Hiroshima’s ongoing peacebuilding and beyond: how does this local initiative seek to extend to world peace?

Abstract

War-torn or post-conflict countries face challenging, complex, and varied tasks related to security, development, and justice to meet the immediate needs of state-building and peacebuilding. Hiroshima, having overcome post-war reconstruction, has remained in the peacebuilding phase by advocating world peace through the value of ‘No more Hiroshimas’. Peacebuilding studies and mainstream debates emphasising the local perspective have not, however, touched upon this historical moment, when the Hiroshima Prefectural Government enacted ‘Hiroshima for Global Peace’, pursuing peacebuilding through a nuclear-free world. In this context, this article analyses how Hiroshima’s provincial government policy demonstrates ongoing peacebuilding in pursuit of world peace. Considering local-global relations, it examines how local policy connects the shared values of a nuclear-free world. Second, it shows how local-state relations highlight Japan’s peacebuilding policy, which includes security cooperation, by sharing the vision of Hiroshima as a symbol of world peace.