Chapter 6: International Education for Peace for Student Teachers in Japan: Promoting Cultures of Peace

In the new millennium, peace education seeks to harness the power and intellect of future generations in the hope of building a sustainable culture of peace. What students define and understand by concepts such as peace, human rights, citizenship, democracy, social justice, global interdependence, and how they relate these to their families, schools and communities will be vital to the future of any nation. It is not too much to say that peace education can be a mirror that reflects the future of a peaceful nation, and in a broader sense, the future of a peaceful world.

In Japan, peace education has been based on the Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. Through the lesson of Japanese history, especially the scourge of the Asian Pacific War, Japanese people have learned that peace education has a great influence on their habits of the hearts and the process of decision making in their social and civic lives. It is self-evident that history is not kind to the arrogant and the ignorant. The awareness of the historical responsibility would be weathered without international education for peace.