by Katsuji Suzuki

Rissho Kosei-kai's unceasing efforts since 1970 at UN and interreligious conferences to promote a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons will culminate this year.

I would like to look back on the course taken by religious people around the world who have cooperated in creating movements for peace and disarmament, including campaigns for the abolition of nuclear weapons. I will also reflect on the wishes of Rev. Nikkyo Niwano, founder of Rissho Kosei-kai, which are the basis of the organization's campaigns to abolish nuclear weapons.

From his childhood on, Founder Niwano was kind to people, and after he became an adolescent he increasingly felt the greatest joy in alleviating people's suffering and pain. He came to know the Buddhist Dharma as revealed in the Lotus Sutra, the essence of Shakyamuni's sermons. Founder Niwano decided to dedicate his life to the bodhisattva practices of helping to free people from suffering and building world peace in the light of the Lotus Sutra. He said, "The Dharma revealed in the Lotus Sutra is applicable to all the myriad forms and phenomena in the universe, and not one thing is excluded from it. I made up my mind clearly when I discovered the truth of this teaching that can save all the vastness of individuals, societies, and nations."

Founder Niwano observed that all people of faith throughout history who prayed for human salvation united the peoples and races among which they arose. With his understanding of the Lotus Sutra, he realized that since all people of religion aim for human salvation and world peace, he should dedicate himself to interreligious cooperation. Furthermore, he fundamentally believed that the salvation of a society, a nation, and the world does not stop at saving individuals. Rather, the effective and ongoing salvation of individuals requires religious groups, who are the stakeholders of their society, and nation and the international community, to cooperate with leaders in many other fields, such as politics, economics, science, and technology.

Now I would like to trace the path to disarmament and the abolition of nuclear weapons promoted by Founder Niwano, rooted in his understanding of religion and of the Lotus Sutra.

Religious Cooperation Promoting the Spirit of Nonviolence

Although Founder Niwano's work for peace began officially at the First World Assembly of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, in Kyoto in 1970, it actually began in 1963 when he visited Europe and the United States as subleader of the Peace Delegation of Religious Leaders for Banning Nuclear Weapons, which demanded a comprehensive, unconditional ban on all nuclear testing.

In January 1968, the International Inter-Religious Symposium on Peace was held in New Delhi to honor the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth, a year before the actual centenary in 1969. The delegation of American religious leaders who participated in that symposium stopped in Japan on their way home to meet with Japanese religious leaders at the Japanese-American Inter-Religious Consultation on Peace in Kyoto. At this meeting, the Americans reported on the symposium's results, and they all discussed a nonviolent approach to peace. It was the concerted will of the Japanese and American people of religion at this meeting in Kyoto to bring peace to the world that marked the beginning of real preparations for an international conference to promote an organization for interreligious cooperation - the World Conference of Religions for Peace.

Founder Niwano said later of his belief in nonviolence, "I believe that in this nuclear age it is the mission of people of religion to devote their lives to helping people everywhere realize that nonviolence is the saving 'force' of humankind."

Religions for Peace Working in Partnership with the United Nations

Disarmament and the abolition of nuclear weapons were first proposed at the First World Assembly of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, in Kyoto in 1970. The First World Assembly convened against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, which had turned into a quagmire. The world's men and women of faith were calling for an early end to it. The world was in the midst of the bitter confrontations of the Cold War. With both sides in a ruthless arms race and the world desperately seeking a solution to the poverty caused by the soaring costs of the military, the Cold War was becoming a heavy and overpowering drag on social development. People of faith around the world saw an urgent need for arms control and drastic reduction. Religions for Peace proceeded to establish its International Secretariat in front of the UN Headquarters in New York. It shared with the United Nations a vision of the world moving toward peace, and it had strongly recognized from the start the importance of a partnership with the United Nations in tackling global impediments to peace.

The reason that Religions for Peace, a private organization representing the world's people of religion, had a voice at the Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Disarmament (SSOD), organized by the member nations of the United Nations, is that Religions for Peace was a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that could contribute on the strength of its heightened visibility sufficiently so as to make it a partner with the United Nations in initiatives regarding the problems of world peace.

Founder Niwano saw that the way to approach governments around the world to promote disarmament and the abolition of nuclear weapons was through a UN NGO reflecting the voices of people around the world. It was Religions for Peace's most favorable advantage that its first secretary-general, Dr. Homer A. Jack, was an expert on disarmament. Following his appointment as secretary-general of Religions for Peace, Dr. Jack served as an NGO representative of Religions for Peace to the United Nations and observed the meetings of the UN General Assembly's First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) and of the Conference on Disarmament at the UN headquarters in Geneva, enabling him to accurately follow trends in world disarmament, mainly through the United Nations.

Proposals to UN Assemblies

There have been three Special Sessions on Disarmament - in 1978, 1982, and 1988 - and Founder Niwano spoke at each as an NGO representative: at SSOD I as Religions for Peace's honorary chairman, at SSOD II as president of the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF), and at SSOD III as president of Rissho Kosei-kai.

Founder Niwano, as one of the speakers representing twenty-six NGOs and six research institutions, made a seven-point proposal, especially calling upon American president Jimmy Carter and Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev, as the leaders of the superpowers engaged in the Cold War, to "take major risks for peace and disarmament instead of taking risks with arms." As a religious leader, he called for an exploration of the religious and spiritual dimensions of world disarmament involving rather highly complex and technical issues. The most important outcome of SSOD I was the adoption of a Final Document that awakened the interest of governments and the general public of all countries, on a global scale, in the issues of disarmament and that clearly specified the goals of general and complete disarmament.

Four years later, in 1982, the Second Special Session on Disarmament (SSOD II) was convened to gauge the progress in implementing the SSOD I Final Document's action plan. Although the Final Document's stipulation for general and complete disarmament had been earth shattering in light of the history of UN initiatives for disarmament, those initiatives had brought no progress worth mentioning in diminishing the tension of the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union to deploy medium-range missiles, in which neither government ruled out the use of nuclear weapons.

That was the situation as SSOD II convened. Dr. Homer Jack addressed the session as a representative of Religions for Peace, and Founder Niwano on behalf of the IARF. When Founder Niwano took the rostrum, he said he was speaking "as a Buddhist from Japan, the only nation ever to suffer atomic bomb attack." He declared, "The fate of humankind must be determined, not by the governmental representatives of a handful of nation states, but by the grass-roots wishes of the broadest possible united segment of humankind." He also reported that Rissho Kosei-kai and Shinshuren (Federation of New Religious Organizations of Japan) had started a petition drive demanding disarmament and the abolition of nuclear weapons, collecting 37 million signatures in two short months.

o ease tensions and restrain the arms race, it was crucial to arouse public opinion, including that of people of religion. To this end, shortly after SSOD II opened, a World Disarmament Campaign was launched. As Founder Niwano was bringing his address to a close, he announced that he was taking to heart the need to arouse public opinion in favor of the abolition of nuclear weapons, and that Rissho Kosei-kai would donate $1 million toward the various activities of the World Disarmament Campaign in 1982 and 1983.

At the time of SSOD II, Rissho Kosei-kai sent a forty-two-member Peace Mission to New York. During their seven-day stay, beginning June 22, the group participated in various events near UN Headquarters for the promotion of disarmament and the abolition of nuclear weapons. They attended as NGO observers at an NGO presentation session of SSOD II and listened to Founder Niwano's oral statement. Their other activities included dialogues with U.S. and Soviet UN representatives. Rev. Kinjiro Niwano, the head of the Peace Mission and chairman of the Rissho Kosei-kai Promotion Committee for Disarmament and the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, submitted a portion of the 37 million signatures collected by Rissho Kosei-kai and Shinshuren to UN secretary-general Javier Pérez de Cuéllar during a ceremony on the terrace outside the headquarters building.

SSOD III convened in 1988. It was addressed by representatives of eighty-seven international NGOs. As president of Rissho Kosei-kai, Founder Niwano spoke of the urgency of trust-building measures between nations as an indispensable requisite for promoting disarmament. He argued that to create an environment for pragmatic and technical advances in disarmament and an advancement of so-called "outward peace," we must vigorously promote dialogue and cooperation that can transform hatred and hostility into trust and friendship.

Three SSOD III subcommittees evaluated implementation of the SSOD I and SSOD II action plans and discussed future disarmament plans and the United Nations' role for disarmament. The issues discussed included a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, naval disarmament, the prevention of an arms race in space, and the relationship between disarmament and development. The subcommittees deadlocked on these issues, however, and SSOD III issued no Final Document. However, the results of the World Disarmament Campaign initiated by SSOD II were appreciated, and it was agreed that the campaign should go forward with increased strength. In this connection, it is worth mentioning that, concurrently with SSOD III, Founder Niwano witnessed the signing ceremony that established the UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific (UNRCPD). The ceremony was held in the office of Mr. Yasushi Akashi, then the UN undersecretary-general for disarmament affairs.

In 1989 the international community witnessed the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and while it was expecting a "peace dividend" with the end of the Cold War, the world was plunged into more than ten years of civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Then the international reaction to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led to the Gulf War, resulting in a new state of confusion for world security. One measure taken to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the face of such an international environment was the Amendment Conference at UN Headquarters in New York in January 1991 to convert the standing Partial Test Ban Treaty to a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

President Nichiko Niwano, who inherited Founder Niwano's fervent desire for world peace, declared in his address to the Amendment Conference that international trust was indispensable for disarmament and the abolition of nuclear weapons, and that to advance the disarmament campaign in the Asia-Pacific region, in particular, Rissho Kosei-kai would continue the overall support it had given the UNRCPD since SSOD III, so that UNRCPD could develop a campaign of maximum effectiveness.

Unending Trust in Young People's Initiatives

As we have seen, on three occasions Founder Niwano called on the statesmen of the world for a world without nuclear weapons, and President Niwano addressed the Amendment Conference. Now, in 2010, the baton to free the world of nuclear weapons has been passed to the world's religious youth, who are at this moment dynamically conducting a drive to gather 50 million signatures in the Arms Down! Campaign for Shared Security.

Two thousand ten is a make-or-break year in which, as Mr. Obama has spelled out, we can either open the path that makes possible humankind's heartfelt desire to create a world without nuclear weapons or resign ourselves to a nightmare that foretells the end of humankind. In May there will be a Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The important decision as to whether we will actually move in the direction of eliminating nuclear weapons is riding on this conference. Our 50-million-strong signature-gathering drive for Arms Down! will have a definite impact, to climax with the 2020 Vision Campaign promoted by Mayors for Peace, led by the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Its goal is to free the world of nuclear weapons by 2020 (by ratification of a nuclear weapons ban treaty as well as actual abolition). At the NPT Review Conference, Mayors for Peace will plead for adoption of the 2020 Vision Campaign.

In his book Some Thoughts on Peace, Founder Niwano tells how he expected the abolition of nuclear weapons to come about. He wrote that some people "are already despairing, mourning the impossibility of abolishing nuclear weapons in the world as it is today. However, as the desire grows more urgent among people, one by one others will be added to their number, and step by step, efforts will be made to achieve this dream. It is in this way that the miracle will occur."

Founder Niwano always had an unwavering faith in the affirmative activism of young people, feeling that it would be through them that a new era would dawn. I would like to close with President Nichiko Niwano's remarks about the youth who are exerting their efforts for the Arms Down! signature-gathering campaign, the youth who are working to usher in a new age of peace:

"There is no doubt that concentrating the brilliance of the lives" of the world's youth "will itself bear much fruit. Uncovering the goodwill and desire for peace that resides in the hearts of all people is a true activity for religious people I would like to see."