From Colonial Policy to Peace Studies―the De-colonization Tasks Ahead of the Peace Studies Association of Japan

Abstract

The Peace Studies Association of Japan, formed in the 1970s, has contributed to the theorizing of the experience of the Hiroshima Nagasaki atomic bomb disasters, establishing a critical view of the vertical relationship between Japan and the countries of Southeast Asia that have developed through massive investment from Japan. Further, this Association promotes the private efforts of the reconciliation between Japan and its East Asian neighboring countries through active exchange while the rivalries of these countries have become intensified in the age of globalization. However, in recent decades, at the same time, social and economic gaps between the center/dominant groups and peripheries, including Okinawa and the northeastern part of Japan, on the one hand, and the formal labor sector and the informal/peripheral sectors on the other, have been widening. This phenomenon can be considered to be a second wave of colonization; this time, it is internal colonization. How can peace studies, whose major concern has been international relationships, treat this new dimension of peace research? To tackle a new research agenda of de-recolonization, this article proposes to trace the historical development of peace research in Japan, which has its root in the colonial policy of the imperialist age and which was institutionalized in the post-WWII period, following the peace research of the Occident in the age of the Cold War. These historical traits give Japanese peace research both its universal character and its imported one. In order to tackle new issues born in the age of globalization, Japanese peace research should reconsider its methodology and made an effort to examine both the domestic and international situations of non-peace: this should constitute the de-colonization task of peace studies in this country.