平和のために東大生ができること

Hello.  I’m Yuta Ikeda.

As Mirai wrote here, We were lucky to listen to Mr. Takeda on Tuesday.  I’ll write two points which impressed me.

First, the Japanese government is now trying to systemize a lot of activities of NGOs, universities, city offices, and mass media, and so on, using the system like “Special Communicators for a World without Nuclear Weapons”.  Those actors have been independently tackling the problem about disarmament, telling wartime memory, etc.  What the government can do is, as Mr. Takeda said, to amplify these activities as whole.  By collecting information and connect each activity organically, the activities will be so efficient.  I have been thinking that everyone wants to somewhat take action, and that, in fact, there are many kinds of activities, but that each is so independent that they don’t have ebough power. I was impressed by the idea that the government can use the private power.

Second, I have been wondering whether being emotional telling the experience of the war works good or not.  Is being an argument based on emotion effective so as to tell the story or to improve disarmament?  Being emotional has both good and bad aspects, but, as Mr. Takeda said, the role of hibakushas may be to move others’ emotion.  After all, diplomacy is both logical and emotional.  So, hibakushas dispassionately speaking their experience is moving, which is one of the effective tools to hand stories down from generation to generation and from Japan to all over the world.

We are thinking about how to tell hibakusha stories.  I think hibakusha story is more or less sentimental.  It is true that stories won’t be common if they are too emotional and ideological.  However, being emotional and, at the same time, moving is what is needed, which is rather effective to tell the story. 

I’d like to think about these themes farther.