Ｇ７summit and Hiroshima 2016/05/28
This year’s summit was successfully held in an small island in Ise city. It was his 5th attendance at a summit meeting for Mr.Abe, Prime minister of Japan, but the first opportunity for him to hold a summit meeting in Japan. He seemed to try his best to put his own color on the summit.
Before the opening of the official meeting, he guided world leaders to Ise Grand Shrine which is the most honorable shrine among more than 100 thousands shrines in Japan and also Ise Grand Shrine is a special shrine since it enshrines Amaterasu- Omikami, the Ancestor of Royal family.
In other word, Ise Grand Shrine represents all shrines which represent Japanese history and culture. It is surrounded by quiet and deep forest and is presumed to be constructed more than 1400 years ago. World leaders must have been impressed by Japanese long history and irreplaceable specific culture.
The world has been led by Europe and America for the last few hundred years. However, from now on, we should aim to establish a world which allows to have wide diversity and will be led by not only Europe and America but also various powers from all over the world including Japan.
It is so nice to have a summit at the place where Japanese long surviving culture exists.
After the summit, Mr. Obama visited Hiroshima for the first time as a sitting American president. President Obama laid a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and told to an audience.
“Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed,” Mr. Obama said in opening his speech at the memorial.
He said “Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us,” and Mr.Obama added that such technology “requires a moral revolution as well.”
The atomic bombings on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki together took the lives of more than 200,000 people.
Thousands of Japanese lined the route of the presidential motorcade to the memorial and listened to Mr. Obama’ s speech. Most Japanese highly appreciated and warmly welcomed a sitting American president to visit the most potent symbol of the dawning of the nuclear age. The representative of survivors of the attack, a chairman of the Hiroshima branch of the sufferers organization, gripped Mr. Obama’s hand and did not let go until he had spoken to him for some time. The chairman did not ask for apology but his further commitment for peaceful world without nuclear weapons.
It was really historic visit and could be a turning point of human history.
Ｉｓｅ Ｇｒａｎｄ Ｓｒｉｎｅ
