A liberal political regime is an important precondition for peace movements to flourish as in Britain of the 19^th century. Japan, as a latecomer in the modern world, adopted an aggressive militarist policy under the authoritarian regime in the late 19^th century. Thus, the earliest peace movements in Japan, which appeared around the turn of the century, took it upon the daring struggle against the towering militarism, and advocated absolute pacifism and a remarkably cosmopolitan outlook; but their social impact was negligible till the end of the Second World War.
The collapse of a militarist Japan in 1945 and the following enactment of the liberal peace constitution brought forth favorable conditions for peace movements. In fact, Ban-the-A-and-H-Bomb Campaign in the mid 1950’s rallied unprecedentedly wide and strong popular support and exerted a significant influence on Japan’s security policy.
However, such seemingly advantageous conditions to peace movements had their own hazards. The strong antiwar sentiment in postwar Japan largely came from the devastating national war experience. Therefore, peace groups very often shied away from immediate security issues in East Asia; and national stories of wartime hard suffering turned a blind eye to even harder indignation of neighboring nations against Japan’s militarist records. In addition, national peace organizations were torn apart in line with the cold war ideological split, and thus lacked the ability to mobilize the grassroots antiwar sentiment effectively.
From around the end of the cold war, some new trends turned up in Japanese peace movements. First, local groups virtually took over longstanding national groups in peace activities. It is largely because locality became the front line between the security of people’s daily life and the growing frequency of US military activities in and around Japan. The most important case was the concentration of US military bases in Okinawa. This problem came to attract national attention by virtue of an unbending Okinawan minority of antiwar landowners. Second, the problem of Japan’s war responsibility was at last widely acknowledged among the Japanese public. Reconciliation with neighboring nations was set as a distinct goal of peace activities. Third, peace activists began to propose an alternative security policy. They stress the importance of establishing the rule of law in the unstable security environment of East Asia.
In short, Japanese peace movements began to address the long-overdue problem of international solidarity in East Asia and to assume the role of a policy initiator.