By Joseph Essertier, World BEYOND War, November 11, 2025

On October 12th in the city of Osaka, Japan, World BEYOND War members held an “Open House” during which we introduced World BEYOND War to a group of peace activists. This was organized as part of the October 2025 Global Day of Education to Close Bases.

First, I gave the audience a broad overview of our organization using the video that was produced after World BEYOND War’s ten year anniversary. Then Gerry Yokota introduced the World BEYOND War online interactive map of military bases.

Dot Nelson came all the way from Hiroshima and gave us an overview of issues surrounding the Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. YASUI Michiko shared her thought-provoking insights about the U.S. military’s sexual violence around bases and explored what feminism has to offer peace movements in Japan. We took a group photo with most of the participants at the conclusion of our Open House.

The next day, the 13th of October, the four of us joined an all-day “Solidarity Festival” (Danketsu Matsuri) at a park in central Osaka. With music, dancing, and various performances on a stage, and hundreds of participants joining in, it was a lively, fun, invigorating event. Various important and difficult issues for the peace movement were covered, including labor unions’ support for peace, stopping the genocide in Gaza, and the “merchants of death” who are profiting from war. One booth aimed to oppose Tomohawk missiles in Japan.

There was one display informing people about the injustice of Japan’s national pension funding militarism, even getting into the hands of Israeli weapons companies, and another that focused on the Nanking Massacre of 1937-38, which ultranationalists in Japan continue to deny and downplay. The new prime minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, “depicts herself as the successor to Abe [Shinzo]’s conservative legacy” and she was always on the “same page ideologically” as Abe on China issues and World War II historical revisionism.

In Japan’s second largest city, our weekend gathering represents the most significant event to date aimed at sharing World BEYOND War’s message.

The post In Osaka: Sharing World BEYOND War’s Strategy for Building Peace appeared first on World BEYOND War.

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