Tanka poems against the war

Another war took innocent girls' lives. How many more times do we have to come across and endure the same brutal tragedies?

https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2026/2/28/backpacks-schoolbooks-seen-amid-rubble-of-iranian-girls-school

This shocking news reminded me that Iranians are poem-loving people.

Here I introduce a poem by a great classical Persian poet, Sa'adi, while wishing for no more violence in the name of “war” or “military operation.”

“All human beings are members of one frame,

Since all, at first, from the same essence came.

When time afflicts a limb with pain,

The other limbs cannot at rest remain.

If thou feel not for other's misery,

A human being is no name for thee.”

By a great classical Persian poet, Sa'adi

(Abū-Muhammad Muslih al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, c.1210 – 1292)

Imagine there is no countries

Nothing to kill for die for.

War is over, if you want it.

 I have been working for peace for more than 20 years. I have met many peace-loving people who are peacefully fighting against the system of war.

This fall I met a young veteran who recognized this system in 2023. Please watch the video for her message in English with Japanese subtitles for all of us on the earth.

On the blue full moon

Rabbits make tiny rice cakes

Bunny, give some to them ?

When you find hungry children

Looking up into the sky

お腹空かし夜空を見上げる児がいたら

月のうさぎよ餅を配れよ

O naka sukashi Yozora wo miageru Ko ga itara

Tsuki no usagi yo Mochi wo kubare yo

Do you know it has been said in Japan that there are rabbits on the moon and they are making rice cakes? I wrote the tanka poem in 2004 thinking of children in Afghanistan and Iraq suffering from hunger in the war zone caused by 9/11 in 2001. 

I am posting this tanka again for children and all the people in Gaza, where starvation is used as a weapon or strategy for genocide.

Stop killing in Gaza!

Have you watched  "Grave of the Fireflies" (1988)?

Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 Japanese animated war film based on the 1967 semi-autobiographical short story by Akiyuki Nosaka. Set in the city of Kobe, Japan where I live and, it tells the story of siblings and war orphans Seita and Setsuko, and their desperate struggle to survive during the final months of the Pacific War.

Here is afterword by Akiyuki Nosaka in Japanese and English:

Do you know the black rain which fell after the atomic bombs exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It radioactively contaminated the areas and has been hurting people's health.

"Pica" 2025 is a play taking on the theme of the "Black Rain Lawsuit."

[Limited-Time Release]

Release Date: August 2–15, 2025

"This is a story about the sky and us after the black rain fell."

Don't miss it!

Have you heard of a real story of  atomic bombs & black rain? Please hear the real voice of a hibakusha, atomic bomb victim.

Seiji TAKATO on Atomic Bomb & Black Rain