On the occasion of a professional assignment in Tokyo, I had the honour and privilege twice to meet representatives and staff of Gensuikyo, the Japan Council Against A & H Bombs. Here are notes taken from my discussions with some of the eight permanent staff, and with supporters of Gensuikyo, notably Yayoi Tsuchida, Assistant General Secretary, and Hiroshi Taka, formerly General Secretary and now Representative Director.

From left to right: Marc Morgan, member of Haringey CND, Hiroshi Taka, formerly General Secretary and now Representative Director of Gensuikyo, Yayoi Tsuchida, Assistant General Secretary of Gensuikyo.

It is impossible to evoke the genesis and history of Gensuikyo without first considering the political background, post-war Japanese history, and the twists and turns of Japan’s relations with the US.

After world war II, Japan was occupied and did not regain its full political independence until 1952. Even then, it was independence under surveillance: Japan was expected to align with the US in its cold war against the Soviet Union and, with the provision of industrial supplies and military bases, in its hot war in Korea. Subservient Japanese governments went along with this expectation, but civil society, while accepting features of Western lifestyle and economic organization, was restless. This set a pattern of ambiguous relations with the US which, while now more muted, subsists until this day.

Matters came to a head in 1954, when the US tested its first H-bomb in the Marshall Islands. This provoked an explosion of anger amongst Japanese people, with an astonishing 32 million people signing a petition calling for the abolition of Nuclear Weapons. Gensuikyo was created in the wake of this outpouring of public concern. After preliminary discussions, the Council was officially launched at a peace conference in August 1955.

The structure of Gensuikyo has changed very little over the years: it is an umbrella organization to which large numbers of organizations are affiliated, with three very simple demands or principles:

Prevention of any repeat of Nuclear war, ever
Abolition of all nuclear weapons
Solidarity with victims of the 1945 nuclear bombings of Japan.

Any organization may join which subscribes to these three core principles. Large numbers of organizations are members of the coalition: Trade Unions – the bedrock of Gensiuyo’s support and also of its financing; Religious organizations; local branches of Gensuikyo, of which there are many, and which can, unlike Gensuikyo centrally, have individual members.

While the core messages of Gensuikyo have changed very little over the years, it has modulated its campaigning themes to take account of changing national and international realities. Gensuikyo played an active part in the increasingly vocal campaign against US attempts to bind Japan into a more militarily explicit Treaty in the early 1960s.

In national politics, Gensuikyo has resisted the attempts, sometimes as in the early 60s induced by the US, sometimes homegrown, to water down Article 9 of the Japanese constitution. Article 9 commits the Japanese government to renounce belligerency and to avoid waging war – and in principle also to avoid preparations for war, including by renouncing the maintenance of a standard army in the classical sense. In practise Japan has a “self-defence force” equipped like most modern armies, but strategy and equipment are supposed to reflect a non-belligerent posture. Several governments including the present one under Abe have attempted to circumvent the restrictions imposed by Article 9, and to embrace conventional military doctrines under cover of strengthening the “self-defence force”. For the most part such attempts have failed, under the pressure of opposition parties and of civil society.

In the 1960s and in the latter decades of the 20th century, Gensuikyo has teamed up with protest movements in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere to protest against French nuclear weapons in the Pacific.

Since 2000 Gensuikyo has been a vocal and active member of worldwide civil society movements putting pressure on the nuclear-armed states to engage in genuine nuclear disarmament. Japan, with Gensuikyo at the forefront, sent between 800 and 1,000 representatives to the UN, on the occasion of the NPT preliminary conferences and then the NPT Revision conferences themselves.

Those meetings revealed the duplicity of the nuclear armed states, with their repeated promises to engage in genuine disarmament in line with their commitments under Article 6 of the NPT, and their repeated and ongoing failure to honour, even to begin to honour, the said promises and commitments.

Gensuikyo continues to participate in the NPT revision conferences, but along with other civil society movements, it is increasingly focusing its energies on promoting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. While maintaining active international links, its priority in this regard is to raise awareness in Japan itself. As the only country ever to have suffered a nuclear attack, and as -regarding civil society at least- an independent voice in a world where superpowers try to pressure allies into subservience, Japan ought to be fertile territory for support for the TPNW.

In practice things are not so simple. Although weaker than it was, and despite the unpopularity of its leader, Prime Minister Abe, the Liberal Democratic party seems certain to be re-elected in elections due later this year. Japanese society as a whole is politically and socially conservative, and apathy or ignorance of the nuclear threat, even in this nuclear-victim country, are prevalent here as they are elsewhere.

Despite this, there are signs of hope. In November 2019 Pope Francis II visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and made rousing speeches calling out nuclear weapons for the monstrous abomination they are. Further to his visit, opinion polls showed 65.9% of Japanese supporting signature of the TPNW by Japan; 10 million people have signed a petition, and 448 local councils – out of a total or 1700 – have passed resolutions, calling on Japan to sign. At a national level, though divided, the main opposition parties are also favourable.

World Conference Against A & H Bombs 2019, organised by Gensuikyo

Gensuikyo will be promoting the TPNW vociferously this year on the occasion of its main annual campaigning event, which is a Peace March, or more precisely a series of Peace Marches, taking place between June and August. The Peace March was first instituted in 1958 (just as the first Altermaston marches were taking place), and has been held every year since.

The main trajectory of the Peace March is Tokyo to Hiroshima, with teams of marchers relaying one another along the 1,000 miles which separate the two cities. But people march in other parts of Japan also, with a total of 100,000 people regularly taking part. I was due to take part myself this year, and would have been a most willing herald of solidarity between the campaigns in our two nations, but sadly the coronavirus crisis has forced me to return home prematurely. A bond is established, however, and I will definitely remain in touch with my friends in Gensuikyo, and will aim to return to take part in their campaigns another time.

Article by Marc Morgan, member of Haringey CND and of Abolition des Armes Nucleaires – Maison de Vigilance (France)