May 2, 2005
TAMADA Megumi
Secretary General, New Japan Women’s Association
Dear friends,
In the year marking the 60th year from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese women earnestly wish that nuclear weapons be abolished. We, members of the New Japan Women’s Association (NJWA or Shinfujin) have collected 660,000 signatures in support of the appeal “Abolishment of Nuclear Weapons Now!” The appeal called on the governments of nuclear weapons states to neither use, threaten to use or to develop nuclear weapons, and to take immediate steps for their abolition. It also called on the governments of all countries to take action for the conclusion of an international treaty for the abolition of nuclear weapons. With all these signatures representing Japanese people’s wish for nuclear abolition, we are here in New York City where the 7th Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is taking place. Of some 800 friends coming from Japan, 200 are NJWA members.
The New Japan Women’s Association was founded in 1962. It has five goals, which represent all kinds of women’s demands, such as peace and democracy, women’s rights, gender equality, better living conditions, and children’s welfare. For 43 years since the association’s founding, every member has, under these five objectives, carried out various activities, lobbying the national and local governments or companies, and organizing group activities based on demands of each member. With 200,000 members and 300,000 readers of its organ paper called Shinfujin Shimbun, NJWA is the largest individual-membership based women’s organization in Japan.
Every summer, we play an active role in the Japan Mothers’ Congress and the World Conference against Atomic & Hydrogen Bombes, two big annual events attended by some 10,000 people respectively. We have used the Women’s Peace Fund to invite women peace activists from abroad, and from the United States, members of the 9-11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Military Families Speak Out, and Abolition 2000 came to participate in these events.
NJWA has always committed itself to peace. Of 60 million signatures collected in Japan in support of the Appeal from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we collected 10 million. In 2000, the signatures were submitted to the United Nations, which acknowledged the effort of the Japanese peace movement. NJWA was granted the special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council in 2005, and has since presented reports and statements or sent representatives to UN conferences. On every occasion to come to New York, our members visited the WILPF UN 0ffice in the Church Center.
Japan has a wonderful Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Based on the refection on the war of the aggression it waged in the past, the Japanese Constitution in its Article 9 declares that Japan forever renounces military force. However, the present government of Japan plans to revise the Constitution to make it possible for Japan to participate in war with no legal restriction. Background to this is the strong pressure from the U.S. government, which wants Japan to cooperate in military activities as an ally. Many Japanese people are voicing against this attempt for constitutional amendment calling for the Constitution to be preserved as it is.
NJWA has published 240,000 yellow handbooks for the Constitution, which carries the full text of the Constitution, as a learning tool for its members. Aware of the importance of the Constitution, the entire association is now carrying out a signature drive to broaden support for the two appeals, “Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Now!” and “No to the Adverse Revision of the Constitution, and Defend Article 9.” In the campaign, we have made pendants, badges, and cards with the shape of 9, to attract attention from women around us. To the government, we have repeatedly made representations to request that it should give up the plan to adversely revise the Constitution, and to play its role as the government of the atomic bombed country by taking the lead in the effort of the international community for the nuclear abolition.
Through our dialogues with many Japanese women in communities, workplaces and streets, and through our exchanges with women of various countries in UN meetings in which we participated as an NGO with consultative status with the ECOSOC, we have become convinced that every woman beyond all the differences wishes for a peaceful world without nuclear weapons and war. The governments of Japan and the U.S. are military allies, but let us women of both countries bring ourselves together to work for peace. Let us unite the power of women around the world to close in the forces clinging to nuclear weapons.
Thank you very much．
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