By Peter Masheter,
For the young people that make up Kakuwaka, a new group in Hiroshima's storied nuclear activism scene, Japan's policy on nuclear weapons is a contradiction to be directly challenged at the highest level.
Inspired by an exhortation from veteran international campaigner and atomic bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow to never assume others will shoulder a cause you believe in, the group dares Diet members elected from the Hiroshima region to sit for filmed interviews and elucidate their position on defense policy including the government's refusal to engage with 2017's historic nuclear ban treaty.
While Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic bombings, recent governments, including that of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, maintain it must tread a path of realism, eschewing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that outlaws their use in favor of another treaty promoting nonproliferation.
But for the membership of Kakuwaka, which in English calls itself Hiroshiman Youth Action for a Nuclear-Free World, nonproliferation has not prevented the current heightened nuclear tensions across the world.
"The argument has failed logically...Through our activism, I want to show people in and out of Japan that the positions politicians are taking are strange," said Miho Tanaka, its 28-year-old representative.
Founded in 2019, the group operates primarily from the Social Book Cafe close to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park dedicated to the victims of the bomb. It comprises some 20 people in their teens to 40s, including company employees, students, activists and musicians, united by a desire to better understand Japan's nuclear policy and achieve a world without the weapons.
It has become a new fixture in the western city's anti-nuclear community and has taken part in debates over the G-7 summit with activist groups with decades of experience.
"Our overall goal is nuclear disarmament, but I don't think, as Japan, it can be explained logically and practically why the country is not in the TPNW," said Tanaka, who fronts the organization with Yuta Takahashi, 22.
"To those politicians who talk about a world without nuclear weapons, we're here to say, if you want to make those statements, you need to show with your actions how to achieve it," said Tanaka, who on top of her activism works fulltime at a local car parts firm.
Amid Russian nuclear threats over the invasion of Ukraine and a trend toward boosting deterrence across the world, Kishida has proclaimed the Hiroshima Group of Seven summit from May 19-21 as a chance to send out a message in support of a "world free from nuclear weapons."
But with Japan under the nuclear umbrella of the United States and its "extended deterrence," Tokyo continues to support the older Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as the only viable way to ensure a world without nukes.
An affiliate of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, Kakuwaka also asks elected officials to sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge that states they will commit to helping further the nuclear weapon ban treaty.
Although heavily influenced by ICAN, the group's inception came rather from a lecture that the now 91-year-old Thurlow gave in Hiroshima in late 2018.
At the event, Thurlow, a survivor who lost eight of her family members to the bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, implored those present not to believe that someone will do the work for them and asked everyone to start taking action.
For Tanaka, it was those words that inspired her and others who attended to start the group. "It made me really feel that if I don't do something, then things won't change," she said.
The group has gone on to successfully debate nuclear issues with 12 local politicians and obtained signatures from some lawmakers, including the current Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Tetsuo Saito and former Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Minoru Terada.
But their biggest target has always been Kishida, even before he ascended to the country's highest office. Kishida represents a constituency in the western Japan prefecture, and Kakuwaka has engaged in a back and forth with his local office for years. A chance of a face-to-face interview still seems far off.
Founding member Erika Abiko, 44, who runs the Social Book Cafe that also offers direct chances to speak with survivors, said the campaign to pursue politicians came partly from a desire to break down psychological barriers to public servants.
"I just thought, why won't Japan even participate in the treaty? Who can we ask? And then I said, let's ask Kishida," said the experienced campaigner who has previously been part of nongovernmental organizations, adding they refer to all politicians by their first name, including Kishida.
"At first, Kakuwaka's group chat was called 'Fumio chat.' We referred to all of the politicians by their first names," she said.
Apart from helping to undo the mystique around politicians who owe their jobs to the voting public, Abiko said the campaign also has a mutually educational benefit.
"If we come to them to ask questions, the politicians have to prepare for that, and it means that they, too, have to study the most recent developments in nuclear weapons and disarmament. I think that is so important because even here in Hiroshima, people talk about nuclear topics without really knowing the issues," she said.
Their activism has also caught praise from members of the older generation of campaigners, including Satoshi Tanaka, 79, representative of the Hiroshima chapter of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations.
He singled out their "energetic, characteristically youthful efforts." But he also called for the group to take a "step further" than seeking signatures.
"It is of the greatest urgency and necessity now to urge politicians in parliament and local councils to debate how to create an environment toward signing the treaty. The whole country is descending into a state of dysfunction over the issue while no consensus is reached," he wrote to Kyodo News.
In the meantime, a meeting with Kishida's secretary in November last year to put forward Kakuwaka's G-7 demands remains their most recent contact. With the prime minister rarely in Hiroshima due to his commitments in the capital, will the summit offer a chance for a definitive response on signing the pledge?
Miho Tanaka was doubtful. "I wouldn't mind if we met the prime minister and we each used the meeting to our own purposes. He would get to say that he'd engaged with some young people, but his side doesn't seem to want to do it," she said.
