Gates of Peace

In June this year my wife had a baby. During her stay in hospital she had a pleasant room overlooking the noisy Peace Boulevard and beyond it the Peace Memorial Park. In the week she was there we couldn’t ignore the activity of the builders just below the window. The noise was considerable. Visiting children enjoyed watching the cranes, one blue and one yellow, as they swung their heavy loads into position. Construction was rapid and after a week ten ominous structures stood in a line outside the window. I asked a nurse about the building. She had no idea what it was. Several trees had come down in the last Typhoon. Perhaps they were taking the opportunity to fill the space up she wondered. Maybe.

Just before my wife and son left hospital I managed to have a closer look at the structures from street level. A sign said “Les Portes de la Paix”. A-ha! Peace of course! There was even an artist’s rendition of what they would look like when they were all done. On Saturday, our mayor Akiba Tadatoshi dedicated the monument and I suppose the gates must have been declared open then. I walked through and around them this afternoon. They are ten arches, rather than gates, standing nine metres tall and made of a greenish, slightly translucent material and inscribed with “Peace” in 49 languages. The effect is not unpleasant but one wonders what it all means.

Apparently, Les Portes de la Paix is a privately-funded project thought up by the mayor himself and designed by French artist Clara Halter and architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who seem to make a living out of peace monuments. On the one hand, the ten arches or gates are said to represent Dante’s nine circles of hell plus one extra for Hiroshima, but on the other Halter and Wilmotte claim “These doors symbolize a crossing of the threshold into another universe, toward our desire for peace." Circles, arches, gates or doors. It doesn’t matter which. The structures are to memorialize the agony of Hiroshima’s destruction and point towards future peace.

I must say I feel a little uncomfortable with the idea of “another universe”. I would like to see something sorted out here and now on this earth. In Niger, children are dying in a famine. Sort it out rich nations. As I write, my wife is nursing our child and he is already looking fat like his father. We are very fortunate. We live in peaceful and prosperous Japan, under Pax Americana. A Japan, whose post-war economy, we should remember, received tremendous boosts from both the Korean and Vietnam wars. We live in Hiroshima, whose economy still benefits considerably from arms manufacturing of one sort or another. There is a nasty double standard working there. Not unlike the double standard that invites Peace Tourism and celebrates the construction of the great battleship the Yamato just 30km down the road in Kure.

It’s hot in Hiroshima now. We’ll burn a lot of fuel, nuclear or not, this summer just keeping cool. Look out Kyoto. We are heating things up to stay chill. In Hiroshima, drivers park next to Peace Park and leave their engines running and sleep or gaze at their phones. Meanwhile, America and Britain, supported by Japan continue to prosecute a war in Iraq to maintain hegemony in the region and maintain control of the precious oil they are wasting. There are deep layers of irony in there.

This week sees Hiroshima remember the 60^th anniversary of its destruction. It is an incredibly complex and multi-faceted commemoration. There will be a lot of talk about Peace. Good. There will be prayers and there will be thousands of people here to contemplate monuments new and old. All of this is important and useful.

But frankly, symbols and monuments are not enough. Here is my modest proposal. Take action now to make Hiroshima City a Green City. If you want to keep it a bit arty emulate Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks project but skip the basalt if you please. Just plant trees. Trees, trees, trees! Living memorials that look lovely, which will keep the city a bit cooler and the air fresher. Fill the city with plants. Clean the rivers and encourage people to enjoy them. This is step one in creating a Green Hiroshima. In fact you could round up the drivers of idling cars and make them plant the trees for us.

Cycle lanes!

Before we get anywhere near the 70^th anniversary build hundreds of Paths of Peace. These would be much more than symbolic, they would impact positively on the environment and the health of our city and proclaim that it is better to preserve resources than fight wars for them. In short, by making Hiroshima Japan’s number one Green City of Peace we would be a beacon of environmental responsibility and pointing the way towards peace here at home on this endangered planet in our own universe.

Well although I would have preferred ten different species of Oak, the Gates of Peace are fairly unobtrusive objects and not unpleasant to look at. I am sure many people will appreciate them. I imagine they look good at dusk and dawn especially. And if they do help us remember that war is horrible and they open up dialogue about what peace is and how to get it so much the better. There are a couple of benches from which to contemplate them if the heat is getting to you, and I am sure you can have fun taking pictures there. You’ll find them beside the south side of Peace Boulevard across from the Peace Memorial Museum.