Yoichiro Murakami – författare

In the post-Cold War era, problems of war and peace have become complicated and ambiguous, involving such nonmilitary issues as the north-south dichotomy of power, resource depletion, and globalization of capitalism. To create a twenty-first-century intellectual and theoretical foundation for peace studies, Building New Pathways to Peace considers both the old concepts of tolerance, shalom, and wa, and the relatively new concepts of human security, decent peace, credibility, accountability, plurality, multiculturalism, and transnationalism. It also elucidates impediments to and necessary conditions for actualizing peace.

Scholars from Japan and a range of other countries explore in this book the still-unfinished effort to achieve the reconciliation of old enmities left over from past wars in East Asia. They present concrete policy proposals for a 'grand design' of peace based on the Japanese concept of 'kyosei', a word roughly translated as 'conviviality'. A positive peace through kyosei means not only the absence of violence, but also the amelioration of past injustices, exploitation and oppression. The diversity of disciplines represented in the volume - international law and politics, history, philosophy and theology - enrich the contributors' search for an intellectually appropriate, practically transformative and viable grand theory of peace in the twenty-first century. Chapters address issues such as security in North-South conflict situations, foreign policy strategies for Japan, the perspective of comparative religions, and current skepticism for the possibility of peace and reconciliation. These insightful and compelling analyses will be of great interest to students and researchers of East Asia and the politics of peace in general.