed as an NGO Representative on the New Zealand official delegation to the Geneva based Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 1985. This gave me a chance to return to Geneva to work, and the experience of viewing the operations of the United Nations from within a government delegation. Observing these events firsthand, I became aware of the ways in which national domestic pressure could change these negotiating positions. This reinforces my view that civil society actors in all countries need to monitor UN agendas and meetings very closely, so that they can make representations to their own national governments for the most progressive negotiating mandates possible. Sustained civic virtue and activism at home, especially when focused on the policy briefs for diplomats and officials working at the UN, will result in international responsibility abroad. In my time at the United Nations, I was always impressed by the ways in which the Scandinavian governments and small countries like the Netherlands were willing to work with groups like the Quakers in order to expand progressive agendas on disarmament, development, and human rights issues. These countries understood then, and understand now, that global change requires a collaborative approach to policy making. We need the wisdom of a wide variety of official and unofficial actors to ensure that the United Nations lives up to its global responsibilities.

SGI and Quaker support for the United Nations Ikeda:   That perspective will be indispensable in governing the activities of the United Nations in the twenty-first century. The SGI is making efforts in various arenas to support the United Nations. We established UN Liaison Offices in New York and Geneva in 1997, and in Vienna in 2008. While deepening our joint efforts with many other NGOs, we are also actively engaged in exchanging information and ideas with the UN Secretariat and the Foreign Ministries of various nations. In New York, an SGI representative has served as president of the Committee on Religious NGOs at the United Nations and as chairman of the board of directors of the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security. Similarly, in Geneva, an SGI representative has served as chairperson of the NGO Working Group on Human Rights Education and Learning, and in Vienna, as secretary of the UN-affiliated organization NGO Committee on Peace. The source of this support for the UN can be traced back to the peace philosophy of our founding presidents Makiguchi and Toda. In The Geography of Human Life, Makiguchi stressed that each of us should be aware of three levels of citizenship: our local citizenship, as individuals contributing to making our immediate community a good place to live; our national citizenship, supporting the larger social unit of the country; and our global citizenship, contributing to the Earth that is the home of all human life. Through this triple awareness, preventing

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ourselves from being swept away by the evils of nationalism by placing one foot firmly in our local community and the other in the world, he called on us to be good neighbors in the community, act as good citizens in global society, and open the way to a century of peace. Mr. Toda, imprisoned along with Makiguchi during World War II for “thought crimes” and released from prison immediately before the war ended, on July 3, 1945, just a few days after the UN Charter was adopted by the San Francisco Conference, also called for a “global nationalism” transcending state borders, while asserting that no people should be victims of war or the suppression of human rights. I will never forget Mr. Toda telling us youth that the UN represented the distillation of wisdom of twentieth-century humankind and was a bastion of the world’s hopes that needed to be protected and developed into the next century. We will inherit the convictions of the first two Soka Gakkai presidents and further promote our activities to support the United Nations. Clements:   I am very much aware of the dedicated actions of SGI members to support the United Nations. Quakers, like the SGI, have long believed in the value of multilateral institutions and have spent a lot of time and effort focusing on ways in which they can support the United Nations and other multilateral institutions. We have always been ambivalent about nationalism and have looked for ways in which to promote transnational institutions and connections. In 1917, Quaker Carl Heath (1869–1950) argued for what he called “Quaker Embassies.” He saw these as places where Quakers could live, work, worship, and promote positive relationships between peoples of all races, creeds, and colors. When the League of Nations was established in 1920, Quakers supported it in order to generate opportunities to create an institution that might have some chance of preventing another World War and to help coordinate international humanitarian and service work. Carl Heath and Pierre Ceresole (1879–1945), the founder of Service Civil International (SCI),4 established a Quaker Embassy or Office to the new League of Nations in Geneva. They were supported in this initiative by Dr. Inazo Nitobe, whom we were discussing earlier. As you know, Dr. Nitobe was one of the first Under-Secretaries-General of the League of Nations. He was also, somewhat unusually, a Japanese Quaker. His wife, Mary Patterson Elkinton (1857–1938), was a very prominent American Quaker. Both Dr. Nitobe and his wife encouraged Carl Heath and Pierre Ceresole to support the work of the League of Nations, especially on questions of disarmament and the prevention of war. Ikeda:   That is a fascinating account. As I mentioned previously, Nitobe and Makiguchi had an enduring personal friendship.

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Nitobe wrote in the preface he contributed to Makiguchi’s The System of ValueCreating Pedagogy: It would be an endless and very challenging task indeed to describe in detail the present state of every area of Japanese society, but to summarize, the irrevocable fact is that our nation is facing an extreme impasse on every front. […] In reply to the question, what is the way to break through that impasse, I assert emphatically and without qualification that education is the one and only answer. No doubt some will object that this is too indirect and relies too heavily on local forces, but in the larger view, education is the only way to rebuild our nation.5 Nitobe was the first president of Tokyo Women’s Christian University and an impassioned supporter of education in many ways. He no doubt had high hopes for Makiguchi’s attempt to rouse a new groundswell of humanistic education through the publication of The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy. Nitobe died in 1933, the year after Japan left the League of Nations and at a time when the country was careening toward ultranationalistic militarism, but up to his death he continued to believe passionately in disarmament and the prevention of war you mentioned and to warn of the impending catastrophe. When the Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament (London Naval Treaty), which limited naval shipbuilding, was adopted by the United Kingdom, the Empire of Japan, France, Italy, and the United States in 1930, he wrote: The cheapest defense of a nation is to give no cause of war. To be prepared for war is to invite it. Man does what he thinks and so does a nation. If we think of diplomacy in terms of war, or of war as an extension of diplomacy—we shall have war. “Preparedness” in foreign relations should be cooperation and not armament.6 And in May 1933, just before he died, he urged: There is no nation that has so disarmed itself that it has no army. For one reason or another, every nation is armed, —“prepared” for an emergency of some kind. This emergency is usually supposed to come from some wicked neighbour. Few know that the “preparation” itself invites an enemy.7 In my 2014 peace proposal, I pointed out the “security dilemma” in which the steps a state takes to heighten security are perceived by other states as an

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increased threat, causing them to respond with similar measures, only leading to further mistrust and tension. I believe that it is incumbent on us today to pay attention to the warning issued by Nitobe more than eighty years ago. Clements:   We Quakers, based on our personal religious convictions, share Nitobe’s beliefs. I also share your concern about states generating security dilemmas for others. They do this by thinking in terms of worst-case scenarios and expanding military expenditure, which generates threats for the other side. We have to transcend this kind of thinking and focus on cooperative and common security as an alternative to self-national security concerns. Quakers regard all social injustices and all war everywhere as abominations to God and humanity, and see it as their mission to work toward their elimination. It is these principles that have moved Quakers to work for a just international economic order, arms control, and disarmament, an end to the arms trade and the encouragement of people-to-people exchanges wherever there seem to be divisions between states and peoples. The social and economic agenda of the United Nations, therefore, is very consistent with the Quaker commitment to the removal of “the occasion for all wars,” and its political agenda is aimed at resolving political and military problems through nonviolent, preventive diplomacy as well. This is why Quakers have been long-term supporters first of the League of Nations and now the United Nations. For example, on arms control and disarmament issues the Quaker United Nations Office dedicated a lot of its time and energy to securing a Chemical Weapons Convention. We did this by organizing specialized meetings of experts with key government officials. These meetings normally took place at Quaker House over a shared lunch. Those activities reinforced my belief that an ethic of hospitality is critical to the creation of the right conditions for addressing complex and difficult problems. Although they were not formal UN negotiations, we also worked on the preconditions for successful START and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) talks by organizing specialist meetings on those topics as well.

Dialogue creates a current toward peace and happiness Ikeda:   Both the START and INF negotiations were important cornerstones leading to the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and you make it clear that repeated non-official meetings for dialogue played an important role in their eventual success. Non-official meetings quite similar to the “meetings over a shared lunch” that you mentioned also played a major role in the signing of the treaty on the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (CANWFZ) in 2006, which created the first nuclear-weapon-free zone in the northern hemisphere. Professor Tsutomu Ishiguri of Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, at that time Director of the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament

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in Asia and the Pacific (UNRCPD), who was supporting the negotiations, recalled the event at a lecture (titled “Significance of the Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia”) sponsored by the Soka Gakkai and held at Kyoto International Culture Center on December 17, 2009: Though I began the negotiations as the UN official in charge, there was no direct communication between the nations involved, and building those bridges was extremely challenging. So I decided to hold unofficial gatherings that I called “Coffee Break Meetings,” establishing a custom of all the participants getting together informally on a regular basis, about once a month. When they met face to face, were able to engage in casual conversation, and eventually exchange opinions frankly, mutual trust was deepened. We had more than sixty such “Coffee Break Meetings,” which played a major role in promoting mutual trust.8 Ivan Illich, whom you mentioned earlier, suggested the idea “tools for conviviality” as a way for the world’s citizens to regain their autonomy. The word “conviviality” suggests an act of sharing refreshments, welcoming both friends and strangers; I certainly believe that deepening mutual understanding and patiently striving to build relationships of trust in informal circumstances—including but not restricted to opportunities to enjoy friendly conversation over a meal—are extremely important for promoting frank and open dialogue. Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–61), second Secretary-General of the United Nations, who held office from 1953 to 1961 and is known as “the conscience of the UN,” urged the need to expand such dialogue to all possible venues. There is a well-known anecdote in which I see a distillation of Hammarskjöld’s beliefs: One evening over dinner, the American author John Steinbeck (1902–68) asked Hammarskjöld, whom he had known for many years, what he could do to assist him and the UN. Hammarskjöld replied: “Sit on the ground and talk to people. That’s the most important thing.”9 Even when trying to solve global problems, one must start from each individual engaging in open-minded, honest discussions with those around them. According to this philosophy, acting in solidarity with others while deepening mutual trust and friendship is the most important thing. Clements:  I deeply admire and respect Dag Hammarskjöld. My interest in United Nations work was prompted by Dag Hammarskjöld. He was a big inspiration to me in my youth. I remember being particularly pleased that he installed a meditation room into UN Headquarters in New York. Even if it’s not used that often, it is a daily reminder to everyone of the spiritual hope of all nations for a world of peace and justice. Hammarskjöld was not prepared to let the United Nations become a hostage to Cold War rivalry and was proactive in developing peacekeeping capacities, ensuring the self-determination of former colonies, and developing a proactive role for the United Nations in the settlement of international disputes.

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United Nations Headquarters in New York and European Headquarters in Geneva both carry on Hammarskjöld’s legacy by playing an absolutely crucial role in enabling conversations that are essential to the maintenance of global peace and stability. I remember when Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) was invited to Geneva, for example, to talk about Palestinian self-determination issues at a time when there was no Palestinian Authority or any political autonomy for the Palestinians at all. The UN in Geneva gave Arafat a space to talk about the goals, needs, and fears of the Palestinian people, all of which were critical to the evolution of the highly successful Oslo discussions later in the 1980s and 90s. Around the same time, I recall attending meetings on Lebanon. The United Nations played an absolutely essential role in bringing the key parties in that conflict to Geneva for discussions about ways in which civil war could be averted and managed in the Middle East. Unfortunately, many of these kinds of meetings end in failure, but the cumulative effects of all of them is to create very powerful norms in favor of negotiated rather than coercive solutions to problems. I worked with Jan Eliasson of Sweden—Hammarskjöld’s homeland—on the mainstreaming of conflict prevention in national, regional, and global institutions. When I was Secretary General of the NGO International Alert, he was Sweden’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs. He always impressed me by his willingness to listen to ideas, values, and hopes from diverse people with diverse talents. He would always follow up conversations that he found helpful with letters seeking clarification or invitations to further conversations. A capacity to listen is a prerequisite for political and interpersonal effectiveness. Ikeda:   I have seen how true that is in my numerous dialogues with world leaders and thinkers. Genuinely top-notch individuals are always modest and sincere. The majority of them are true masters of dialogue who listen closely to what others say, as well as courageous people of action. When seventh UN Secretary-General Kofi Atta Annan convened a round table of leading thinkers on the subject of dialogue among civilizations in 2000, Professor Tu Weiming of Harvard University was one of the participants. In our dialogue, New Horizons in Eastern Humanism: Buddhism, Confucianism and the Quest for Global Peace, Professor Tu, stressing the importance of listening to opinions from the other party’s viewpoint, said: True dialogue, however, must be founded on mutual trust and understanding. We must receive the other person’s civilization intending to make it part of ourselves, thus opening the horizons of our own civilization.10 [...] We must listen and treat this listening as a great opportunity to expand ourselves and deepen our self-awareness, self-comprehension, and selfcriticism.11

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I believe that persevering in such dialogue can serve as the momentum for a tide carrying the world in the direction of peace and happiness, and become the foundation for supporting the various activities of the UN. I’d like to ask you, Dr. Clements, what is your vision about the direction of UN reform in the twenty-first century.

A new UN system that reflects people’s voices Clements:   We are at a fascinating moment in human history. We know a lot about the personal, social, and structural causes of violent conflict and war. Over the past sixty-eight years the world community—politicians, civil society actors, and the private sector—have gained a lot of experience in managing violence and in negotiating peace agreements and implementing peace processes after conflict. We have the theoretical and empirical knowledge necessary to ensure that the twenty-first century is a century of stable peace and “maturity,” as Kenneth Boulding hoped it would be. The one ingredient which seems to be missing when we think about building a more peaceful world is political will. Most national politicians are more concerned with the “bread-and-butter” issues of domestic politics than they are with building robust international institutions or developing a global civic culture with institutions to match. What has become very clear over the last decade, however, is the manifest inadequacy of the modern nation-state. Very few of the world’s major economic, social, and political problems can be solved solely at national levels anymore. This suggests that the twenty-first century is going to be a century of deeper regional and global interdependence and integration. It is very important, therefore, that the United Nations reinvigorates its mandate and mission. It must be able to provide a center capable of ensuring that it can keep peace throughout the world; encourage friendly relations among nations; help nations work together to improve the lives of poor people, to conquer hunger, disease, and illiteracy, and to encourage respect for each other’s rights and freedoms; and function as a nexus for harmonizing the actions of nations to achieve these goals. Norman Cousins (1915–90) said, “If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must bolster it; those who advocate it must submit to it; and those who believe in it must fight for it.”12 This is a clarion call to UN advocates both inside and outside of the Secretariat to work with political leaders and the peoples of the world in the articulation of a bold new vision for the twenty-first century. Without this, the UN will continue to be subject to ad hoc and partial decision making rather than a coherent vision which will see the simultaneous development of national, regional, and global institutions for a just, sustainable, and peaceful world. Ikeda:   The “clarion call” of Norman Cousins is the lifeline for continuing to impart vigor to the UN’s mission. I discussed this with Mr. Cousins in our

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dialogue, but I stress the need to introduce a system for incorporating the will of the people into the UN’s decision-making process as a means of fortifying the institution. Based on this view, I have proposed the creation of a global people’s council that would function as a consultative body to the General Assembly, as well as a “UN people’s forum,” a gathering of the representatives of NGOs who would consider strategies for strengthening the organization. I have also suggested the creation of a permanent post specifically dedicated to enhancing the standing of NGOs within the UN system and the promotion of partnership with them. Hammarskjöld, referring to the philosopher Henri Bergson’s (1859–1941) concept of “creative evolution,” stressed that the UN, as a living institution, must continuously grow and develop, based on the world’s needs. It is my belief that it is incumbent on the UN to forge strong cooperative relationships with civil society, centered on NGOs, to achieve that purpose. And “we the peoples,” the subject of the preamble to the UN Charter, are the real foundation of the organization. As you indicated, Dr. Clements, we are steadily accumulating the ideas and experience needed to solve the world’s problems. What is lacking is the firm political will to do so. If international political leadership is lacking, civil society will have to act as the “fulcrum of Archimedes”13 to become the leverage to change the times. I strongly believe that it is critical and urgently needed that people around the world build a global network of ordinary citizens supporting UN activities, based on an awakening to the fact that the essence of leadership is shouldering the tasks that we alone can accomplish in our own situations and communities. Clements:   I agree. Unfortunately, despite the hundreds of NGOs and INGOs who work with the UN, I do not think that the people’s voice is heard as loudly as that of the nationstate. This is not surprising given that the institution was set up to be a collection of nation-states gathered together for common purposes. But I would like to see a more representative assembly of the world’s people, alongside or replacing the General Assembly, representing the interests of all people of all continents. It is absolutely vital that the voices and aspirations of the common people are heard directly and not mediated through national state representatives. This is definitely where we need to be directing attention in the next five to ten years. Of course this would raise all sorts of important questions about the role of the Security Council and all the other machinery of the United Nations, but I think it’s important to have a radical vision so that the UN doesn’t settle for suboptimal solutions to global problems. In any event, it is clear that the UN would be a very impoverished organization were it not for the dedication and commitment of all the non-state actors

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associated with it—civil society organizations, the private sector, faith-based organizations, and so forth. The UN cannot leave these groups on the margins. Something equivalent to the European Parliament for the World is highly desirable. It would result in higher levels of national and regional accountability and a strong desire to work out mechanisms for the representation of collective interests through civil society, NGO, and INGO representation. I think we are in accord on this. Your global people’s council is, I suppose, what I was proposing as a more representative elected assembly for the United Nations.

Notes 1 UN News Centre, “UN meeting targets ‘killer robots’,” May 14, 2014, http://www. un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47794#.U6EwOHaGlN0 (accessed June 10, 2017). 2 Peace (1996–2000), ed. Irwin Abrams (London: World Scientific, 2005), p. 78. 3 The Ottawa Process was launched in 1996 with a meeting among like-minded states toward a treaty banning landmines held in Ottawa, Canada. The resulting Ottawa Treaty (The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction) was signed on December 3, 1997. The campaign for the Ottawa Process was led by a group of NGOs such as the International Campaign to Ban Landmines instead of existing multilateral frameworks. 4 Service Civil International (SCI) was founded by Pierre Ceresole, a Swiss engineer, in the aftermath of World War I. Originally organizing voluntary projects promoting postwar reconstruction, SCI now consists of forty-three branches running voluntary projects worldwide in areas such as education, human rights, and emergency humanitarian relief. 5 Translated from Japanese. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Soka kyoikugaku taikei (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy) (Tokyo: Seikyo Shimbunsha, 1972), pp. 250–51. 6 Inazo Nitobe, The Works of Inazo Nitobe, vol. 5 (Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 1938), p. 36. 7 Ibid., p. 529. 8 Professor Ishiguri’s remarks appeared in the Seikyo Shimbun on December 17, 2009. 9 The Adventure of Peace: Dag Hammarskjöld and the Future of the UN, ed. Sten Ask and Anna Mark-Jungkvist (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 99. 10 Tu Weiming and Daisaku Ikeda, New Horizons in Eastern Humanism: Buddhism, Confucianism and the Quest for Global Peace (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), p. 39. 11 Ibid., p. 43. 12 David E. Christensen, Healing the World: A Primer About the World and How We Must Fix it for Our Children (New York: iUniverse, 2005), p. 93. 13 Archimedes (c. 287–c. 212 B.C.E.) was a Greek mathematician, engineer, and inventor, known in part for his explanation of the functioning of levers. He is accredited with the statement, “‘Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world!”

13 REJECTION OF WAR AND VIOLENCE: THE BANNER OF HUMANKIND

Nelson Mandela: A great champion of human rights Ikeda:   More than 1.5 billion people around the world live in places where conflict is ongoing or in areas where their lives are adversely affected by conflict. Some 50 million children are deprived of the opportunity to attend school. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a serious heightening of tensions in Ukraine, as well as many civilians falling victim due to military confrontation between Israel and Palestine. Preventing wars that disregard human life and inflict terrible harm on so many individuals is a crucially important issue in the twenty-first century. Even in nations in which conflict and civil strife have been resolved, social conditions often remain unstable, and violence is quite likely to recur. Since 1983, Sri Lanka has suffered terrible destruction from civil conflict, with many serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law occurring right up to the time of the conflict’s end (in May 2009). This has been detailed in the March 2011 UN Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka; further efforts to uncover the facts will continue to be required. Recently the UN announced that several internationally renowned authorities will be added to the panel probing human rights violations in the Sri Lanka conflict: former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, former Governor-General of New Zealand Silvia Cartwright, and former Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Asma Jahangir. Former Governor-General Silvia Cartwright is an alumna of Otago University, where you teach, Dr. Clements, and was New Zealand’s first female Chief District Court Judge and the first woman to be appointed to the High Court. She has also been active on the international scene, including serving as one of the judges in the Trial Chamber of the Cambodia Tribunal.

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I know that you were involved in trying to prevent the intensifying conflict in Sri Lanka. What steps do you regard as necessary for making human rights violations during times of conflict widely known and preventing reoccurrences of the conflict? Clements:   I was involved in trying to prevent the intensification of the conflict in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, when I was Director of the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva. The QUNO was also actively engaged in opposing child soldiers and provided a safe space for a range of Singhalese and Tamil groups to come and talk, as a means of preventing the emerging civil war in Sri Lanka. Through that experience, I learned the importance of establishing a venue where the parties in a conflict could listen to one another’s accepted versions of the truth of the situation. The model for this approach was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC),1 established by former South African President Nelson Mandela as part of his effort to bring peace and reconciliation to South Africa, which had been the scene of such gross violations of human rights over the many long years of apartheid. As President Mandela set himself to the task of rebuilding South Africa, he created in the TRC a space for South Africans to hear one another’s truths. This choice to forgo retaliation and instead seek out the truth by peaceful means was an important part of post-apartheid healing. To do this effectively we need to understand that there is no one truth. We each see our own version of the truth, and it is important to illuminate it fully, in all its many aspects. Through the work of the TRC, the truths of the secret and immoral acts of the apartheid regime were uncovered, as were some of the unjustifiable acts of the African National Congress. Neither would have been revealed had there not been a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As a mechanism for revealing some of the deep psychological and physical damage that apartheid did to Africans, the TRC was successful. Whether it has succeeded in generating deeper reconciliation and reparation for the atrocities committed remains a much more difficult question, but the TRC was a brilliant process for beginning to heal a much wounded nation. Ikeda:  Your mention of President Mandela brings back fond memories of my first meeting with him in Tokyo (in October 1990). Mr. Mandela, then Deputy President of the African National Congress, beamed happily, delighted to meet the young people who welcomed him with great enthusiasm and joy. At our meeting, he spoke of the ideals that he continued to embrace throughout his imprisonment of more than 10,000 days. Those beliefs are epitomized in the words he delivered at the closing of a speech he gave the day of his release, in the form of quoting a statement he had delivered at his trial: I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in

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which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.2 When I quoted those words at our meeting and expressed my profound sympathy with and commitment to those ideals, Mr. Mandela nodded in recognition. At our meeting, I told him how much we respected him as a great champion of human rights, based on the legacy passed on to us by President Makiguchi, who fought against Japanese militarism and died in prison for his beliefs, as well as President Toda, who steadfastly upheld his convictions while in prison. When our conversation moved on to the indispensability of social diversity and unity and people’s movements working to make the world a better place, Mr. Mandela said that life has many ups and downs, and even contradictions. He concluded that it is our struggles with the contradictions of life and society that make life worthwhile. His unyielding convictions, quietly beating behind his warm and inviting smile, were clearly evident. True to his words, almost immediately after being released from prison, President Mandela took the initiative in leading efforts to quench the anger and hatred lying dormant in the people’s hearts. During the 1994 elections, the extreme black and white groups were refusing to participate and threatened war if the elections went ahead without them, but President Mandela remained steadfast. On one occasion, when he was appearing on a live radio broadcast, a member of one of the hard-line white groups called in. He ranted at Mandela and delivered the threat that the country would be embroiled in a bloodbath if he continued on the course he was following, but Mandela remained calm and, addressing the caller by name, spoke to him cordially. Well, Eddie, I regard you as a worthy South African and I have no doubt that if we were to sit down and exchange views I will come closer to you and you will come closer to me. Let’s talk, Eddie.3 This encounter over the phone changed the caller’s way of thinking, and he stopped training volunteer commandos and preparing for war. By his own account, the main reason for his significant change of heart was the respect that President Mandela had shown for him, even though they held completely opposing views. Clements:   It’s a very moving story, isn’t it? I can perfectly imagine Mandela’s expression and voice at the time. Mandela was teaching us all an important lesson about leadership and behavioral change. Leaders cannot expect their followers or citizens to change their behavior unless they, themselves, are willing to do so. As he said: The first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself…. Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.4

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Mandela embodied these principles brilliantly, leading by example. First of all, he emerged from Robben Island determined to exercise magnanimity and forgiveness toward his oppressors. Second, he wanted to make sure that White South Africans were not treated like Black South Africans. Third, he wished to ensure that all classes, creeds, and ethnicities in South Africa were treated equally and fairly. And finally, he knew that he had to do something innovative to address the suffering caused by apartheid. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was one expression of that, I believe. Mandela said: No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.5 This affirmation of love and its potent transformative power is what distinguishes most principled nonviolent activists. At all times, it is the love of life and love of people that is crucial for building a peaceful world, and Mandela loved both life and people. He was also a deeply humble man who felt uneasy when people tried to sanctify him. Expressing that profound humility, he said: “I never was one [a saint], even on the basis of an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”6 Ikeda:   Yes, he was indeed a humble man. At our meeting, the Soka University Award of Highest Honor was presented to him in recognition of his achievements as a shining champion of human rights and a great educator. In response he said with a grave expression that he didn’t deserve such an honor, but he accepted it as an expression of our expectations for him and his organization (the African National Congress) and promised to never betray those expectations. After his election as president, one of the first areas to which he turned his attention as a top priority was educational reform. This was based on the beliefs that he had arrived at after extensive consideration during his long years in prison. It is said that the majority of black children who had grown up under apartheid held intense feelings of anger and fear toward school. As these young people were arrested and joined Mr. Mandela in prison on Robben Island, Mr. Mandela devoted himself to helping them open new worlds through education and free their hearts from the domination of anger and fear. At our first meeting, we spoke of the “Mandela University” he established in prison. He nodded in enthusiastic agreement when I said that the foundation of social development is distorted if we focus solely on politics and economics and when I stressed that a flourishing educational system was indispensable for South Africa’s lasting and comprehensive prosperity.

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Of course, politics and economics are also important for a sound, stable country and society, but politics can easily fall under the sway of a small group of individuals, and if the economy is structured simply to produce maximum profit, it can inflict suffering on the weak and disadvantaged. Education must act as a brake on a society when it begins to move in a wrong direction and be a source for engendering a positive energy to promote coexistence and construction over conflict and destruction. President Mandela’s educational reform efforts were directed at preventing the children of future generations from being consumed by hatred and anger and on providing an educational environment that fostered hope for a better life and a brighter future. After he became Chancellor of the University of the North (the present-day University of Limpopo) in 1992, President Mandela expressed his thoughts on education as follows: “The central problem facing all South Africa’s universities is the challenge to transform themselves from institutions which were part of an apartheid education ethos.”7 He argued that universities must adopt a vision “based on a pragmatic approach on how to effect change and deepen the commitment to education which prepares us for productive life.”8

To realize education that creates happiness Clements:   Education must not be a method of oppression—that assertion by Mandela must always be borne in mind not only in South Africa but by all involved in education around the world. In this context, I am a firm subscriber to the ideas the educator Paulo Freire (1921–97) puts forth in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In this book, he articulates clearly that education—especially education in developing countries—is by no means neutral. It often serves the interests of the establishment, the rich, and the powerful, and as such becomes a tool of oppression rather than liberation. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes “the practice of freedom,” the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.9 The apartheid education system was aimed at maintaining apartheid and the systematic exclusion of Black South Africans from the benefits of White South Africa. As Mandela stressed, it was and is vitally important that the post-apartheid educational system be equal, inclusive and emancipatory. If we are interested in the development of principled, self-empowered individuals, then this means that we need to pay close attention to what we are teaching and how we teach it. Whether we are teaching human rights or peace education, it is vital that we ensure that our institutions themselves are just and peaceful. This

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means working to develop classrooms that become places that advance peace building and human rights. I try to do this within the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago. I want faculty and students to create an institution that embodies the principles of love, nonviolence and critical pedagogy. Only by experiencing an alternative system will individuals be able to create the conditions conducive to peace at interpersonal, intergroup, national, and international levels. Ikeda:   The ideas of Paulo Freire, who stressed dialogue and empowerment, have much in common with President Makiguchi’s educational philosophy, and I find myself in agreement with much that he says. “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”10 This has much in common with the educational aims of Soka University and Soka University of America. When I met with Professor George David Miller of Lewis University, Illinois (September 2000), we discussed Freire’s educational philosophy. Dr. Miller cited Freire as one of the greatest philosophers of all time, alongside Socrates. Freire stated, “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.”11 Dr. Miller had actually met Freire, and recalled how at a conference he only agreed to give his presentation after having the ornate lectern removed from the stage. As you noted in your reference to Freire’s philosophy, education and schooling in nations with an authoritarian, oppressive social structure exhibit a strong tendency to subjugate students and exploit them to serve the needs of the established social, economic, and political systems rather than show them the way to happiness and self-empowerment. Japan under its militaristic government in the early decades of the twentieth century is a perfect case in point. To avoid repeating that error, what points do you think we need to emphasize in schools and universities? Clements:   We need to ensure that all of our education is aimed at creating critical, independent thinkers capable of transcending “conventional morality,” and applying higher levels of principled thinking to moral decision making. We do not want students to graduate from our schools and universities who are incapable of thinking for themselves. It is vital that we equip our students with all the theoretical, analytical, and critical skills that they need to be innovative and creative and to make independent ethical and scientific decisions when and as needed. If we are to move in this direction then our schools and universities need to be oriented to radical inquiry, dialogical and experiential education. This will result in what Ira Shor describes as “critical pedagogy.” Shor defined this critical pedagogy, which is related to the educational ideas of Freire, as follows:

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Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse.12 If our students can penetrate beneath the taken-for-granted and official pronouncements with care and sensitivity they will be better able to suggest principled, nonviolent, and just alternatives. Ikeda:   That’s an important point. Especially with the rapid advance of the information society today, in which we find ourselves inundated with a flood of information, it is absolutely indispensable to develop the abilities to which you refer. The type of education proposed by Mr. Makiguchi also aimed at producing independent-minded individuals who could think for themselves and act based on their convictions, rather than be swept away by the general consensus and the tide of the times. He strongly lamented the tendency of the Japanese to “too readily place their trust in the judgments of others and follow along blindly; they make neither the effort to look at, question or confirm the facts for themselves nor to develop their own independent conclusion or viewpoint.”13 He concluded that the only way to reform society was to reform education, and developed his philosophy of Soka education for that purpose. It was based on that viewpoint that Mr. Makiguchi was highly critical of the approach that suggested education was just a process of filling students’ minds with information. In The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy, he quoted the inventor Alfred Nobel (1833–96) as saying that although it is possible to inherit property, it is impossible to inherit happiness, and stated that these words eloquently demonstrate that wealth and happiness are not the same thing. He stressed that the aim of education should be to enable children to tap their inner potential to create their own happiness. In the context of education, “information” is the equivalent of “wealth”: it is not the same thing as happiness. He called for an end to the practice of trying to cram information into students’ minds, urging: “The true task of an educator is not to peddle information but the far more important task of providing guidance in the means of acquiring knowledge,”14 and said: The educator’s real role is to provide students with the guidance and motivation to not only inhibit the harm, evil, and ugliness [in society], but to transform those negative qualities into benefit, goodness and beauty and create a life of happiness.15

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In other words, no matter how harsh reality is, by persisting in nurturing the ability to create value, we can, through education, foster and support a way of living that uses the difficulties and problems that arise in life as the source for opening the way to personal happiness and building a better society. This educational ideal stood in direct opposition to the belief that education should serve the interests of the state, the educational principle prevailing during Mr. Makiguchi’s time. What led to the confusion of education’s true purpose? According to Mr. Makiguchi, “it’s easy to say that one opposes great evil, but when it comes to following through on one’s words with actions, people are quick to compromise and persecute great good. This is the present situation in our society.”16 “Rather a single lion than a thousand sheep!” With this rallying cry, Mr. Makiguchi remained unflinching in the face of numerous persecutions and continued, even when incarcerated, to keep the banner of his personal commitment to peace and humanity aloft to the very end.

Gandhi’s emphasis on the principle of avoiding irreversible decisions Clements:  “Rather a single lion than a thousand sheep!” Mr. Makiguchi’s beliefs are ably summarized in that statement. I am impressed by all those, including of course Mr. Makiguchi, who chose the pacifist rather than the military option during World War II. Pastor Martin Niemöller, who opposed Hitler’s efforts to subvert the Confessional Church and replace it with pro-Nazi Lutheranism, is a good example of pacifist resistance. He went to prison for his actions and beliefs. Similarly, Raoul Wallenberg (1912–47) used his diplomatic status to rescue many Hungarian Jews and did so without any use of violence. The pacifist convictions of these and other like-minded individuals opened up political spaces—then and now—for people to think more creatively about how to resist oppression nonviolently. I am especially impressed by people such as Gandhi and Nelson Mandela who expressed their fundamental beliefs not through violence but by consciously choosing nonviolent methods to voice their opposition to injustice and oppressive regimes. The more I have read of Gandhi’s work, the more impressed I’ve become with the delicate way in which he wove the threads of truth-seeking with love and nonviolence as a way of life. I am constantly amazed at how much of the philosophy that he articulated in the 1920s and 30s remains as true today as it did then. In connection with Gandhi’s philosophy, one point in particular that I would like to transmit to the younger generation is that one must never forget how important the principle of irreversibility is in ethical decision making. Gandhi believed that wherever possible we should avoid making irreversible decisions, because if they are wrong we have to live with mistakes that cannot be undone or rectified. Nowhere is this more important than in decisions about life and death.

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If our decisions involve harm or death to others they are irreversible; wherever possible they should be avoided. The best way we can avoid making such harmful decisions is by a radical commitment to nonviolence as a way of life. As Gandhi said: “I object to violence because, when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.”17 Because of this, his whole life was dedicated to the nonviolent pursuit of justice and peace and to doing no harm to others. Ikeda:   In ethical considerations, we must not easily make irreversible decisions—I am reminded by that of the words of Nitobe, whom we discussed earlier, in a book that was first published in English. When militarism was beginning to emerge as the dominant ideology in Japan leading to an emphasis on extreme patriotism or chauvinism, Nitobe declared: There should be no mark to limit the march of the human mind. Foregone conclusions, interested arguments, proofs to back up a favourite theme— these are all intellectual treason and moral cowardice. Correct, put to rights, your nation’s mistakes, whatever they may be. To defend them on false pretences is only to aggravate them and to dye them blacker. Truth and justice are greater than the greatest national interests.18 In this book, Nitobe focused primarily on the spirit of the quest for learning. This remains a lesson that all people in a democratic society should etch deeply in their hearts at all times. These words, incidentally, were penned at around the same time as the famous Salt March in India in 1930, an example of a movement that arose based on Gandhi’s belief that in the struggle for independence, the opponent was not people— the British—but policies—colonial rule. No matter how challenging the circumstances or how strong the social pressure, relinquishing one’s true beliefs is the equivalent of relinquishing one’s self. Expanding and fortifying a network of individuals who are faithful to that principle creates a breakwater to prevent multiplication of immoral and violent acts. Clements:   I agree completely. Gandhi knew that India, like every nation, would be judged by how well it treated the poorest and the weakest. As he said, “Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him.”19 This commitment to the poor ran through the whole of Gandhi’s life. As for myself, I am impatient with a lot of academic research because it is academic! I am a philosopher who wants to both understand and change the world. If my theory and research does not enable me to do this in a sensitive and collaborative fashion, I do not consider it helpful research.

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I think my current research and practice has been profoundly affected by all those I have met, in and outside of war zones, who have been traumatized and shocked by the ravages of war. This has made me determined to ensure that I am in no way complicit in any emotional, social, political, or military process likely to result in violence to others. Ikeda:   That is a truly noble statement. I am deeply grateful and reassured that you have accepted the position of Secretary General of the Toda Institute. The commitment to always stand on the side of the people is the basis for all our activities. The spirit of Soka education, going back to Mr. Makiguchi, can also be summarized in that single statement. War, conflict, and other acts that cause harm and loss of life to countless individuals are engendered by a combination of such factors as cold-hearted national and economic interest and such attitudes as the arrogance to not regard others as equally human, deeply rooted discrimination and prejudice, and a disregard for life. Though it may seem circuitous, I believe that the way to overcome such negative forces and build a society of peace and harmonious coexistence is to forge layer upon layer of individual friendships and trust through dialogue, exchanges, and other means, extending a net of amity over human society as a whole. Only by forming ties between one human being and another—acting as a kind of mooring line to keep the boat of the sanctity and worth of each individual among the people from being carried away by the turbulent currents of conflict between nations and peoples—can we ensure that nonviolence will become firmly rooted within society. In the past, I had several opportunities to meet and talk with Dr. Bishambhar N. Pande (1906–98), one of Gandhi’s closest disciples; during one of our meetings, he proudly shared with me the following episode. The incident occurred when a mob of fanatical Hindus attacked a student hostel where both Hindu and Muslim students were living, all working to complete their academic theses. The rabble called on the Hindu students living in the hostel to come out, saying they would be safe. The Muslim students were to remain inside. If no one came out, the mob would set fire to the building with everyone in it. The students all refused to come out, saying that unless everyone’s safety was assured, they would all stay inside; the mob could set fire to the building if they wanted to. Eventually, the army arrived and the students were able to evacuate the building. At this time, the mob threatened that only the Hindu students could bring out their books and papers. But again, the Hindu students refused to accept special treatment from the mob—if you intend to burn the theses of the Muslim students, burn ours, too! In the end, the building was burned and, with it, all the students’ papers.

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Dr. Pande spoke with one of the Hindu students, who had spent three years writing his doctoral thesis. When he asked the student if he wasn’t bitter, the student responded: “What could I be bitter about? My conscience is perfectly clear. I acted in accordance with Gandhi’s teachings. That is our spirit.” He had protected, to the very end, his fellow students whose religion was different from his own.

Hope is the foundation of the peace movement Clements:   Gandhi understood that the real point of nonviolence is to generate alternative “loving communities” within a predominantly violent world. The episode you related truly represents the pinnacle of Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence. In pursuing the truth in human relationships, Gandhi believed he would discover the key to deepening caring and concern for other peoples. He was absolutely convinced that this “truth force” would prove more compelling than brute force. He believed in living each day with, as his companions, truth, justice, patience, compassion, courage, and loving kindness. These are the values and concerns embodied by Gandhi that I and most peace advocates promote. This is a much more radical commitment than simply looking for nonviolent political tactics to change odious political regimes. The overthrow of regimes generating suffering for citizens is an important prerequisite for peacefulness, but it is not sufficient. Genuine peacefulness flows from an intentional commitment to do no harm and to do some good on a daily basis. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech embodied Gandhi’s hope for a world based on love, justice, equality, and peace. Urging us to do better in our relationships with one another and to confront and transcend our own biases, prejudices and stereotypes and rediscover a common humanity one with the other, he wrote: With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.20 Even though he made this speech about 8,700 miles (14,000 kilometers) from Wellington, where I was living at the time, I was in no doubt that it was a speech that was aimed at me as much as America. I also had to acknowledge my own biases, limitations, shortcomings, and prejudices and join with others in making the world a more caring and hospitable place for everyone. Ikeda:   As Dr. King said, the true test of our humanity is possessing the courage to strive tirelessly to “hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” The future of humankind rests on how successful we are at expanding a global network of youthful activists aflame with that courage.

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As our dialogue reaches its conclusion, I would like to introduce the following parable that Gandhi related to young Arun Gandhi, his grandson. One morning before dawn, a man on a beach was picking up starfish that had washed ashore and returning them to the sea, knowing that the starfish would dry up and die once the sun came out. A young man approached him and asked the man what he was doing. “I am trying to save the starfish,” replied the first man. Incredulous, the young man said, “But look how many starfish there are! There are millions of them! What difference can you possibly make?” The first man returned the starfish in his hand to the sea and said: “It will make a big difference to this one.” Through this story, Gandhi was trying to awaken people to the fact that saving even a single person is a great change that is in our power to make. Listening sincerely to the problems of a single person in your life, right where you are now, encouraging that person and igniting the light of hope in his or her heart—that humble but steadfast effort may not make news around the world or be recorded in the annals of history. But each person who experiences a new hope burning in their heart will have gained a new strength to live, and your act is a precious event in their lives. That is the foundation for a sound and steady movement for peace firmly rooted in the earth of the people. It is my heartfelt wish that young people will take the lead in continuing to build a network of the people spreading revitalization and joy and creating a magnificent ray of light in the twenty-first century. Clements:   With limitless hope in young people, too, I would like to impart these words of Nelson Mandela: I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.21 In addition, I would like to call on young people to treasure those who share their aims. During my time at International Alert, for example, if I felt depressed, by what I had experienced in a particular war zone, I was always heartened by connecting with individuals and groups who were hopeful, present, and attentive to local needs. Whether it was Save the Children, or Oxfam, or UNDP, these different groups and the individuals serving within them would always shake me from my own feelings of grief and remind me of the importance of working with others on problems that threatened to overwhelm me personally. If this generation of young people could embrace the convictions upheld by Gandhi, Dr. King and President Mandela throughout their lives, they will be

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capable of shining with the same humanity as those great individuals. In addition, I am certain that their neighborhoods, communities, nations, and the world will become better, more loving, and more compassionate. Sustainable peace and political transformation require individuals everywhere to oppose violence and work nonviolently for union and reconciliation. Community, national, regional, and global change will happen when all the good works of millions of individuals create a tsunami of kindness, care, and understanding. This will be an irresistible force for positive change.

Notes 1 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up in 1995 in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid. Its mandate was to bear witness to and record crimes relating to human rights violations, as well as to consider granting amnesty to the perpetrators. Both victims and perpetrators of human rights violations were invited to testify. It is considered a pioneer of restorative rather than retributive justice. 2 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 322. 3 John Carlin, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008), p. 151. 4 Micah Amukobole, Character-Centred Leadership: Principles and Practice of Effective Leading (Nairobi: Evangel Publishing House, 2012), p. 232. 5 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 542. 6 Nelson Mandela, Notes to the Future: Words of Wisdom (New York: Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation, 2012), p. 40. 7 From an interview in the October 1993 issue of Enterprise magazine. 8 Ibid. 9 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000), p. 34. 10 Ibid., p. 72. 11 Ibid. 12 Ira Shor, Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 129. 13 Translated from Japanese. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Makiguchi Tsunesaburo zenshu, vol. 5, pp. 242–43. 14 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 244. 15 Ibid., pp. 247–48. 16 Ibid., vol. 10, p. 156. 17 Mahatma Gandhi, The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas, ed. Louis Fischer (New York: Vintage Spiritual Classics, 2002), p. 175. 18 Inazo Nitobe, The Works of Inazo Nitobe, vol. 5, p. 97. 19 Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1983), vol. 89, p. 125. 20 Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World, ed. James Melvin Washington (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1986), p. 105. 21 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 185.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Kevin P. Clements Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Founding Director of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, the University of Otago, New Zealand, Clements was born in New Zealand in 1946. He has served as Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association (2008–10) and of International Alert (1999–2003). He was formerly Professor and Director of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, U.S.A., and Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland. In 2009, he became Secretary General of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, Tokyo, and was appointed Director in 2017. His career has been a combination of academic analysis and practice in the areas of peacebuilding and conflict transformation. He has been an adviser to the New Zealand, Australian, British, Swedish, and Dutch governments on conflict prevention, arms control, defense, and regional security issues. He has written or edited seven books and over 150 articles on conflict transformation, peacebuilding, preventive diplomacy, and development.

Daisaku Ikeda President of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a lay Buddhist organization, Ikeda was born in Tokyo in 1928. He founded the Soka school system, running from kindergarten through graduate school at universities in Tokyo and California, implementing an educational philosophy based on value-creation. He has also

166  About the authors

founded various cultural and academic institutions, from the Min-On Concert Association and the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum to the Institute of Oriental Philosophy and the Toda Peace Institute. Based on an abiding faith in dialogue, Ikeda has met with world leaders and intellectuals in the fields of culture, education, and the arts, exchanging views on a diverse range of topics. Many of these meetings have led to the publication of dialogues, including Choose Life with Arnold Toynbee and Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century with Mikhail Gorbachev. He is the author of the multi-volume novelized histories of the Soka Gakkai, The Human Revolution and The New Human Revolution. He has been awarded more than 380 academic honors from the world’s universities and institutions of higher education. He received the UN Peace Award in 1983 and is an honorary member of the Club of Rome.

INDEX

accountability 121; levels of 123; national and regional 151 African National Congress 153, 155 Ahtisaari, Martti 152 Ainu ethnicity 98 Aldrich, Daniel P. 119–20 American Civil Rights Movement 37, 118 Amnesty International 92 Annan, Kofi Atta 148 antinuclear arms policy 21 antinuclear movements 18, 24, 28–9 anti-Vietnam War movement 34 APEC Leaders’ Declaration 61 APPRA see Asia-Pacific Peace Research Association (APPRA) APRA see Asia Peace Research Association (APRA) Arafat, Yasser 148 ARF see ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Armed Forces Appeal Board 9, 10 arms control 4–5, 17, 141, 146; and disarmament 130 ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) 4 Ashoka, King 36 Asia: cultures and peoples 36; religious traditions of 36 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting 60 Asia-Pacific Organization for Peace and Culture 60 Asia-Pacific Peace Research Association (APPRA) 61 Asia-Pacific summit 60

Asia Peace Research Association (APRA) 61 atomic bombings 16, 70 Australia 24, 63, 74, 87, 99, 129, 130, 165; development and underdevelopment in 99 Australia, New Zealand, United States (ANZUS) Security Treaty 23 authoritarian 40, 157 Basic Act on Disaster Control Measures in Japan 91 Beaglehole, John 40 behavior issues for children 78 being, social significance of 53 beliefs 11, 49, 57–8, 125 Berger, Peter 39 Bergson, Henri 150 Beveridge, William 107 biculturalism 96 Bok, Sissela 6 bombing 16, 25, 30, 35, 65, 70 border disputes 61 Boulder Quaker Meeting 51 Boulding, Elise 49–54, 89 Boulding, Kenneth 49, 55, 149 Bowen, Kevin 36 brain drain 40 British industrialism 108 Buddhism 3, 36, 42, 45, 57, 82, 84; teachings of 124 Buddhist conception of compassion 45 Buddhist pacifism 3

168 Index

Burton, John 130 Butler, Judith 7 Cabactulan, Libran N. 30 Campaign to Stop Killer Robots 141 Canada, development and underdevelopment in 99 Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) 74, 77 CANWFZ see Central Asian NuclearWeapon-Free Zone (CANWFZ) capital punishment 125 Cartwright, Silvia 152 Center for Research on Conflict Resolution 52 Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (CANWFZ) 146 CERA see Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) Ceresole, Pierre 144 chauvinism 160 chemical weapons 142 Chemical Weapons Convention 146 Chile 103 China 22, 70, 106; and Japan 5, 8 choice theory in political science 126 Chowdhury, Anwarul K. 91, 118 Christchurch Earthquake 72, 74, 76 Christchurch Student Volunteer Army 76 The Christian Pacifist 17 Christian Temperance Movement 108 Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake 75 civil rights 122 civil society, United Nations and see United Nations Clark, Helen 87 climate change 7, 8, 15 coexistence, principle of 61 Cold War 7, 16, 17, 19, 21, 34, 142, 147–8 collective security 23 collective well-being 118 Collins, Canon 19 Communism 34 compassion 113 conflicts: ethnic 61; in Northern Ireland 89; peace and 3; probability of 132; resolution 54, 129–31; state-based 33; studies 132; and violence 130; violent 133 Conflict Transformation Across Cultures 123 conservatism 62 conventional morality 157 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Meeting of Experts 140–1

Convention on Cluster Munitions 142 conviviality 147 Cook, James 40 courage 113 Cousins, Norman 149–50 critical pedagogy 157 cross-border education 60 Cuban Missile Crisis 19 cultural violence 101 culture 38, 118–19; form of violence 100–2; fostering humanity 102–5; movement for 83; of peace 13, 42, 49; respecting indigenous peoples 95–100; of war 33–4 Culture of Peace Lecture Series 73 Curle, Adam 55, 57, 81 Daniel, Philip 52 Declaration Calling for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons 18, 20 delegations 14 de Mello, Thiago 103 democracy 123 Democratic Capitalism 34 democratic deficits 120, 122–3 diabolical weapons 20 dialogue 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 18, 19, 27, 34, 38, 39, 41, 48, 50–2, 56, 60, 66–7, 81, 88, 89, 90,106, 107, 131, 132, 136, 146–9, 163, 166 disarmament 4–5, 21, 130, 142, 143, 146 disasters 72–3; capacities for responding to 54; control measures 91; emotional support and care for 79; inflict 78; in Japan 74; prevention organizations 72; relief cooperation 60; relief, volunteer activity in 75–7 discrimination 12, 13, 101–2, 161 domestic politics 149 domestic violence 84 domination 34 domino theory 34 earthquakes 74, 77, 125 East Asia, environmental cooperation in 7–9 East–West relations 141 economic globalization 105 economic justice 96 education 159; functions of 43; overcoming cycle of violence 133–9; pillars of theory, research, and practice 131–3; pursuit of conflict resolution 129–31; method of oppression 156; movement for 83; peace and 49; promotion of 48

Index  169

educational exchange agreement 131 educators, role of 158 Eliasson, Jan 48 Elkinton, Mary Patterson 144 emotional well-being 78 empathy 45 energy 60 England 19, 66, 86, 96 Enlai, Zhou 86 environmental cooperation in East Asia 7–8 environmental destruction 2 equality 162; of opportunity 49 Erasmus Programme 69 ethnic conflicts 61 European Parliament 151 exclusionism 62 EXPO in Osaka 69–70 Facebook 121 Faculty of International Liberal Arts 129–30 family 121; breakdowns 84; guidance programs 124–5 France 8, 20, 23, 69, 129, 145 Freedom of Information Act 121 Freire, Paulo 156, 157; educational philosophy 157 French Indochina War 34 Fukushima Prefecture 80 Fulbright, J. William 69 Fulbright Scholarships 69 fundamental beliefs 159 Galtung, Johan 133 Gandhi, Arun 101, 163 Gandhi, Mahatma 6, 58, 85, 137; disciples of 161; life of 160; philosophy of 159, 162; Salt March in India 160; teachings of 162 Geneva Conventions 141 genocide 101–2 George Mason University 130–2 Germany 69 Glassman, Robert 36 global citizenship: education for 102–5, 138, 139; overcoming cycle of violence 133–9; pillars of theory, research, and practice 131–3; pursuit of conflict resolution 129–31 global governance 3 globalization 1; process of 96 global minds 129 global nationalism 144 global peace 148 global warming, climate change and 8 Gouldner, Alvin 41

Great East Japan Earthquake 72, 75, 76, 78, 80, 125 great goodness 11 Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 119 gutsy sunflowers 73, 82, 87 Hammarskjöld, Dag 147, 150; beliefs of 147 Hancock, Herbie 81 happiness 57, 81, 113, 115, 123, 132, 146; peace and 146; realization of 132 Harding, Vincent 118 harmony, peace and 42 Havel, Václav 102, 105, 123 health education program 44 Heaney, Seamus 134 Heath, Carl 144 Henderson, Hazel 53 heroes 9 hibakusha 21 Hillary, Edmund 117, 118–19 Himalayas 117 Hindu 161 Hiroshima 21, 25, 30, 65, 70 Holyoake, Keith 34 Homans, George C. 41 hope and courage, reconstruction of 113; disasters in New Zealand and Japan 72–5; psychological and spiritual support 77–82; volunteer activity in disaster relief 75–7 Huizinga, Johan 38 human decency 141 Human Development Report of 2007/2008 7 human dignity 95, 109, 114–16 human equality, recognition of 115 humanism 97 humanitarian disasters 56 Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons 16 humanitarianism, peace and 9 humanitarian law 142 humanity 2, 57, 139, 159, 163–4 human life, sanctity of 85, 124 human needs theory 130 human revolution 57 human rights 1, 85, 91, 122, 131, 142, 156; culture of 95, 104; curriculum 132; movement 103; suppression of 48, 144; violations 95 Human Rights Watch 141 human security 3, 8, 26, 60, 109, 140; principle of 109; promotion of 114 human will 141 humility 155 Humphrey, Hubert 34 hunger 2

170 Index

ICAR see Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) ICJ see International Court of Justice (ICJ) ideological conflicts 35 Ikeda Center 39, 52, 53, 131 Illich, Ivan 116, 147 ILO see International Labour Organization (ILO) imperialism 34 Indangasi, Henry 100 India 37; Salt March in 160 Indian Ocean earthquake 119 individual identity 100 individual security 8 individual sovereignty 120–1 individual well-being 118 Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 111 INF see Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) informal employment 112 INGO 150–1 Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) 34, 130; threefold commitment to theory 132 interdependence 57 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) 146 international assistance 75 international community 33 International Court of Justice (ICJ) 23 international economic order 146 international humanitarian law 30–1; violations of 152 international human rights law 152 International Labour Organization (ILO) 112 International Peace Research Association (IPRA) 2, 52, 61; Conference 51 International Peace Research Association Foundation 52 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) 21 International Society for the Sociology of Religion 38 international youth symposium 70 interval of hesitation 9 IPPNW see International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) IPRA see International Peace Research Association (IPRA) Ishiguri, Tsutomu 147 Islam 3 Israel, military confrontation 152 Iwate Prefecture 80

Jahangir, Asma 152 Japan 83, 90, 157; China and 5, 8; culture of hospitality 70; disasters in 72–5; discussion meetings 10; dominant ideology in 160; employment rules 111; geographical studies 62–3; geography 63; impressions of 64–6; military power 109; National Health Insurance Act 108; political parties in 86; positive reactions in 106; problems in 96; pursuit of modernization 87; social welfare programs in 109; students 63; tourism to New Zealand 64; unemployment 111; women in government and workplace 87 Japan–New Zealand relations 65 justice 162 just war theory 17 Kennedy, John F. 19 Khrushchev, Nikita 19 killer robots 141 King, Martin Luther 37, 58, 102, 121, 162 Kirk, Norman 24 Kissinger, Henry 35 Ky, Nguyen Cao 34 Landmine Ban 142 landmines 142 language studies 65 LAWS see Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) leadership: of New Zealand 107; poverty of 121 Learning Cluster seminar 43–4 Lederach, John Paul 136 Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) 140–1 Levinas, Emmanuel 126 liberal preoccupation 108 life of mission 82 logic of compassion 6–9 logic of domination 6–9 Lotus Sutra 42 love 113, 157, 162 loving communities 162 Lown, Bernard 21 Makiguchi, Tsunesaburo 10–12, 41, 61–3, 87, 90, 98, 124, 143–5, 158, 159, 161; beliefs of 159; educational philosophy 157 Mandela, Nelson 57–8, 102, 137, 152–6, 163; against black domination 153–4; educational reform of 156; expression and voice of 154; on human rights 154;

Index  171

imprisonment of 153; in 1994 elections 154; peace and reconciliation to South Africa 153; principles of 155; thoughts on education 156 Mandela University 155 Manhattan Project 67 Maori: communities 86, 135; culture 96–7, 99, 100; institutions 86; language 96, 100–1; and Pakeha relations 96; renaissance 96–7; singing and dancing 97 marriage guidance programs 124–5 Marshall, John 23 Martin, David 39 Mason, George 131 Mbithi, Philip Muinde 99 McKenzie, Chris 97 McReary, John 102, 103 Methodist Conference in 1940 10 militarism 11, 34, 160 militarization 61 military technology 140 Millennium Development Goals Report 2013 90 Miller, George David 157 Mine Ban Treaty 142 Mingyuan, Gu 9 minor goodness 11 Mitchell, Christopher 130, 131; structural analysis of conflict 131 Miyagi Prefecture 80 modern capitalism 115 modern systems theory 104 Möller, Michael 141 Monnet, Jean 8 moral decision making 157 Mount Everest 117 Mulgan, John 138 multilateral institutions 144 Muslim 161 Mussolini 66 NAC see New Agenda Coalition (NAC) Nagasaki 21, 25, 30, 65, 70 National Council of Women of New Zealand 85, 88 nationalism 144 nationalization 61 natural disasters 56, 119 neoliberal market principles 110 New Agenda Coalition (NAC) 17 newborns 107 New Zealand 73, 79, 83, 107, 138; antiwar movement in 35; Arms

Control Act 23; bicultural foundation document 96; capital punishment in 125; colonial history 86; colonial women in 86; conscientious objectors in 12; development of 87, 99; disasters in 72–5; educational system 90; Employment Contracts Act of 1991 111; gender-based discrimination and sexism in 88; gender-specific policies and programs 90; government on marriage 124–5; historical impetus in 96; history and social studies classes 84; Human Rights Commission 122; indigenous research capacity 40; involvement in Vietnam 34; Japan tourism to 64; leadership of 107; military training in high school 40; political and social rights in 86; population 97; post-colonial history 87; rugby players 64; situation in 96; social reformers 84; Social Security Act 108; social welfare programs in 109; state welfare provisions 107–8; Trade Union movements 108; welfare state 109, 110; white settlers 101; women’s movement in 87; women’s suffrage movement in 86; workshop in 50 New Zealand Foundation for Peace Studies 27 NGOs see nongovernment organizations (NGOs) Nichiren Shoshu 11 Nichiren 11, 12, 84 Niemöller, Martin 159 Nitobe, Inazo 110, 144–5, 160 Nixon, Richard 35 Nobel, Alfred 158 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) 95, 150, 151; Committee on Disarmament 143; Committee on Peace 143; International Alert 4 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 1985 143 nonviolence 157 Northern Ireland: conflict in 89; peace negotiations in 135 nuclear-armed states 17 nuclear deterrence, theory of 27 nuclear disarmament 19 nuclear-free-zone 25 Nuclear Free Zone Committee 24 Nuclear Free Zone movement 27 nuclear nonproliferation 21

172 Index

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Preparatory Committee 16 nuclear technology, impacts of 29 nuclear testing 20, 21 nuclear “theology” 23 nuclear umbrellas 21, 22 nuclear war 19 nuclear weapons 16–32, 65, 142; abolition of 26; aspects of 16; demonic nature of 19–21; eliminating reliance on 27–31; employment of 16; humanitarian impact of 17; inhumane nature of 16; issue of 17; New Zealand, denuclearized 21–4; proliferation of 27; renunciation of 16; threat of 25; views on 22; voices protesting inhumane nature of 16–19; worldwide awareness-raising toward abolition of 25–7 Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) 30 NWC see Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) Obama, Barack 28 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries 120 Ottawa Process 142 Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting (PALM) 72 Pacific neighbors 60–3; concept of 61; impressions of Japan 64–6; youth exchanges to deter war 68–71 Pakeha communities 135 Palestine: military confrontation 152; political autonomy for 148 PALM see Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting (PALM) Pande, Bishambhar N. 161–2 Paris Peace Accords 35 passive violence 101 patriotism 160 peace 34, 50, 56, 97, 118–19, 159, 162; agreements 55; belief 9–12; and conflict 3; creative vision for 1–6; culture of 13, 42, 49, 51, 55; and education 49, 156; and friendship 56; and happiness 149; and harmony 42; and humanitarianism 9; and human rights curriculum 132; lessons of war to youth 13–14; logic of compassion 6–9; logic of domination 6–9; movement for 12, 50, 83; negative view of 37; studies 132, 133 Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies 133 peacemaker 136 Peace Squadrons 27

personal happiness 113 personal religious convictions 146 political accountability, levels of 121 political activism 119, 122 political campaigns 122 political leadership 123 political rights 122 political science 126, 134 political transformation 164 positive regionalism 71 post-disaster reconstruction 92 poverty 2, 37, 48, 88; of leadership 121 power of hope 73 practice 132 prejudice 12, 101–2, 161 psychological well-being 78 Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs 18, 67 Putnam, Robert 122 pyramid of hate 101 Quaker beliefs 56 Quaker Embassies 144 Quaker Higher Education Conference 51 Quaker peace-making initiatives 51 Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) 141, 153 QUNO see Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) rapidity 54, 56 redundancy 54, 56 Reeder, William F. 130 Rees, Stuart 132 Reeves, Paul 135–6 refugees, protection of 142 regional connectivity 60 regional security architecture 130 re-humanization 46 relationship issues 78 relief centers 125 Religion and Transnational Society 39 religious beliefs 10 research 132 resilience: approach of 54; factors promoting 54–7; qualities of 56 resourcefulness 54, 56 responsibility, levels of 123 reverence for life 126 rice prices 86 rice riots 86 Rio Conference 51 Roberts, John 40 robotic weapons 141

Index  173

robustness 54 Rohr, Richard 79 Roosevelt, Eleanor 85 Rotblat, Joseph 18–9, 66–7 Rush, Benjamin 131 Russell, Bertrand 18–20 safety net 115 Saito, Shoji 98 Salt March in India 160 sanctity of human life 124 sanctity of life: learning 39–41; re-humanizing society 42–6; sustainable peace 37–9; violence, cycle of 33–7 Savage, Michael Joseph 109–10 scholarship 126–7 Schuman Plan Conference 8–9 Schweitzer, Albert 126, 127 SCI see Service Civil International (SCI) security: dilemma 145 Seddon, Richard 109–10 self-awareness 148 self-comprehension 148 self-criticism 148 self-empowered individuals 156 self-national security 146 Sendai 72, 125 Service Civil International (SCI) 144 SGI see Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Shakyamuni 6, 7, 118, 136 Sheppard, Kate 83–4, 88 Shiga, Shigetaka 87 Shor, Ira 157 Shorter, Wayne 81 Shultz, George P. 27 singularity 46 Sino–Japanese relations 9, 65, 70–1 Skegg, David 76–7 social activism 119, 122 social capital 119; boundaries of compassion 124–7; decline of democracy 120–4 social diversity 154 social division 101–2 social gospel 84 social insurance policies 107 social justice 96 social media 121 Social Protection Floor Initiative (SPF-I) 114 social relationships 89 social rights 122 social science 126 social security 109, 114; establishing 109; New Zealand’s development as

pioneering welfare state 106–8; society 112–16; welfare policy 108–12 Social Security Act 108–10 social security policies 109 social welfare, principle of 110 sociology 130, 134; of religion 39 Soka education 161; philosophy of 158 Soka Gakkai International (SGI) 3, 25, 38, 45–6, 56 SOKA Global Action 118, 119, 125 Soka University 62, 69, 129, 131 Soka University of America 43, 55, 62, 65, 67, 97–9, 129–31, 133, 155, 157 Soka University Award of Highest Honor 155 South Africa: educational system 155; ethnicities in 155 South Asia, policymakers from 123 South Korea 106 Soviet Union 141 SPF-I see Social Protection Floor Initiative (SPF-I) spiritual transformation: Boulding, Elise 51–4; factors promoting resilience 54–7; vanquishing violence 57–8 sports 64 Sri Lanka: civil conflict 152–3; civil war in 153; human rights violations in 152 starvation 37 state-based armed conflict 33, 37 state-centered security 130 state interests 60–3 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Yearbook 2013 33 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) negotiations 141 structural violence, forms of 48 student exchange program 69 sustainable communities 113 sustainable peace 164 The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy (Makiguchi) 145 Tehranian, Majid 3, 4 theory 132 Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai 72 three poisons 57 Toda Institute 3–4, 106, 109, 161, 165 Toda, Josei 10, 16, 18, 20, 22, 132, 143, 144 Tohoku earthquake see Great East Japan Earthquake Tohoku Recovery of the Heart campaigns 125 Tools for Conviviality (Toynbee) 116

174 Index

totalitarianism 123 Toynbee, Arnold 116 trade 65 TRC see Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament 145 truth 46 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 153, 155 tsunami 73–5, 119, 125 Twitter 121 UCLA see University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Ukraine, tensions in 152 ul Haq, Mahbub 109 UN see United Nations (UN) uniqueness 46 United Nations (UN): arms control and disarmament 140–3; Decade for Human Rights Education 95; Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 98; Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) 92; Development Programme (UNDP) 55; Disarmament Campaign 25; educational initiatives of 95; educational program 103–4; General Assembly 72; High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 33; Human Rights Council 96; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 8; Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 90, 107; peace and happiness 146–9; people’s voices 149–51; Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific (UNRCPD) 147; revitalization 140; Second Special Session on Disarmament 25; Security Council 26, 150; Security Council Resolution 91; SGI and Quaker support for 143–6; social and economic agenda of 146; World Programme for Human Rights Education 85, 95–6 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 85, 114 universities, missions of 133 University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) 129 UN Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace 48 Urbain, Olivier 4

U.S. Civil Rights Movement 37, 118 U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights 131 Vienna Summit 19 Vietnam 35; New Zealand involvement in 34 Vietnam War 34–6, 67, 70 violence 101–2; acts of 137; conflict and 130, 133; cycle of 33–7, 133–9; passive 101; structural 48; vanquishing 57–8 Virginia Declaration of Rights 130 Waitangi Tribunal 100 Wallenberg, Raoul 159 war and violence 34; education 156–9; Gandhi 159–62; human rights 152–6; peace movement 162–4 WCCCI see World Centers of Compassion for Children International (WCCCI) Weber, Max 39 Weil, Simone 3, 5, 9 Weiming, Tu 148 well-being 29, 113; collective 118; of democracy 120; emotional 78; individual 118; of New Zealanders 110; psychological 78 WHO see World Health Organization (WHO) Wider, Sarah 88 Williams, Betty 137; peace movement 137 Williams, Jody 142 Wilson, Bryan 38, 39 womb-to-tomb security 108, 109 women: attitudes of 83; heads in branches of government 87–90; social engagement of 90–3; suffrage movement 83–8 Women’s Christian Temperance movement 84 workshops 106 World Centers of Compassion for Children International (WCCCI) 137 World Council of Churches in Geneva 125 World Economic Forum 87 World Health Assembly 107 World Health Organization (WHO) 107 Yousafzai, Malala 48–51, 90 Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 19, 22 youth politics 121 Zweig, Stefan 112