I am so sad and angry that Takaichi administration lifted the ban on lethal weapons exports, which means a major shift in Japan’s pacifist policy lasted for 80 years.

Takaichi is one of recent Japanese leaders to have pushed back against Japan's  pacifist stance.　Her party, the LDP, was able to win a large number of seats in the last House of Representatives election, and it is said that this was because many people, especially young, were favorably disposed towards her as the first female prime minister in Japan.

However, more and more Japanese young people are getting to know Takaichi is against Japan's long-lasting pacifist stance, and feeling anger towards her nationalistic stance and how she fawns over US president Trump.

I'd like you to know that now tens of thousands of young people are hitting the streets and raising their voices in their own unique ways, which has not been seen in Japan ever before. Their demonstrations are really free and innovative. Some look like fans at BTS concerts or anime song shows.

A young woman has set up a special website for anybody to join demonstrations and rallies to take place all around Japan as Demo-Calendar.

When you are in Japan, why don’t you check the calendar and join some in solidarity with peace-loving people?

Demo-calendar in English

++ Related news on nationwide protests in Japan ++

 ■Rare nationwide protests in Japan against Iran war

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/09/world/video/japan-iran-anti-war-protests-ldn-digvid

■Anti-constitutional revision rallies attract the largest number of participants in their 30s, according to an analysis of crowd flow data in front of the Diet.　KYODO 4/19/2026

https://www.47news.jp/14175710.html

Why don't you study International humanitarian law, Mr. President?

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

To stop those brutal acts of war, all of us need to know the law and condemn the violations indiscriminately, whoever violates the law.

＃Stop bombing Iran, Lebanon and Gaza!

＃Stop threatening humanity! 

 It's been 15 years since TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. It's said that the first casualty when war comes is truth, and it seems the same in the case of nuclear accidents.

Do you know that more than 400 children in Fukushima Prefecture are suffering from thyroid cancer? Young thyroid cancer patients who were children at the time of the accident are currently suing TEPCO for compensation.

This has received little coverage in Japan. Please watch the press conference, and report on it.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Challenging the Narrative: Thyroid Cancers in Fukushima Motomi Ushiyama, Chief of Internal Medicine, Sagami Seikyo Ophthalmology and Internal Medicine Clinic Kenichi Ido, Attorney at Law

To support the 3.11 Children's Thyroid Cancer Lawsuit: https://www.311support.net/english/

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!