Feature

SGI's Antinuclear Activities




In September 1957, Josei Toda, the second president of the Soka Gakkai, issued a declaration calling for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. The fulfillment of this ideal, he said, would be the responsibility of youth. His call became the foundation of the Soka Gakkai's peace movement and its grassroots activities to promote peace and nuclear abolition.

Toda saw nuclear weapons as an absolute evil, an embodiment of the destructive aspect inherent in the lives of all people that seeks to subjugate, control, and ultimately destroy others. He believed that nuclear weapons, which threaten the collective right of humanity to exist, should be absolutely condemned. Toda wished to "expose and rip out the claws that lie hidden in the very depths of such weapons." In this sense, SGI members see their daily endeavors to transform the destructive and authoritarian impulses within their lives and to confront injustice in the world as integral to the construction of lasting peace.

Toda's successor, SGI President Daisaku Ikeda, has spearheaded and inspired the organization's global peace movement. His annual Peace Proposals, examining global problems and outlining viable solutions grounded in a Buddhist humanist perspective, suggest broad themes and approaches to the SGI members. In 2006 Ikeda proposed an International Decade of UN Action for the abolition of nuclear weapons in partnership with civil society.

Read Josei Toda's antinuclear declaration here.


Petition Drives

More than a number, these petitions represent millions of dialogues carried out on the issue of nuclear abolition

In 1973, youth members of Soka Gakkai Japan gathered 10 million signatures supporting abolition which Ikeda presented to then Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim at the UN in 1975.


Abolition 2000 International Petition:

In 1997, SGI members collected over 13 million signatures, mainly in Japan, as part of the Abolition 2000 petition drive. The signatures were presented in 1998 to the chairperson of the Preparatory Committee of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT PrepCom) and to the United Nations Secretary-General through a representative.

 
Exhibitions

Public education for peace

The "Nuclear Arms: Threat to Our World" exhibition was first presented in 1982 at the UN Headquarters. The exhibition was viewed by 1.2 million people in 25 cities in 16 countries, including Moscow, Beijing, Paris and New Delhi.

"Nuclear Arms: Threat to Humanity," launched in 1996, is an updated version of "Threat to Our World." It was viewed by about a half million people in 14 cities in eight Latin American countries. During a showing in Mexico in 2002, the youth members of SGI-Mexico collected 60,000 signatures on an antinuclear petition which was submitted to the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL).

The "Linus Pauling and the Twentieth Century" exhibition introduces the life and achievements of this tireless campaigner for peace and nuclear abolition. Since 1998, it has toured seven cities in the United States including Washington, D.C., and five cities in Japan. To date, it has been viewed by more than one million people.
A new international exhibition on nuclear weapons abolition, human security and building a culture of peace will be launched by the SGI in 2007.


Publications

Factually recording the horror of war as ordinary people experienced it

The youth of Soka Gakkai Japan compiled and published 80 volumes of more than 4,000 individual war and atomic bomb-victim experiences from World War II between 1974 and 1985. The Soka Gakkai Women's Peace Committee in Japan published a 20-volume work of women's war experiences.

In 2005, the Soka Gakkai Women's Peace Committee in Japan compiled a DVD of 31 women war survivors talking about their experiences for educational purposes.

 

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