"There are two major roles of politics. One is to prevent the people from starving. The other, and this is the most important, is to never wage war."
In my second year of high school (1967), perhaps influenced by the Vietnam War, I understood the Constitution literally. Combined with my adolescent idealism, I came to believe that unarmed neutrality was Japan's ideal state. I believed that maintaining unarmed neutrality required strengthening the United Nations and create a standing force, and that a world federation, as an extension of that, was necessary for collective security. This belief has continued to this day.
However, along the way, I learned that the UN never created a standing force. In fact, the veto power of the five major powers made UN security powers ineffective. Even Switzerland, a permanently neutral country, has an army for national defense. I realized that being unarmed would be unsettling, and that the Self-Defense Forces were necessary within the scope of exclusively defensive defense.
Then, on February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. It was a huge shock, and I pondered what I could do, but I felt helpless and helpless. However, as it was one year before the prefectural assembly election, I decided to think about it again after the election and to concentrate on election preparations. The following January, I happened to come across a piece by the late Professor Haruo Nishihara, former president of Waseda University, in which he wrote, "Japan, as a peaceful nation, should become a country whose national policy is to actively contribute to peace without relying on military force, and politicians, bureaucrats, business leaders and citizens should each use their own methods to nip conflicts in the bud, intervene in disputes and work to ease confrontations. If this is the case, young people should also be able to participate." I thought that if there was something young people could do, then surely there was something an elderly person like me (71 years old at the time) could also do, and I thought hard about it.
While I make some donations, I wondered what else I could do to contribute. Ever since my second year of high school, I have believed that the creation of a UN standing force is necessary for world peace. Eleven years ago, I opposed the Abe administration's exercise of the right of collective self-defense. While researching books and magazines, I discovered that former Prime Minister Tanzan Ishibashi, whom I greatly admire, had advocated for the establishment of an international police force, and former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa had also advocated for the creation of a UN standing force. I realized that not many people in Japan knew that these two former prime ministers, both from the Liberal Democratic Party, advocated for the creation of a UN standing force. Given this, I felt it was my responsibility to spread the message of these two former prime ministers both within and outside Japan.
After the election, on May 19, 2023, I visited the United Nations Headquarters to deliver the message of the former Japanese prime ministers. On July 3, Prime Minister Kishida submitted a draft statement of my opinion to the office of the Kochikai, of which he is the chairman. Letters were also sent to various embassies in Tokyo. Since the end of August the year before last, I ‘ve visited five countries - Finland, the three Baltic states, and Moldova - to deliver messages in person, and mailed letters to other countries. Last year, I’ve also mailed letters to each country, and even now, every Saturday from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, we distribute flyers with messages from the former prime minister at the west exit of Shinjuku Station, while playing John Lennon's song "Imagine."
