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February 1, 2008

Interfaith summit to take place in Japan before G8 meeting

by Hisashi Yukimoto
Ecumenical News International

TOKYO — The Japan section of an interfaith world body has announced plans for a four-day meeting of religious leaders from around the world before the July 7-9 summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo.

“It is a good opportunity for our cooperation with other sectors and the idea of shared security, both of which were proposed at our 8th world assembly in Kyoto two years ago,” the Rev. Keishi Miyamoto, secretary general of the Japan Committee of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, told journalists in Tokyo on Jan. 30.

According to the WCRP the concept of shared security builds upon an expanded notion of human security that includes concern for basic human rights and needs. The four-day Japan interfaith meeting to start on July 1 follows a gathering of religious leaders that took place in Germany in 2007 before the G8 meeting in the northern German town of Heiligendamm.

The Rev. Martin Affolderbach from the inter-religious affairs desk of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) welcomed the initiative to be held on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido. “We are very happy that you continue this very important work to address the G8 summit, but not only this summit but also the wider public in the whole world,” Affolderbach said at the media conference.

Members of the WCRP’s Japan Committee and its international secretariat are to meet the government’s chief government spokesperson Nobutaka Machimura on Feb. 1 at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence in Tokyo for discussions about the inter-religious meeting.

The Rev. Kyoichi Sugino, director of inter-religious development at the WCRP’s international secretariat said the meeting with Machimura would be an opportunity to discuss the idea of “shared security” that featured at the group’s 2006 assembly in Kyoto.

Sugino, who is from Japan’s Rissho Koseikai lay Buddhist organization, noted that the issue of climate change would be a major item on the agenda of the G8 meeting. He pointed to the work being done by Christian groups to build ecologically-sustainable churches, and the activities of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, a secular body encouraging the world’s major religions to tackle climate change.

The Rev. Toshimasa Yamamoto, vice chairperson of the committee and the general secretary of the National Christian Council in Japan, praised the idea of religious leaders trying to make their view known to the G8.

“I think that we as religious persons should appeal about the importance of peace and non-violence, and against the expansion of war and the culture of violence being done in the name of the U.S.-centered economic globalization and ‘war on terror,’” said Yamamoto, who attended the interfaith summit in Germany.