Preventing Catastrophe: The World’s First Peace Museum (2006)

This is a contribution to a Festschrift for Professor Ikuro Anzai, then director of the Kyoto Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University. Inaugurated in 1992, the museum was one of the first in the country to show that Japan was not only a victim in the Second World War but also an aggressor. The university is unique in the world in housing a peace museum. Anzai has not only been the foremost promoter of such museums in Japan and the wider region but also a pillar of support of the International Network of Museums for Peace (INMP). Parallels are drawn with Jan Bloch, the founder of the world’s first peace museum (Lucerne, 1902). To help prevent the catastrophe of nuclear war, it is proposed that an Atomic Bomb and Peace Museum is created in Lucerne, in the spirit of Jan Bloch. This might be realized with the help of the peace museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with which Ikuro Anzai is closely associated. The advent of the nuclear age has seen the creation of many peace museums, especially in Japan. They are important instruments of public peace education. As director of the Kyoto Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University, Professor Ikuro Anzai has played a central role in their development. The world’s first peace museum was established by Jan Bloch in Lucerne in 1902, to warn of the dangers of a new large war. He belongs to a rich tradition of peacemakers and peace educators from the past, whom the world does not remember. Their inspiring lives and ideas should also be told in peace museums. In order to enhance the effectiveness of the atomic bomb museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such museums should also be established outside Japan. The creation of an Atomic Bomb and Peace Museum in Lucerne would provide a great stimulus for the movement for abolition of nuclear weapons and of war.