Report from Senior Advisor

Scientists and Religious Leaders in Japan meet at the Symposium on the Pursuance of a World without Arms: Non-war, Faith, and Science in Tokyo Japan
Report by Rev. Masamichi Kamiya, Senior Advisor of ACRP

Religious leaders of Religions for Peace (RfP) Japan and members of Pugwash Conference Japan co-hosted the Symposium on the Pursuance of a World without Arms: Non-war, Faith, and Science, which was convened on November 8^th, 2025 at Sanjo Conference Hall, Tokyo University.

Utilizing the 63^rd Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, which took place in the city of Hiroshima Japan from November 1^st to November 5^th this year, RfP Japan with the cooperation of Pugwash Japan invited several delegates of the 63^rd Pugwash Conference to the Symposium in Tokyo.

Dr. Hussain Al-Shahristani, President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, delivered his keynote address at the Symposium. Afterwards, four distinguished panelists from RfP Japan responded to the keynote address. These panelists were Rev. Yoshiharu Tomatsu, chairperson of RfP Japan, Prof. Kathy Matsui, a Board member of RfP Japan, Dr. Makoto Mizutani, a member of the Taskforce for Stopping Nuclear Dependence, RfP Japan and myself, Senior Advisor of ACRP and another Taskforce member. 

(20251108) Kamiya’s Response in English (PDF).

 

Stressing that major global challenges of our time are interconnected crises of peace, planet, prosperity, technology and values, Dr. Al-Shahristani stressed: “Each of these challenges requires cooperation across nations, disciplines, and belief systems—precisely the kind of bridge-building that organizations like Pugwash and Religions for Peace seek to nurture.”

At the symposium, in addition, a famous sentence contained in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto issued in 1955 caught great attention. The phrase reads: “We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” Rev. Kamiya said in this presentation: “I firmly believe that the ‘Golden Rule’ [of religion] may be one dimension of humanity, which the Russell-Einstein Manifesto urges us to remember.”

Dr. Hideki Yukawa, a Japanese Physicist who received Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949 and a founding member of the Pugwash Conferences, was one of the keynote speakers at the First World Assembly of Religions for Peace (called then World Conference on Religions and Peace) held at Kyoto Japan in 1970. Dr. Yukawa stressed in his address that a world free of arms and the abolition of nuclear weapons in particular must be pursued, while hoping that people of religions play an important role for achieving the shared objective.

In view of the genesis of Religions for Peace as such, this symposium was in a sense the reaffirmation of important collaboration between scientists and religious people for the prevention of war and the elimination of nuclear weapons. This symposium contributed to further uniting two great streams of human conscience, namely the rational inquiry of science and the moral wisdom of the world’s religions as Dr. Al-Shahristani pointed out.