Isn't it time to cut military spending to fund human needs in Japan?

(Photo: Shiho Fukada,  The New Yorker: "People wait in line to receive a charity meal in Kamagasaki, Osaka. Once a thriving day-laborer’s town, Kamagasaki today is home to about twenty-five thousand mainly elderly day laborers, with an estimated thirteen hundred who are homeless.")

In January 2013, Tokyo increased military spending for the first time in 11 years: to 4.68 trillion yen ($52 billion).

Meanwhile, 310,500 people in Tohoku remain in temporary housing; Fukushima nuclear meltdown radiation is still uncontrolled; and Japanese people overall are becoming increasingly unemployed, under-employed, and even impoverished.

1 in 6 (more than 20 million) people in Japan live without food security, under the poverty line. In the last 10 years, over 700 Japanese people have starved to death.

According to the Gini Index (“the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country”), in Japan has gone from .25 (1993) to .33 (2008). Japan also has one of the OECD's highest poverty rates (15%), close to Mexico's. It is even higher for the elderly.

At the same time, the consumption tax and government debt has increased.

Isn't it time to cut military spending to fund human needs in Japan?

(Tokyo already has the world’s sixth largest military budget.)

"LIFE IS A TREASURE" (Nuchi Du Takara) monument groundbreaking ceremony @ Okinawa Peace Prayer Park - APRIL 22, 2013

"LIFE IS A TREASURE" (Nuchi Du Takara) monument groundbreaking ceremony - APRIL 22, 2013 at OKINAWA PEACE PRAYER PARK:

Nuchi Du Takara "Life is a Treasure" monument groundbreaking (Hikoshiki) ceremony will be on Monday, Earth Day April 22nd from 14:00, at the "Okinawa Peace Prayer Park". The "hinpun" monument will be completed on Saturday June 8th World Ocean Day.

The monument will be at the "Cornerstone of Peace" (Everlasting Waves of Peace). Un-veiling and blessing ceremony will take place on Sunday June 9th from 14:00, everyone welcome.

Charity Live will be held at the Okinawa Peace Prayer Park Hall (Okinawa Heiwa KinenDou) from 14:00~

Adults: ¥3,000 / Children and Students free.
Performance by Ishihara Emi, Karate, Ryukyu Buyo etc,

Other live events that support this project will be announced under the "Blue Peace Live".

Handprint Cherry Blossoms Bring Hope to Miyagi

Via Asahi:

"Handprint cherry blossoms of hope are in full bloom"

ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--Although cherry blossoms are not in bloom yet in the Tohoku area, a handprinted painting of a tree in full bloom can currently be seen in the Ogatsu district of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, which was hit hard by the Great East Japan Earthquake. 

About 200 people including some from other parts of Japan, gathered together on March 30 and 31. Participants added their palm prints in pink and red paint to a white plastered wall, forming cherry blossoms on an illustrated tree.

The wall, which is four meters long and 40 meters wide, was built at Arahama beach in December as a canvas to express messages of hope.

“Because reconstruction has been stalled, I wanted to create an opportunity for people to come together here,” said Akira Komatsu, 38, a vice chairman of the committee for the canvas project. “I hope people's spirits will be raised by looking at this handmade cherry tree.”

Cherry Blossom Tree at Night at Tazoin Zen Buddhist Temple in Kyoto

Photo: Taizoin Zen Buddhist Temple on FB 

Spring Love Harukaze 2013: Creating the Future!

The legendary free urban gathering, Harukaze (“Spring Love”), is back for its fifth year—again set to bring good vibes to Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park on Saturday, March 30^th and Sunday, March 31st during the height of cherry blossom season. Following the ongoing event theme of “Building the Future”, this year we will focus upon three main sub-themes: supporting children in Fukushima, shifting to alternative energy use, and advocating the right to dance.

Come out with your family, friends, or on your own to this amazing weekend extravaganza to contemplate new lifestyles following the 2011 disaster, while also enjoying the gorgeous sakura and feeding your mind and soul with some Spring Love!

Date/Time : Saturday, March 30^th (12:00〜20:00)
Sunday, March 31^st (11:00 〜　20:00)
Venue : Yoyogi Park (Outdoor Stage area)* Rain or shine!!

Admission : Free!! (Donations kindly accepted)


Event Highlights :

• Top-rated musical and dance performances on three stages
• Peace Dome featuring talk sessions related to this year’s event themes, and more
• All stages and booths powered through solar energy and biofuel…no nuclear energy or fossil fuels!!
• Art Gallery
• Workshops
• Kids activity area
• Skate Ramp
• Love and Peace Parade / The Un-named Parade
• Chillout Flea Market featuring ecological and fair-trade goods
• Food/drink stalls featuring healthy/organic ingredients
• NPO/NGO booths

Event sponsored by:
 Harukaze Organizing Committee
, Kanto Regional Environmental Office
, Shibuya Ward Office
With cooperation from: A SEED JAPAN, BE-IN, BUENA SUERTE, Kadoman Planning, BALANCE, TEAM, Third Culture, WAON PRODUCTION, Peace Not War Japan, POSIVISION, RA, natural smile

Sister Event : Earth Day Tokyo 2013

This year’s event themes :

* Supporting Citizens in Fukushima

We believe that one of the missions of Harukaze Spring Love is to keep the conversation going re. what is continuing to take place in Fukushima prefecture. In Tokyo in particular, our lifestyles have been supported by the electricity made at the Fukushima nuclear power plants. The reality, however, is that nuclear power has provided large amounts of money in Fukushima prefecture, from which the lives of certain individuals have benefited economically. Fukushima’s innocent citizens, including its children have suffered greatly as a consequence of nuclear policy and the resulting accident. By keeping the discussion going regarding what citizens in Fukushima continue to face, we can figure out ways to offer support in this regard.

＊Spring Love Harukaze will include exhibition booths with information about citizens in Fukushima, as well as inviting guest speakers who are involved in providing support in this regard. Donations will also be collected and given to groups doing work in this area.

* Shifting to alternative energy use

The electricity for all stages at Spring Love Harukaze will be provided through solar energy. Additional electricity usage will come from one to two electrical generators that are powered using biofuel. In addition to reducing the amount of noise coming from the event area and providing a more quality listening experience, this will prove that it is indeed possible to power music festivals—as well as society in general!—through existing energy networks without relying upon nuclear energy or fossil fuels.

In addition to simply raising our voice against nuclear energy, we are leading through an example of positive action in this regard.

* Advocating the right to dance

The Entertainment Business Act serves to enact restrictions with regard to appropriateness within the entertainment industry. Originally established in the immediate postwar period to prevent prostitution, the law in fact serves to regulate dancing in live houses and clubs—and police have recently begun utilizing this law as a justification for crackdowns in this regard (particularly in the Kansai region).

Spring Love Harukaze is participating in the “Let’s Dance!” petition drive, which aims to exclude dancing from the list of restricted activities associated with this law. Please sign one of the petitions circulating throughout the event venue and show your support for the freedom to dance!

2013 Participating Artists

MUSIC

• ackky (journal)
• TOSHIO BING KAJIWARA (HE?XION! TAPES)
• Bryan Burton-Lewis (Third Cluture)
• DJ NOBU (Future Terror)
• ERA (DipAura/1968/meki-higon.com)
• GOCOO
• GUUSUN
• HI-GO (DipAura/1968/meki-higon.com)
• J.A.K.A.M. (NXS / CROSSPOINT)
• KILLING ME SOFTLY
• KILLY (mindwarp)
• LIKKLE MAI
• 野毛ハーレムLAND
• NOINONE(feat.ULU)
• NUMANOID a.k.a. DJ TSUYOSHI (Madskippers / Joujouka / IDPS)
• parAdice (△,DUNE)
• Polar Chalors
• RABIRABI
• SUSERI (from Melbourne)
• VOODLES
• 7e (mindwarp)

ART

• Gravityfree
• DOPPEL

TALK GUESTS : Coming Soon!

Additional Event Information

* Smokers: Please respect the event’s general no-smoking policy by smoking only within designated areas!

* Harukaze has a “gomi-zero” (“no garbage”) policy
. Please leave the venue as clean as you found it by separating your trash at one of the provided garbage stations. Garbage cleanup is an extremely expensive undertaking, and if this policy is not respected, we may not be able to offer this free festival in the future. Show some spring love by supporting “gomi-zero”!!

Volunteers needed before and during the event!!
 We ask anyone with ideas and passion regarding our peaceful shared future to please contact us! We are looking for those who can help us before the event dates and during the event for the following tasks: Site management, translation/interpretation, cleanup, various administrative tasks,
etc. If you are able to help, please contact us at 
newstaff@harukaze.asia

* Organization: Harukaze is put together by a collective of individuals who aim to use the power of messages, ideas, expression and art to create a positive shared future that is built upon ideals such as peace, ecology and culture.
 All staff, activists and artists are working on an entirely volunteer basis, and Spring Love Harukaze is funded entirely by the donations of like-minded individuals, as well as sales from goods during the event.
Fundraising: 
Harukaze will have several fundraising collection boxes placed on site. This event is not possible without the voluntary work of our staff, and your donations will be an essential force for this
free event to continue in the future. We ask all attendees to stand up for SPRING LOVE and its peaceful and progressive causes for future generations to come!

Event History

Enjoyed by many event-goers during its first run from 1998-2002, when it was known simply as “Harukaze,” the festival returned in 2009 together with Peace Not War Japan—adding discussions on peace-related issues into the lineup and collecting donations for grassroots peace organizations during the 2009 and 2010 festivals.

Following the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake, the 2011 event included a candlelight memorial, panel discussions on issues related to nuclear power and alternative energy, and song tributes for disaster victims led by gospel singer (and festival director) Yuka Kamebuchi with her ensemble “VOJA” (Voices of Japan). The 2012 Harukaze event, “Think It!”, continued the discussion by encouraging festival-goers to reflect upon and implement alternative cultural perspectives and sustainable living into their own lives.

Highlights from Past Festivals:

2012 : http://tenthousandthingsfromkyoto.blogspot.jp/2012/04/tokyo-is-city-with-every-possible-sort.html

2011: 
http://pnwj-newsblog-e.blogspot.jp/2011/04/tokyo-art-and-music-event-mourns.html
http://asaphotograph.viewbook.com/album/springloveprayforpeople?p=1#47

2010 :
 
http://pnwj-newsblog-e.blogspot.jp/2010/04/spring-love-harukaze-2010-music.htm

2009 :
 http://pnwj-newsblog-e.blogspot.jp/2009/04/spring-love-rocks-yoyogi-park-with-love.htm

Watch Lucy Walker's acclaimed documentary The Tsunami & The Cherry Blossom for free today

Watch Lucy Walker's acclaimed documentary The Tsunami & The Cherry Blossom for free today at her website: http://www.lucywalkerfilm.com/TSUNAMI-THE-CHERRY-BLOSSOM

Don't forget Tohoku

Via Scott Ree of the Namida Project: "Don't forget Tohoku." 

Living Permaculture: 3/11 - Peace On Earth

Via Living Permaculture, Peace On Earth and other 3/11 (protest, festival, and meditation) events.

Tomoyuki Toyozato: Photos of Iejima Protest of V-22 testing & flight training

Okinawan photographer Tomoyuki Toyozato's photos capture the continued legacy of a half-century of US-imposed suffering of Okinawans who live in Iejima, a tiny island three miles west of Okinawa's main island. Toyozato's photos show residents protesting US military use of their island for V-22 Osprey transport aircraft testing and flight training.

Osprey aircraft noise  causes headaches, palpitations, and dizziness. Local dairy farmers are reporting adverse health conditions in cows, which may experience even greater level of impacts as human beings from the aircraft’s low-frequency sound emissions.

Ms. Shoko Jahana, director of the Nuchi du Takara House, 

a museum that documents the March 1955 violent seizure of farmland in Iejima.

Her sign says "Nuchi du Takara" (Life is sacred). 

Residents have been protesting the US military use of their island since 1955, when the US military violently seized 63% of land belonging to the farmers of Iejima, to make way for an aerial test bombing range.  When the farmers and their families resisted, US troops dragged women and children out of their homes by force and killed family goats. The soldiers poured gasoline on crops to destroy them and contaminate the ground.

In July 1955, led by Iejima resident, Shoko Ahagon, the founder of the Okinawan nonviolent movement for human rights and property rights, about thirty people from Iejima, including children, traveled to Okinawa island, to spread news of the US military seizures of their homes and farms.  Journalist Jon Mitchell tells the story  of their "Beggars March", during which the farmers begged the US to return their homes and farmland, to no avail.  Following the loss of their property and means of livelihood, farmers were forced to collect scrap metal from the US bombing range; this resulted in the deaths and injuries.  When farmers tried to return to unbombed parts of their farmland, US soldiers arrested them.

Besides using gasoline, the US later used  Agent Orange to raze crops and contaminate the ground. (Mitchell: "Given that the US military was now aware of the health dangers of these defoliants, its actions border on biological warfare against the very Okinawan allies who it was supposed to be protecting.")

Sixy years on, the US military still uses Iejima as a war training base: to simulate the landing area on an aircraft carrier and the US is expanding its use of Iejima for V-22 Osprey practice take-offs and landings.

Last fall, despite unanimous prefectural opposition, the US Marines brought the V-22 to Okinawa for hazardous low-level testing training over urban areas, including schools and hospitals, and ecologically sensitive rainforest in northern Okinawa. The accident-prone transport aircraft is now in its 25th year of development, at the cost of $22 billion and over 30 lives. The US is planning the construction of 68 other heliports throughout Okinawa to stage US and Japanese government-subsidized training of the commercially unviable  aircraft. The manufacturer hopes to sell the aircraft to the Japanese government, which would be the first foreign government to purchase the expensive US update of the tilt-rotor aircraft first developed German WWII weapons developers who abandoned development because of design defects they could not overcome.

(Many thanks to photographer Tomoyuki TOYOZATO for sharing his photos of the protest in Iejima last week; his image of Henoko is the cover of Satoko Norimatsu's and Gavan McCormack's "Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States" - http://www.japanfocus.org/-Satoko-NORIMATSU/3828)

•••

More on Iejima by Jon Mitchell at The Asia-Pacific Journal: "Beggars’ Belief: The Farmers’ Resistance Movement on Iejima Island, Okinawa" - http://www.japanfocus.org/-Jon-Mitchell/3370; and  "Agent Orange on Okinawa - New Evidence" - http://www.japanfocus.org/-Jon-Mitchell/3652

Latest on Okinawa at The Asia-Pacific Journal: "Okinawans Facing a Year of Trial: the Okinawa-Japan-US Relationship and the East China Sea"  by Sakurai Kunitoshi with an introduction by Gavan McCormack - http://www.japanfocus.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3908

Excellent article on US military V-22 testing and training expansion plan in Okinawa and mainland Japan:  "US Marines eye Japan as a training yard" by Kosuke Takahashi -  http://eblog.kosuke.net/article/56687633.html

More on V-22 hazards at Wired: "General: ‘My Career Was Done’ When I Criticized Flawed Warplane" by David Axe -  http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/air-force-silenced-general/

Frequent Osprey flight violations reported in Okinawa in first month, Asahi, Oct. 31, 2012: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201210310074

Nuclear survivor Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner: "Remember"

Via the Hawaii Independent, nuclear survivor Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner's "Remember":

On the 59th anniversary of the dropping of the “Bravo” bomb on my home, I find myself wrestling with what it means to remember, recommit and resist.

From 1946 to 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in my home, the Marshall Islands, all of which were considered atmospheric. The most powerful of those tests was the “Bravo” shot, a 15 megaton device detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini atoll – which was 1,000 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Since then, the US has continued to deny responsibility while many Marshallese continue to die due to cancer and other radiation related illnesses. In my own family both my grandparents passed away before I was born due to cancer and just two years ago I lost my ten year old niece Bianca to leukaemia. Radiation related illnesses endure into today, and many more of our family members continue to battle with the effects of those tests which took place over 50 years ago.

We Marshallese grow up with this history and these stories. We know them all too well. Not just stories of cancer, but also stories of babies born with no limbs, of stillbirths and thyroid problems, of families starving on outer atolls after being displaced from their own homes, stories of ash that fell from the sky that looked like snow. And then there are the stories of the land we lost – the beautiful bountiful Bikini atoll, how the elders cried as they were ripped from the shores of their ancestors...

 I am proud to say I come from a line of activists who have fought against these atrocities. My uncle Dwight Heine was the principal draftsman of the Marshallese protest submitted in 1954 to the UN regarding the nuclear test. The document he wrote is quiet, dignified, and understated. “Some of our people were hurt during the recent nuclear test,” he wrote, “and we have asked the aid of the United Nations, of which the United States is a member and to which it is answerable for its administration of the trust territory, to stop the experiments there. Or, if this is not possible, then to be a little more careful..."

It’s time that the next generation, our generation, picks up the torch from our elders and continues the fight for justice for our people. Oceania Rising brings together the next generation of activists - not just from the Marshallese community, but also from Kanaka Maoli, Chamorro, Okinawan, Japanese, and Tongan communities. This event is not only about honouring Marshallese nuclear survivors, but it is also about honouring our shared histories of solidarity building against militarization, imperialism and the impacts that it’s had on our Oceania. I am grateful to be learning more about these shared stories within our Pacific brothers and sisters’ communities, and I am grateful to learn more about my own history as well. It is this history which gives us the strength that is needed to continue to remember, recommit, and resist, as we continue the struggle to bring about change for our people.