You are here

Imagining “World Peace”: The Antinuclear Bomb Movement in Postwar Japan as a Transnational Movement

Author: Hiroe Saruya

In: Iacobelli, Pedro, Danton Leary, Shinnosuke Takahashi (eds) Transnational Japan as History, pp. 187-210

The end of World War II saw the emergence of a new public arena for imagining a “world society” in which nation-states would cooperate to achieve peace, a dramatic change from the previous world of competitive nation states engaging in multiple wars and imperial expansions. But, the author argues, this call for “world peace”—a renewed political imaginary after the failed attempt of the League of Nations and the Kellogg–Briand Pact—was not simply empty political rhetoric or a naive utopia. Its (re-)creation led to vigorous debate that resulted in various transnational political institutions and forms of transnational activism in the aftermath of the war.