Japan’s Initiative for Ministry of Peace
In Japan, when Dennis Kucinich was introduced to Japanese people by Yumi Kikuchi as a presidential candidate who can bring about peace to the world, a support group for Dennis Kucinich was created (Friends of Dennis Kucinich, and a few other local groups) and they published a book “Dennis Kucinich - The Peace President of America” , which consists of Dennis’ speeches and Yumi’s essay in 2003. From the readers of this book, naturally emerged a voice for creating Ministry of Peace in Japan.
Yumi and Mr. Takafumi Tomita attended the 3rd Department of Peace Conference in Washington DC in Sep.2005, and when returning they organized telephone conference to listen to Dennis Kucinich (he was supposed to visit Japan last summer, but was canceled). 100 people who support Dennis Kucinich came to listen to him on the phone.
Then Yumi and Mr.Sasaki attended the 1st People’s Summit for Department/Ministry of Peace in London in Oct. 2005. And together, they called for the meeting on creation of the group that promotes Ministry of Peace in Japan.
They met for the 1st time in Tokyo on Dec 16, and two days seminar following that. 50 people attended and agreed on to call the group JUMP (Japan United for Ministry of Peace) and starting local groups. As of today (Jan 5, 2006) we have 12 prefecture (like state) coordinators out of 47 prefectures. Our aim is to have coordinators in all prefectures by the end of 2006, and 300 electoral district leaders by July 2007, when the next election takes place in Japan.
We also started fund raising effort to support the 3rd world peace workers to participate the 2nd People’s Summit in Victoria, in June 2006. Our target is to raise enough money for 20 people (7 million yen). We set up new account specifically for that, which is called Ministry of Peace Fund (Heiwa-sho Kikin).
We will be organizing concerts and lectures throughout Japan to raise awareness and fund at the same time.
We have sent our representatives to the 2nd People’s Summit for Department of Peace in Victoria and the following World Peace Forum in Vancouver.