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INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN
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INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY • TOKYO, JAPAN
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VOL2 Nol DECEMBER 1995
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Browsing in Tokyo bookstores these days one readily notices sections labeled "Books of Asia." Books on China, South and North Korea, or other Southeast Asian countries look like they are competing with each other for bestseller status. Some of these books are well-researched, well-documented, and, well-written. Quite a few, however, are more sensationalized, capitalizing on the present "Asia boom" in Japan.
Asian languages like Indonesian, Vietnamese, even Mongolian, are reportedly becoming more popular among students attending foreign language schools in town. APEC, the Asia Pacific Economic Forum, has suddenly come into the limelight, and is fast becoming a near household word. Most world leaders today are emphasizing the importance of Asia, whether politically, economically, or culturally.
These observations suggest Japan's present day "Asia-ism" or tilt toward Asia. And this, I believe, is the most conspicuous, if not most significant, phenomenon at the time of the 50th Anniversary of the end of the Pacific War.
There are legitimate reasons for this tilt toward Asia. However, I suspect that many people, including myself, feel rather skittish about this "Asia-ism." It is closely related to an anti-western psychology or sentiment that Japan has consciously or unconsciously preserved since the Meiji era.
Indeed, the legitimate reasons for this tilt toward Asia are tied to practical responses to world economic dynamics. No doubt Asia is the most lucrative economic frontier in the world. While
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Tilt Toward Asia
Ken Kondo
the Cold War was moving towards its end in the mid-1980s, East and Southeast Asia, in particular, were emerging as the fastest growing economic region of the planet. Four so-called "little dragons" (Korea, Hongkong, Singapore, Taiwan) emerged as high-growth, capitalist-oriented industrialized economies only to be followed by the ASEAN countries. Moreover, not to be ignored is China's rapid and impressive growth as a "Socialist market economy," with its two billion population.
Since this region, in the next few years, is expected to register between a six and ten percent growth rate which means unparalled opportunity for investment and trade, it is not surprising for Japan or any other country to look to Asia. However, in addition to economic opportunities in general, Japan has a particular economic reason for tilting toward Asia. The surging yen, as well as US pressure on trade has prompted Japanese firms to shift more production overseas, especially to East and Southeast Asia. The resurgence of China as a power also affects security concerns in the region and the world. It is another reason for arousing interests in Asia.
But Japan's "Asia-ism" means something more than simply the desire for economic opportunities and concerns for regional security in Asia. The popularity in Japan of Mahathir Mohamad, the Malaysian Prime Minister, is illustrative. The book entitled,77ze Asia That Can Say No, which he co-authored with Shintaro Ishihara, former Diet member and novelist, has sold briskly since its publication late last year. Since then several books featuring Mahathir and his ideas have been published.
Mahathir is well-known for his argument that the decadence and selfish
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individualism of Western civilization have caused its decline and economic stagnation, while Asian values such as respect for authority, loyalty to family, reverence for education and hard work, have out about the present economic growth and success of Asia. He also denounces the West's "racist" attitude toward Asia. In short, Mahathir is a hero of Asian nationalism.
One recalls that the word ken-bei ("dislike of America") appeared a few years ago out of controversies over Japan's contributions to the Gulf War. In recent years contentions to the effect that Japan's invasion and colonization of Asia were no different from what Western powers did, and that contrary to those who accuse it of domination Japan has, in fact, contributed to the emancipation of Asia from colonialism, have increasingly been popularized by Japanese conservative nationalist politicians. Under this creeping mood of nationalism, which is aided by the irritation and frustration generated by the rather highhandedness of the US on trade and other matters, Mahathir's rhetoric tickles Japanese anti-West sentiment.
See KONDO, page 9
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In This Issue
From the Institute Director ......................2
Feature Article.........................................3
Work of the Institute ................................4
Review....................................................5
Institute Profiles....................................... 6
Resources............................................... 7
Commentary............................................ 8
Statement................................................9
Editorial................................................. 10
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FROM THE INSTITUTE DIRECTOR
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FEATURE ARTICLE
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Japan and Postmodernity
Shin Chiba
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insignificant and fragmented, while incorporated into a system of some sort or other. Nevertheless, Lyotard maintains that the self is by no means isolated from that system or organization:
Young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, a person is always located at "nodal points" of specific communication circuits...A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island.5
We can see here the gist of postmodernity which is variously characterized as "foun-dationless," "empty," "flat," "depthless," "meaningless."6 And this is one of the most serious challenges with which Japanese society is faced today.
Allow me to portray briefly the postmodernity of Japan in a somewhat pessimistic manner. Excessive materialism and comfortism grounded in the modern ideology of "progress" and "growth" have now become so dominant a lifestyle in Japan as to have become a prevailing ideology. The mode in which this postmodern ideology attempts to realize itself is typically "the changing of change," as Sheldon S. Wolin suggested in defining the mode of postmodernity, which is to say, "the intensification and rationalization of change, the continuous reproduction of the new and the simultaneous subversion of the old."7 Contemporary Japan is indeed a characteristically postmodernizing society of rapid, incessant change.
As a result, the formal rationalization and control of human life has increasingly permeated our society, so that victory may be won over ordinary people by state and corporate bureaucracies. Politics is taken away from the hands of common people and delivered to elite experts, while democracy is acclaimed only as rhetoric.8 Economic power is concentrated in the hands of technocrats, even as the so-called "rational choice theory" extensively pervades social planning and policy making, while economic inequality and injustice are rationalized and incorporated into the social structure. Culture suffers the vulgarizing impacts of philistinism and commercialism; its basis of value is jeopardized and weakened by consumerism. Traditional learning, knowledge and thought are increasingly looked down
See FEATURE, page 12
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It has been long pointed out that the last few decades of the twentieth century represent a great turning point in world history. To be sure, one can discern some unmistakable signs here and there in the fin-de-siecle context which attest to the arrival of the postmodern situation in the so-called "late capitalist societies" or the "post-industrial societies" of North America, Western Europe, and Japan.1 When looking closely at current trends in the intellectual, socio-cultural and political situation of my own society, Japan, I cannot but recognize that what is conspicuous about the contemporary Japanese situation is not the emergence of the so-called "new human species" (shin jinrui) among the youth but that middle-aged and old people as well as the young are gradually becoming engulfed in the historical wave of postmodernity.
As a matter of fact, some astute observers of the current "high tech," "information" and "consumer" society of Japan insist that it represents a most exemplary instance of the postmodern situation of reaction, where "resistance" has been virtually wiped out and "politics" has been practically abolished.2 Even though one may not totally agree with their somewhat extreme and pessimistic analyses of current Japanese society, one cannot help but admit that these observers have at least caught a glimpse of some undeniable trends of postmodernity observable in Japan today.
It is neither feasible nor advisable however, to apply unthinkingly or directly to Japan the arguments of such French and American postmodern theorists as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Francois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Frederic Jameson or Richard Rorty. As is often noted, modern Japan has shown a general tendency of observing the continuous arrival of Western ideas and ideologies without seriously confronting them or assimilating them into traditional Japanese ideas. While ideas or "isms" of Western origin have been enthusiastically imported one after another, they are sooner or later used up, and disappear into oblivion. At the same time, there are obviously some aspects peculiar of Japaneseness which
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remain untouched in the whole matter of importing Western ideas and "isms." This very fact makes it difficult to assess the Japanese situation in an unambiguous and straightforward manner. For instance, it is reported that Japanese theorists Kojin Karatani and Akira Asada not so long ago shocked and intrigued Derrida in their round table discussion by boasting that there was no need for deconstruction as there has not been a construct in Japan.3
The most one can say with confidence about current Japanese society is the following: while the premodern still lingers so heavily on every aspect of Japanese socio-cultural life so much so that the modern has not reached its maturity, the postmodern has already begun to take shape gradually in some aspects of socio-cultural life, such as in the lifestyles of the consumer society and an efficient, high-tech, information society. What one can expect from contemporary Japan is the possible formation of a complicit relationship between the premodern and the postmodern. In this sense, the Japanese situation can rightly be described as extremely treacherous and complicated.
Nonetheless, the recent argument concerning the dominance of postmodernity in Europe and North America does illuminate in part a gradual change taking place in the socio-cultural life of today's Japan, especially the dimension which emphasizes the loss of the value basis of present-day life and its concomitant meaninglessness and aimlessness. According to postmodernism, in the postmodern world the modern idea of humanity, which has been understood as possessing universal value, has collapsed. Furthermore, it proclaims that the postmodern situation has witnessed the collapse of the idea of modern subjecthood, as it is simply "the age in which the subject is dead" (Jean Baudrillard). Lyotard argues that the discrediting of the grand narratives of modernity leads to the disintegration of the social aggregates which in turn change people into a mass of individual atoms. Thus, "each individual is referred to himself," and yet "each of us knows that our self does not amount to much."4 The self cannot eliminate the sense of being
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WORK OF THE INSTITUTE
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PEACE REPORTS
INTERNATIONAL
CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
PEACE RESEARCH
INSTITUTE
Volume 2, Number 1
Editorial Committee:
Toshiki Mogami Lester Edwin J. Ruiz Masaki Tanaka
PEACE REPORTS is published twice a year by the International Christian University Peace Research Institute (ICUPRI) located at 3-10-2 Osawa, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo 181, Japan.
Telephone: (81) 422 33 3187
Fax: (81)422346985 e-mail: peace@icu.ac.jp
Copyright ©1995 ICUPRI. All rights reserved.
ICUPRI was founded in March 1991 to engage the university community in scholarly research and education about peace. In addition to its research projects and publications, ICUPRI seeks to encourage national and international research and cooperation through lectures, seminars, and conferences, as well as training and teaching in peace and world order studies.
ICUPRI is supported through the ICUPRI Research Fund established in 1992 from donations of the Mitsubishi Group as well as other contributors.
Individual contributions in PEACE REPORTS do not necessarily reflect the official position of the University or the Institute.
Inquiries may be addressed to the editors at the above named address.
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Since the publication of PEACE REPORTS in March 1995, the Institute has engaged in the following programs and activities:
Research
The Japan-US Relations in the Context of Global Peace research project published in March 1995 a book entitled Ima Amerika Wa [America Now], edited by Professor Makoto Saito, former Senior Research Fellow of the Institute, and Professor Naoki Onishi of the Humanities Division. The volume is a collection of essays resulting from a series of research meetings sponsored by the project focusing on the United States from various academic fields including anthropology, religion, political science, and business administration. The book is available in Japanese from the Institute.
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Symposia
Wishing to take advantage of the presence of American and Japanese, as well as international, students at ICU, and in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the last World War, the Institute, in cooperation with the Japan Studies Program, held an open colloquium on the topic, "Fifty Years of the Japanese and American Peoples: Toward a Just Peace in the Pacific," on June 2,1995, from l:00pm-4:00pm. Professors Yoshikazu Sakamoto, M. William Steele, and Toshiki Mogami composed the panel.
The colloquium, attended by over 40 faculty, students, and administration, was designed to provide an opportunity to. discuss, in order to understand more deeply the dynamics of Japan's and the US shared history of the last fifty years, especially in the light of what have been significant differences between the two countries and peoples which have surfaced as questions of war responsibility, fair economic development, ethno-cultural integration, and indigenous democratization.
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Education
In March 1995, as part of its commemoration of the Fifty Years After the Second World War, ICUPRI sponsored a ten-day field trip to Central and Eastern Europe. The aim of the trip was to provide students with opportunities to see, first hand, key sites of Nazi war atrocities, and to meet with individuals and groups who were actively involved in the democratic revolutions of 1989-1990 in Eastern Europe. Highlights of the trip included visits to concentration camps in Auschwitz, Maidenek, and Sachenhausen, as well as, the memorial houses of the Wannsee Conference and German resistance movements in Berlin. The 24 students and three faculty advisers also met with officials of Solidarity (Warsaw), the Charter of 77 (Prague), and German church people (Berlin) who were actively involved in the democracy movement during the period noted above.
A photo exhibition of the 1995 field trip was held from June 5-10, 1995 at the Honkan.
(See related article in this issue of PEACE REPORTS, "Students Speak of their Experiences of Central and Eastern Europe." Eds.)
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Conferences
Several Fellows of the Institute were invited to represent the institution at a number of major peace studies-related conferences. Professors Yoshikazu Sakamoto and Lester Edwin J. Ruiz participated as paper presenter and discussant, respectively, in the international conference on "The United Nations: Between Sovereignty and Global Governance," held at La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia, July 2-6, 1995. Professor Toshiki Mogami was a commentator at the International IALANA (International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms) conference on "The Arms Trade, Collective Security, and International Law," in Florence, Italy, May 13-14, 1995; and, a resource speaker on behalf of the Mayor of Hiroshima on "Constructing a Peaceful World: A Forum" at the American University, Washington, D.C.,onJuly9,1995.
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REVIEW
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M. Scott Peck is the author of several books on the topic of personal and interpersonal psychological and spiritual development, including The Road Less Traveled which has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than eight years. In his most recent book Dr. Peck associates the problems of our deeply ailing society with the word "incivility." The Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary uses terms such as rudeness, discourtesy, barbarous or uncivilized to characterize the idea of "incivility." Dr. Peck is implying that destructive behavior patterns seem to be increasingly entering into relationships between individuals, in marriage, family, in our work, organizations, businesses and international relations. He believes that we can learn to restore civility in our organizations by first restoring it in ourselves through a deep spiritual commitment and by developing what Dr. Peck refers to as "community." The dictionary definition of the term "community" is a body of people having common organization or interests or living in the same place under the same laws. Dr. Peck expands upon this idea, implying a much deeper meaning which is explained in the following summary. In this, as in all of his works, Dr. Peck puts the responsibility for a better world on us, rather than blaming something or someone else. The ideas expressed herein have been paraphrased and/or excerpted from A World Waiting to be Born.
It seems that people do not always agree. Lack of agreement often produces tensions which lead to conflict. It is important for us to understand that some conflict will appear in our lives. Indeed, it may not be bad to openly deal with conflict in our lives and organizations through mutually respectful discussion and clarification. Conflict is unproductive when it is either used in the extreme and becomes disrespectful or hidden.
Lack of agreement often leads to conflicts before more productive means of resolving differences are tried. Conflict is painful and often foolish, but for some it is often less painful to take a rigid position than to live with the tension of uncertainty for a substantial period of time. Conflict puts the tension directly in the open, but it does so in a way that allows some people to choose rigid positions. On the other hand, living with tension of uncertainty requires that we face our ethical problems
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A World Waiting to Be Born: Civility Rediscovered, M. Scott Peck. New York: Bantam Books, 1993, 366pp.
Mark Greenfield
directly and with an open mind. It takes considerable emotional and ethical maturity. This maturity means that we learn to tolerate ambiguity, that we learn to enjoy the experience of discovery, and that we accept tensions which naturally arise when we let go of our rigid ways of viewing the world. This means that we may preserve our integrity but not our simple, rigid, or closed ideas.
Part of the difficulty in resolving conflict is that the participants often do not know each other very well. Indeed, it is strange to even think that strangers should ever sit down and start negotiating. Strangers are not in the least ready to negotiate. Yet that is often the way that things are done. On the other hand, when people do know and care about one another, it becomes relatively difficult to be in conflict and easier for them to behave more cooperatively.
Not surprisingly, conflict has its opposite, which in its extreme, is just as unhealthy. This can be seen as a type of false agreement. Instead of too much open conflict, the tension within an organization is hidden. Conflict is submerged or even denied. Real problems or issues, rather than coming to the surface, are pushed out of sight to form a dark but often hidden shadow.
This is the opposite of too much conflict. There may be a failure to honestly live with the tension from lack of agreement because the organization does not promote open debate. It acts as though the tension is not present. Yet some tension is always there. Life is a kind of tension which cannot be avoided. The point is that in many situations, when honest and ethical methods of dealing with normal tensions are lost, organizations may fall into chaos. Daily business is frequently faced with problems that produce tensions, and we should not pretend otherwise.
An organization needs both those who push hard and those who wish a more
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gentle approach. It also needs to maintain a balance of how much tension is in clear view of the entire organization. An organization may fail when either those pushing too hard or those with a softer approach become dominant and the open debate between them is silenced. A common type of failure may occur when circumstances cause the leaders to become so dedicated to a certain position or idea that questioning of that idea effectively stops. In some cases the need to cut costs or increase efficiency may rule an organization so totally that more visionary ideas are silenced. This may cause any organization severe or permanent damage.
A community can provide a much better balance. A community is a "safe place," where all the players feel free to speak their minds and where their voices will be listened to with seriousness. It is an environment in which differences are not only allowed but encouraged. It is a group whose members have learned to fight fairly so that problems are not left unsolved and the ethical tension is not abandoned. Introduce and encourage true community into your organization, and you will encourage its ethical integrity.
As constant conflict is a type of chaos in building a community, false agreement may represent an even less developed stage. Group members may pretend that they have no issues, no differences. They might try to avoid conflict and tensions. Often when unanimous decisions are made, they only have the appearance of reaching an agreement. It only appears that the issues have been dealt with, when in reality issues and tensions have been avoided or hidden. In effect issues have not been fully open to all, and some members of a group may not feel as though they have been heard or listened to. They may not have had the chance or feel free to offer alternative and constructive ideas. A true community, on the other hand, is a group that deals with its issues and faces its problems openly.
Openly dealing with problems are never painless and life with built in tensions can often hurt. Introducing true community into an organization is not always easy, but it does help the group to be more ethical, civil, honest, healthy and alive! It
See REVIEW, page 9
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INSTITUTE PROFILES
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Faculty Fellows
(Membership in the Institute normally is by invitation of current Institute members, upon the recommendation of the Institute Director to the University President, and for a fixed term. We continue from the previous issue our introduction of Institute members. Eds.)
Shin Chiba is Professor of Political Thought in the Division of Social Sciences. Among his many publications, "Arendt and the Politics of Freedom: A Politics of World Construction and a Politics of Resistance," in Shiso: 837 (March 1994); "The Concept of Love and the Political-Arendt and the Constitution of Collective Identity," in Shiso : 844 (November 1994); and Federalism, Democracy, Nationalism in The Development of Western Viewpoints in the Constitution (Tokyo, 1995), are worthy of note. Prof. Chiba was a volunteer in Kobe helping the victims of the Hanshin earthquake.
Kazuo Ogushi is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Division of International Studies. Among his publications, reflecting his interest and expertise, are Armed Forces and Revolution: A Study of Peru's Military Government (1993), and Social Movements and Leftist Thought in Latin America (both in Japanese). Currently, he is on research leave in South America.
Lester Edwin J. Ruiz is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Division of Social Sciences. His publications include Christian Ethics in Ecumenical Context (Michigan, 1995), co-edited with Prof. Chiba; "Myths, Politics, and Identity" in Paz y Prospectivas (Granada, Spain, 1994), "Toward a New Radical Imaginary" in Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance (Spring 1994). Prof. Ruiz is on the International Council of the International Peace Research Association, a board member of the World Order Models Project, and also an editor of the journal Alternatives.
Akira Tachikawa is Professor of Education in the Division of Education. His publications include "Abduction and Recitation," in Politics in Education (Tokyo: 1994); and "The Darker Side of American Education," in Today's America (Tokyo: /1995), both in Japanese. Among his professional involvements' his work with
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the Association of Christian Universities and Colleges of Asia is notable, including participation in the recent "Second International Colloquium on Education Toward Social Progress" held in Nanjing, China.
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RESOURCES
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(The Institute has its own library and materials acquisition program. These materials can be made available to the university community by making arrangements with the Institute staff. Below is a partial list, continued from the last issue, of what is available. They are listed for reader reference and interest; information included in this section does not imply endorsement by the Institute. Eds.)
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Smith, James D. Stopping Wars: Defining the Obstacles to Cease-fire (Boulder: Westview Press, Inc. 1995).
Urwin, Derek W. Historical Dictionary of European Organizations (Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1994).
Weiss, Thomas G., et al. The United Nations and Changing World Politics (Boulder: Westview Press, Inc., 1994).
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Japanese translation].
Beiner, Ronald, ed. Theorizing Citizenship (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
Bloom, Allan. Love and Friendship (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993).
Bok, Derek. Universities and the future of America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990).
Cornell, Drucilla, Rosenfeld, Michel, and David Gray Carlson, eds. Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (New York: Routledge, 1992).
Drakulic, Slavenka. The Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side of the War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993).
Gavshon, Arthur. Crisis in Africa: Battleground of East and West (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981)[available in Japanese translation].
Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmoder-nity (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989).
Hauerwas, Stanley. The Peaceable Kingdom (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983) [available in Japanese translation].
Kondo, Dorinne. Grafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
Nisbet, Robert. Twilight of Authority (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).
Peterson, V. Spike, and Anne Sisson Runyan. Global Gender Issues (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993).
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Books
Archibugi, Daniel and David Held, eds., Cosmopolitan Democracy: An Agenda for a New World Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
Bello, Walden. Dark Victory: The United States, Structural Adjustment and Global Poverty (London: Pluto Press, 1994).
El-Ayouty, Yassin, ed. The Organization of African Unity after Thirty Years (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1994).
Gellner, Ernest. Encounters with Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994).
Gleditsch, Nils Fetter, et al. The Wages of Peace: Disarmament in a Small Industrialized Economy (London: Sage Publications, 1994).
German, Robert F. Historical Dictionary of Refugee and Disaster Relief Organizations (Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1994).
Haller, Max, and Rudolph Richter, eds. Toward a European Nation?: Political Trends in Europe, East and West, Center and Periphery (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1994).
Kakonen, Jyrki, ed., Green Security or Militarized Environment (Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Company, Ltd., 1994).
Lebow, Richard Ned, and Janice Gross Stein. We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
O1 Ballance, Edgar. Civil War in Bosnia, 1992-94 (London: Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1995).
Ratner, Steven R. The New UN Peacekeeping: Building Peace in Lands of Conflict after the Cold War (London: Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1995).
Righter, Rosemary. Utopia Lost: The United Nations and World Order (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995).
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Networks
Americans for Indian Opportunity
681 Juniper Hill Road Bernalillo, NM 87004 USA
Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110054 INDIA
Centre for Peace and Conflict Research
Vandkunsten 5, DK-1967 Copenhagen, DENMARK
Consortium on Peace Research, Education
and Development
4103 Chain Bridge Road, Suite 315
c/o The Institute for Conflict Analysis and
Resolution
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030 USA
International Institute for Peace
Mollwaldplatz 5, A-1040 Vienna, AUSTRIA
International Peace Research Association
c/o The Institute for Conflict Analysis and
Resolution
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030 USA
PP21 RUA
Suzuki Bldg. 5F Nishi-Waseda 2-15-7 Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169 JAPAN |
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From the Reading List of
Institute Members
Anderson, Scott, and Jon Lee Anderson. Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1986) [available in
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Congratulations!
The Peace Research Institute congratulates lori Kato for winning the 1995 Saito Award for his thesis entitled "Kokusai-shakai ni okeru Seigi" [translated as "Justice in International Society"].
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COMMENTARY
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History in the Making:
Lessons of the Smithsonian
Exhibit
Jessica Stoner, Utako Shimizu,
Shari Mao*
In this fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, there has been a renewed public and scholarly interest in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And so should it be. For the fact is, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only cities on our planet to experience the devastation of atomic bombs, gave rise to a new era of international politics where the power of a state is measured by the number of nuclear weapons it has at its disposal.
Moreover, the capacity for nuclear war, despite the end of the so-called Cold War and its nuclear arms race, indeed, perhaps, because of its end, remains a profound threat to planetary life. Nuclear war, in fact, can only bring to an end human life as we know it. J. Foster and G. Brower rightly noted in this context that there are no historical precedents and nowhere in the literature of nuclear warfare is the termination problem systematically addressed. They add that there is no terminal point to nuclear war short of mutual annihilation (And the Clocks Were Striking Thirteen: The Termination of War, (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 1976), p.D.
If we are to heed the warning of Albert Einstein that the splitting of the atom has changed everything save our mode of thinking...and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe, then, it is critical, especially for our generation which has not experienced a world war in our lifetime, to reflect, indeed, to meditate, on the meaning and significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the future of our planet.
In this context, we find the controversy around the US Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's exhibition, opened in May 1995, and which ignited a firestorm of criticism, to be instructive. In brief, the original plan for this exhibit was to include pictures of
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the destruction caused by the bomb, mainly of Japanese victims, and a narration which included profound questions about the necessity of and justification for the bombings. The exhibit also included the Enola Gay, the original aircraft used to drop the bomb, as well as information about its crew.
American veterans groups vehemently objected to the exhibit, calling it a biased and unsympathetic portrayal of the war. More than eighty congresspeople joined these groups threatening to cut federal contributions to the museum and demanding the removal of the museum director, Martin O. Harwit. As a result of the furor and objections, the exhibit was subsequently scaled down by the director who replaced Harwit, and has since been reduced to a display of the Enola Gay fuselage and information about the crew.
Disputes over the exhibit largely focused on facts, figures, hardware, and the perceived slant of its presentation. Critics of the exhibit especially pointed to the fact that the bombings forced Japan to surrender, thereby bringing the Pacific war to its shocking but necessary end, and held the Russians at bay, thus safeguarding the future of democracy. Others more sympathetic challenged the use of the awful weapon on moral grounds, and questioned the necessity of its use given the actual state of the war fifty years ago.
Both Japanese and American university women in a Peace Studies course at International Christian University, who were exploring issues around the theme "Women and Peace," found themselves involved in this international controversy. In the setting of our classroom we experienced firsthand the difficulty and discomfort of having to face not only this painful past, but the present which has emerged from it. On the one hand, we understand the position of American World War II veterans who felt that they were only serving, if not defending, their country. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the plight of the Hibakusha and their families, who, fifty years later, are still living with the aftereffects and the painful memories of nuclear radiation.
Without diminishing these histories, we want to suggest that there is something even more disturbing about the recent
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discussions around the Smithsonian exhibit than its lack of representation, if not misrepresentation, of the motives or reasons for the use of nuclear weapons fifty years ago. The current discussions fall short of exposing our generation and those to come to the human experience of nuclear warfare in the form of pictures and artifacts which, in our view, show for themselves why the atomic bomb should never be used again. The way in which each country chooses to represent their actions in war (e.g., the Smithsonian exhibit) is integral to the way future generations view their own position within the world community and directly influences their perceptions of war and peace. Thus, C. Spretnak writes in a different, though not unrelated context:
Since a major war now could easily bring on massive annihilation of almost unthinkable proportions, why are discussions in our national forums addressing the madness of the nuclear arms race limited to matters of hardware and statistics? A more comprehensive analysis is badly needed. ("Naming the Cultural Forces that Push Us Toward War " in Journal of Humanistic Psychology (Summer 1983), cited in Betty Reardon, Women and Peace: Feminist Visions of Global Security (Binghampton, New York: State University of New York Press, 1993), p.140.
Activist groups may have been successful in preventing what they believed to be a narrow interpretive historical representation of the Pacific war, but, these gains may have, in the long term, cost us much more. For the pictures and artifacts that have been excluded represent a very important connection between nuclear weapons that threaten our world today and the actual human experience of nuclear warfare. Severing the connection between these opens the way to what Einstein feared, namely, the drift toward unparalled catastrophe, in part because the consequences of the former are hidden, if not forgotten. Can this be avoided?
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There are two ways through which this unparalled catastrophe might be avoided: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
See COMMENTARY, page 13
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* With the assistance of Maiko Morita, Miki
Sumiyoshi, and Mie Takahashi. |
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STATEMENT
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(This statement, slightly revised by PEACE REPORTS, forms the conclusion to a larger work entitled "The International Christian University
Peace Statement," a project initiated by Shima Kobayashi, Utako Shimizu, Don Suh, and Miki Sumiyoshi-students in Peace Studies II, 2994.) |
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A Commitment to Peace
As members of the International Christian University, we commit ourselves in and through our university education to achieve and maintain a deeper purpose-that of Peace.
This peace must extend to all members of the university community, regardless of color, gender, class, or religion. This peace must extend to all that is under the heavenly skies and the vast seas, from the smallest creatures to the largest trees. This peace must extend from our innermost and most private selves to our outermost and most public selves.
This peace is characterized by the triumph of integrity over skepticism, freedom over coercion, respect over prejudice, and attention over indifference. This peace is characterized by the willingness to question the obvious, to deny unprincipled, self-serving compromises, and, to reject the security of harmony without truth, dignity, and justice.
The active search for Peace must not and cannot end within the environs of the ICU campus. It must be a lifelong search, a common effort which should resonate permanently throughout the many corners of the earth. Peace must be the single overriding objective of all our thoughts, all our actions, and all our livelihood. Peace must call forth all that we can and need to do together.
So the seed is sown. Let the love for simple truth nurture the courage, energy, and conviction necessary to make Peace the largest tree that will shelter and embrace all of humankind, the deepest ocean that will nurture and protect all earthly creatures, the widest sky that will contain and sustain all universes that have been, are, and will come into being.
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KONDO, Continued from page 1
If the present "Asia boom" or "Asia-ism" in Japan is so tainted by this way of thinking, that is, Japan turns to Asia whenever it cannot come to terms with the West, then we should ask ourselves two questions: Do Asian nations willingly accept Japan? and, Is it wise for Japan to "escape from the West by entering into the East" ?
Malaysia had a long history of colonial domination and Mahathir speaks out of this historical experience. The crimes which the West committed against Asia are serious. At the same time, and without a doubt, the crimes committed by Japan against Asia are also serious. Without dealing squarely with Japan's past conduct of aggression, atrocities, and human abuses, we cannot expect Asia to look with favor on Japan taking advantage of Mahathir's nationalism to legitimize its "Asia-ism." Indeed, it may be going too far to say that the specter of the "Great Asian Co-prosperity Sphere" has come back to life, but it cannot be unequivocally denied that such a temptation exists in Japan, at the same time that such a fear of it exists in Asia.
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Among Asian nations Japan was the first country that has succeeded in nation-building by consciously and voluntarily adopting Western ideas and technology while keeping indigenous values and culture largely intact. In this sense, I believe, Japan is well positioned to play the role of being a "bridge over the Pacific." But in order to do so, Japan should do first things first, namely, accept full responsibility for its past conduct against Asia (and not avoid it by using vague terms such as "regret" or "remorse" ). If at this time of the 50th year of the end of the Pacific War we are still debating whether to choose Asia or the West, I wonder what Japan has learned from the past.
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REVIEW, Continued from page 5
provides for a situation in which everyone can happily and healthfully grow and contribute at their own paces and in a safe space.
In summary, Dr. Peck's ideas have relevance not only to our personal and interpersonal development, but might have relevance to struggles at ICU in general, and to the intentions of the Peace Research Institute in particular. We are obviously experiencing difficult economic times in Japan and to some extent globally. These difficult times have put additional stresses on nearly every organization and institution which must provide a viable service while at the same time remaining economically self reliant. This means that many of us have been experiencing changes in priorities and cuts which might seem to put some parts of an organization in competition with others. It is under these circumstances that civility is most needed but when civility has the tendency to break down. This provides all of us with many opportunities to serve as an example of just how valuable real civility supported by a viable "community" can be.
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Special Film Viewing
On Saturday, September 30, 1995, the ICU Peace Research Institute, in cooperation with the Embassy of France, L'lnstitut Franco-]aponais de Tokyo, Uni-France Tokyo, and Mitaka City, held a film showing of Claude Lanzmann's historic Shoah, a series of stories by witnesses of the Holocaust. Over 150 people saw this epic nine hour film.
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EDITORIAL
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Fifty Years After the War:
The Struggle Against Forgetting
Lester Ed win J. Ruiz
for the Editorial Committee |
though it cannot ignore it and must often be nurtured by it. Rather, it must come from, and be inspired by, the future. It is here where the voices of later generations that have been excluded, particularly the generations that have not experienced World War II, as well as the voices of those who today have been forced to suffer the consequences of that war-be it the effects of nuclear radiation, or the legacy of hearts and minds broken by personal loss or sacrifice, or the conditions of poverty brought about by a fundamentally hierarchical and uneven post-World War II world-find their most profound significance.
Thus, the editorial committee has included the work of a number of students, from "Students Speak of their Experiences of Eastern and Central Europe," to "History in the Making: Lessons of the Smithsonian Exhibit," to the ICU Student Peace Statement. It is not that these voices are the only voices of wisdom or truth. Far from it. Rather, it is that they remind us that while the past clutches at their lives, it was not of their making; and that while the future belongs to all of humanity, or, more accurately put, that we belong to the future, that future cannot and must not be colonized: it must always remain free. And that, in the end, both past and future have no place except in the present where they are, not only experienced often as a haunting-as Jacques Derrida might put it, but where their effective-histories rise and fall...live and die.
Indeed, if there is anything which binds together Auschwitz and Nanjing, the Wannsee Conference's "Final Solution" and Postdam, Bataan and Pearl Harbor, and, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention, the violence against women, past (e.g. comfort women ) and present (e.g., sex tourism ), the latest atomic testing by the French in so-called French Polynesia, or even the wars in the Balkans, Rwanda, and in the streets of Los Angeles or Sao Paulo, it is not only what Howard Chua-Eoan of Time magazine called simple ferocious hate; of civilization pitted against civilization, race against race, blood against blood; but, rather, it is the puny, though odious and intolerable, attempts by some of their protagonists to colonize our common future, thereby endangering even more an already fragile and precarious world.
See EDITORIAL, page 13
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The struggle against forgetting was Milan Kundera's way of identifying for his time the profound dilemmas which those of us who find ourselves haunted by these fifty years after World War II are confronting today. The horrors of that war-from Auschwitz to Nanjing, from Dresden to Tokyo, from Stalingrad to Okinawa, and, of course, Hiroshima and Nagasaki-are so deep, so as to be immensely consequential, that the human imagination, as well as the human body, often seek refuge either in the darkness of the human soul, and in the silences of the heart to protect itself from the utter desolation, if not the often unrecognizable indifference, that accompany such horrors, not to mention the terror that they bring; or, seek comfort in the deliberate, often irrational, moral and/or political rationalizations for the justness of one's (self-interested) cause-be it the victor's justice or guilt, or the vanquished's shame or undeniable historical legitimacy.
One of the leading scientists of the Manhattan Project present at the Trinity test site in New Mexico when the first atomic bomb, euphemistically called "the gadget" was detonated, was reported to have exclaimed, "My God, what have we done?" almost the exact words which Robert Lewis, co-pilot of the Enola Gay, wrote in his journal soon after Little Boy was dropped over Hiroshima. These words speak for themselves: not only for what Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell call the "pointless apocalypse," but for the momentous consequences of our personal desire to forget-if not ignore, and the human responsibility to remember-to paraphrase the words of one survivor of the battle for Okinawa.
Acknowledging this human responsibility not only to remember, but which accompanies remembering, the editorial committee has chosen "Fifty Years After the War: The Struggle Against Forgetting" as the theme for this issue of PEACE REPORTS. Recognizing, however, the futility of focusing exclusively on the war, even to revise that history, as a way of
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remembering in order that history will not repeat itself, we have deliberately chosen a different path, that of identifying some of the key issues which we believe hold together that past, our present, and the future.
Ken Kondo's "Tilt Toward Asia" and Shin Chiba's "Japan and Postmodernity" remind us of the contexts-historical, cultural, philosophical, and political-in which remembering the Pacific War must take place. Toshiki Mogami draws our attention to the need to bind our experience of artifacts (e.g., the Peace Research Institute's Eastern and Central European field trip) to the profound dynamics of political thought and practice in the present. And Mark Greenfield's review of M. Scott Peck's A World Waiting to be Born: Civility Rediscovered, is a gentle reminder, from a different historical place, to be sure, of the importance of certain values for overcoming, albeit in a different context, the many forms of violence (what one might call "incivility") in our world today.
Put differently, these essays seek to link past, present, and future; suggesting, however obliquely and provisionally, that the struggle against forgetting is less a remembrance of the past and more a commemoration, that is, an articulation, of what it is that we can and need to do together in the light of our commitments, no matter how different, divergent, or antagonistic, to what elsewhere I have called "a friendlier tomorrow for all." Even more important, these essays may be read as proposing that remembering is not the privilege of those who paid dearly for victory, nor even of those whose sacrifice failed to overcome defeat, but rather, that remembering, indeed, the struggle against forgetting, is the responsibility of anyone who not only would want to forget or has already forgotten, but who has forgotten that he or she has forgotten.
The heart of the struggle against this triple forgetting: as much deliberate as it is unintentional, does not rely on the past,
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16th General Conference of the International Peace Research Association
Creating Nonviolent Futures
July 8-12,1996, University of Queensland
Brisbane, Australia
Five days of plenary sessions, commission meetings, discussions and presentations by an international forum of outstanding peace leaders, peace scholars and activists representing 70 countries on topics including defence and disarmament, peace education, women and peace, religion and conflict, human rights and development, ecological security, peace building in crisis areas, and many more, with a supporting cultural program of film, music, and poetry.
Send inquiries to: Mr. John Synott, IPRA Program Director, Locked Bag No.2, Red Hill Post Office, Brisbane, QLD 4059, AUSTRALIA. Ph: 61 7 864 5993, Fx: 617864 3982; e-mail: j.synott@qut.edu.au
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it ae cc lias R ft. e-
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FEATURE, Continued from page 3
upon as a relic of the previous, i.e., modern, age. Supreme intelligence (Sophia), wisdom of life, and knowledge of matters which are all concerned with the Bildung of human personality are replaced by massive amounts of technical information and data. Thoughtlessness spreads out among men and women, old and young, in sharp contrast with the rise of technical knowledge and information. Religion and faith tend to be regarded either as fitting artifacts ready to enter museums or as archaic objects for archaeological investigation. When it comes to the human situation of postmodernity, while an increase of diversity in tastes and hobbies can be seen, lifestyle becomes all the more standardized and normalized, so that the human Typus uninteresting and unoriginal becomes predominant.
Excessive materialism and comfortism have become an ideological screen to veil this serious and critical situation. A lucid illustration can be obtained, for instance, by looking into the recent phenomenon referred to as the "becoming a playland"-a kind of huge adult Disney World-of such megapolis as Tokyo, where an affluent and cute little cosmos for the enjoyment of leisure is played out. No matter how real this performance may appear, its illusoriness and falsity becomes obvious, when one juxtaposes it against the real world. For this juxtaposition exposes the inherent fictitiousness of this performance by contrasting it with today's realities in the world and Japan, i.e., threats of hunger and nuclear disaster, anomie, anxiety neuroses, a sense of loss spreading widely in the populace.9
What meaning then does religion or faith have in this postmodern situation, when the great majority of people today have little interest in them? What meaning in particular does the transcendence of Christian faith come to have? Is the Genesis story of Noah's ark as narrated in Genesis 6:1-9:29 a suitable metaphor to express the contemporary situation? Noah devoted himself to the task of building an ark for many days and nights, as God had ordered him. He diligently set out to do this task under the burning hot sun in the midst of peoples, derision and ridicule. For he believed in the promise of the Lord and took seriously the unseen as a
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reality of life. Is this image of the faithful Noah an appropriate metaphor to express the way in which the Christian believer lives in postmodernity? Or is a more fitting metaphor Jesus' parables of heaven as described in Matthew 13:44-46, the stories of treasure hidden in a field and of a merchant in search of fine pearls? Is Christian faith increasingly becoming a rare and priceless treasure in the dark and muddy sea of postmodernity?
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6. Cf., Sheldon S. Wolin, Seijigaku Hihan [orig. Japanese: A Critique of Political Science], eds. and trans. Shin Chiba, Takafumi Nakamura, Makoto Saito (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo Publishers, 1988), pp. xv-xx. Miyoshi and Harootunian, Postmodernism and Japan, note 2, pp. vii-viii. Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 6-9.
7. Sheldon S. Wolin, The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 77. Cf., Shin Chiba, "Gendai Kokka to Seitosei no Kiki: S. S. Wolin no Democracy Ron" [original Japanese: "The Modern State and the Crisis of Legitimacy: S. S. Wolin's Ideas on Democracy"], Shiso [Thought]: 784 (October 1989), p. 44.
8. Rightly suggestive is John McGowan's argument that postmodern foundation-lessness leads neither to chaos nor to liberation but to rigidified social order. See John McGowan, Postmodernism and Its Critics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 23-24. Cf., Jameson, Postmodernism, note 6, pp. viii-xxii.
9. Cf.. Shin Chiba, "Josho: Seijo Shiso no Genzai" [original Japanese: "Introduction: The Present of Political Thought"] in Seiji Shiso no Genzai, eds. Yasunobu Fujiwara and Shin Chiba (Tokyo: Waseda Daigaku Shuppanbu Publishers, 1990), pp. 5-6.
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Notes
1. This piece is an excerpt from my article in the book, Christian Ethics in Ecumenical Context: Theology, Politics, and Culture in Dialogue, eds. Shin Chiba, George Hunsberger, and Lester Edwin J. Ruiz (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman's Publishers, 1995). I use the term "postmodernity" in reference to the "postmodern" situation or age, while I mean by "postmodernism" a contemporary school of thought, whether poststructualism or revisionist Marxism, neopragmatism or neo-Nietzscheanism, which directly deals with the implications of the presupposed arrival of "postmodernity." I take as some of defining characteristics of "postmodernity" the following tendencies of the "high-tech," the consumer and information society: the sense of meaninglessness, the sense of aimlessness or flatness, the loss of confidence in normative judgment, and the like.
2. Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian, "Introduction" in Postmodernism and Japan, eds. Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1989), pp. ix-xv. Masao Miyoshi, "Against the Native Grain: The Japanese Novel and the 'Postmodern' West," in ibid., p. 148. Alan Wolfe, "Suicide and the Japanese Postmodern: A Postnarrative Paradigm?" in ibid., pp. 220-29. Kojin Karatani, "One Spirit, Two Nineteenth Centuries," in ibid., pp. 271-72.
3. Masao Miyoshi, "Against the Native Grain," p. 148.
4. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 15.
5. Loc. Cit.
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The main task in the coming era is something
else: a radical renewal of our sense of responsibility. Our conscience must catch up to our reason, otherwise we are lost. ......we
must divest ourselves of our egotistical anthropocentrism, our habit of seeing ourselves as masters of the universe who can do whatever occurs to us. We must discover a new respect for what transcends us: for the universe, for the earth, for nature, for life, and for reality. Our respect for other people, for other nations, and for other cultures, can only grow from a humble respect for the cosmic order and from an awareness that we are a part of it, that we share in it and that nothing of what we do is lost, but rather becomes part of the eternal memory of Being, where it is judged.
-Vaclav Havel
(quoted from his "The Politics of Responsibility," World Policy Journal, Vol. XII, No.3 (Fall 1995))
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COMMENTARY, Continued from
pageS
(NPT), and the fear that derives from memories of human agony in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unfortunately, drawing on Michael Mandlebaum's rather pessimistic analysis, for all its aspirations of preventing nuclear proliferation, the NPT not only as a creation of the Cold War but as it functions in a post, post-Cold War era of North-South conflict especially in the context of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the existence of rogue states or terrorist groups which makes nonproliferation even more difficult, may serve to deepen the rift between the nuclear "haves" and the nuclear "have nots." This can only be a prescription for even further conflict.
Mandlebaum argues, moreover, that the next nuclear war is likely to shape the nonproliferation policies as well as the attitudes and policies well beyond nuclear proliferation of the international community and the United States; just how it will do so, however, cannot be foreseen ("Lessons of the Next Nuclear War" in Foreign Affairs (March/April 1995, p.37). This is a bleak picture of the future, but not so far removed from much of the conventional policy making of states. While his picture is grim, however, that future is not yet a reality. One can argue that the future leaders of these countries who are our contemporaries, but who do not have a memory of the only atomic bombings the world has known, might learn from the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki-if these are brought into their lifetimes.
In international relations and contemporary politics, states often regard nuclear weapons as symbols of power, i.e., signs whose meanings can be invested and divested at will. Once the weapon is severed from its effect, it is easy to lose sight of the horrors and the threat to humankind that these weapons represent. For this reason, the decision to postpone and scale down the Smithsonian exhibit was profoundly disturbing to our Peace Studies class. Another opportunity for the younger generations to be exposed to the frightening images of nuclear war was lost in the unresolved disputes of the older generations, many of which are based on the unstated assumption that nuclear weapons (i.e., hardware) can be separated from the experiences of human suffering
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which are its direct consequences.
The fundamental conflict in the dispute over the Smithsonian exhibit stems from differing perspectives about how Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be represented especially in the context of a no doubt contradictory plurality of memories of the war. We feel that in the process of relaying history, it is necessary to investigate issues in their entirety while recognizing, if not minimizing, bias. This is oftentimes not an easy task. History is comprised of many peoples' experiences, quite different from one another. To properly analyze events of the past differing perspectives must be articulated and considered in order to provide a fuller, and therefore more adequate, picture that does justice to the complexity of human relationships. The challenge is to present the public with the varying interpretations of history, and trust them to make decisions for themselves. After all, the criteria for who makes decisions is a simple one: if one is affected by it (a policy, for example), one should be able to participate in making a decision about it.
The protagonists in the debate on the Smithsonian exhibit seem to have failed to realize that their very disputes in 1995 over the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are also history, and directly influence the next generation's perceptions and understanding of the nuclear experience. As William Faulkner once said, "The past is not dead. It is not even past." The argument over the Smithsonian exhibit shifts the viewing public's focus away from the actual experiences of August 1945 and instead places the emphasis on how to interpret those experiences. We fear that the resulting consciousness may lead to apathy among later generations if the experience of destruction from the atomic bomb is buried in these arguments.
To the critical interpreter, history with its wealth of experiences-successes and failures, can be viewed as a reference point for future decisions for peace. Unfortunately, history is often manipulated and used as propaganda to justify current prejudices and to prolong arguments that have little positive impact on the decisions that are faced by later generations.
As voices from the future, we challenge those involved in the current discussions to look forward and measure carefully the
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impact of their decisions and printed words, the power of which is exemplified by the Smithsonian exhibit. In our view, instead of reducing the exhibit, it should have been expanded. Although history can never be recreated in its entirety, attempts can be made to show the complexity of its conflicting interpretations. In doing so, those viewing history for the first time can be freed from the biases of earlier generations and enabled to draw their own conclusions. This, in turn, we hope, will help us to develop a worldview more suitable not only for the present world community but for the future, a community in which all nations and peoples are committed to working together for peace.
EDITORIAL, Continued from
page 10
In the face of this danger, which is both a seduction and an illusion, it is our hope that this issue of PEACE REPORTS will provide a context and an occasion, though only a beginning, for those concerned about our planet, to meditate-in what is only part, to be sure, of a larger ongoing dialogos, i.e., a movement through meaning-about these fifty years after the war, and our common struggle in the present against forgetting, not only of the past, but especially, of the future. In a different, though not unrelated context, Koreyoshi Kurahara, the Japanese film director of the recently released US television miniseries "Hiroshima," put this challenge of remembering a little differently, though no less profoundly: "Pandora's Box has been opened. That is the significance of Hiroshima. Now what are we to do about it? We have to look to the future together [emphasis mine.]. There must be no more Hiroshimas."
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ERRATA
The Editorial Committee apologizes for the typographical errors in PEACE REPORTS 1:1, as well as for the oversight of not translating into English the titles of publications by a number of its Fellows: Professor Furuya's Daigaku no Shingaku [translated as Theology at Universities] and Professor Sakamoto's Nihon Heiwaron Taikei [translated as Essays on Peace in Japan].
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THE INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE
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DIRECTOR
Toshiki Mogami, Professor of International Law and Organization, Division of Social Sciences
FACULTY FELLOWS
Koya Azumi, Professor of Sociology, Division of Social Sciences
Shin Chiba, Professor of Political Thought, Division of Social Sciences
Yasuo Furuya, Professor of Religion and Theology, Division of Humanities
Mark Greenfield, Professor of Physics, Division of Natural Sciences
Ken Kondo, Professor of International Journalism, Division of International Studies
Kazuo Ogushi, Associate Professor of Political Science, Division of International Studies
Lester Edwin J. Ruiz, Associate Professor of Political Science, Division of Social Sciences
Norihiko Suzuki, Professor of Business Administration, Division of International Studies
Akira Tachikawa, Professor of Education, Division of Education
Norie Takazawa, Associate Professor of History, Division of Social Sciences
Koa Tasaka, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Division of Natural Sciences
Jacqueline Wasilewski, Associate Professor of International Communication, Division of International Studies
NON-FACULTY FELLOW
Yoshikazu Sakamoto, Senior Research Fellow, International Politics; Professor Emeritus of Tokyo University
INSTITUTE STAFF
Masaki Tanaka, Associate; Ph.D Candidate in International Politics, Chuo University
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The International Christian
University
Peace Research Institute
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POSTAGE
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3-10-2 Osawa
Mitaka-shi, Tokyo 181 JAPAN
Phone (81)422-33-3187
Fax (81)422-34-6985
e-mail: peace@icu.ac.jp
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