Peace and Wars

(Arakawa is speaking to Goto)

   “It’s 50 years since the end of World War II. We’ve lived our lives never having known war. Violence, yes, but that’s recognized as criminal, never a time when the whole country was dedicated legal violence. Peace. Is it peace we’re working to protect? What is peace meant for this counry, for this city, for us? All the effort and passion Japan put into the war ended in Hiroshima in defeat. And then the Americans came, bringing their nuclear deterrent, their cold war, their hollywood chewing gum war, and now all over the world there are bullet wars, civil wars, suffering, misery. We’re a rich country, but what is our wealth built on? The bloody corpses of all these wars. They’re the foundation of our peace. We now put the same effort into indifference that our parents put into war. Other countries, comfortably far away, pay the price for our prosperous peace. We’ve learned very well how to ignore their suffering.”
   “No matter how repulsive the peace, it’s still vital to guard it. It maybe an immoral peace, it may be an unjust peace, but an unjust peace is still better than a just war.”
   “I share your revulsion about just wars. If there ever was such a thing, it was the war against the Nazi’s. Our allies, Goto. Our allies. But how many millions throughout history have died in the cause of what their lying leaders called ‘just wars’? And yet it seems to me that the line between a just war and an unjust peace is very faint indeed. If the just war is a lie, is the unjust peace less of a lie? We are told there is peace, but we look around us and even if we cannot give it words, our lives tell us we cannot believe what we are being told. In the end, every war gives way to peace, so-called, and every so-called peace is the dormant seed of war. So it’s only a matter of time until the hard reality of war sweeps away our illusion that the absence of war is peace. So I ask you again, what are we working to protect? We enjoy peace on our tv screens, while just outside the camera shot, the war is waging. We forget that we’re just a camera angle behind the battle lines. No, we don’t forget. We quite simply refuse to remember. That cannot go on. Someway, somehow, we will be punished.”