By Gerry Yokota, World BEYOND War, June 1, 2026
On Saturday, May 16, members of the Japan chapter of World BEYOND War participated in two Nakba Day events in Osaka.
The first event was an interfaith prayer service organized by Kairos Palestine Japan. The liturgy was prepared by Global Kairos Asia. The service ended with congregants singing this beautiful lullaby.
The last lines of the lullaby are from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish:
The seeds of a grain of wheat dying
Will fill the valley with grain.
The standing event at Osaka Station was attended by about 200 people. WBW-Japan Co-Coordinator Gerry Yokota was invited to give a speech, where she appealed to everyone to put pressure on the leaders of all nations to cease with violent assaults and arms proliferation. Her message was particularly aimed at the current administration in Japan, which is seeking to revise Japan’s Peace Constitution. Article 9 of the current constitution renounces war, but Prime Minister Takaichi aims to revise it to allow the Self Defense Forces to play a more active role in supporting allies like the U.S. in emergencies such as the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Takaichi has also recently changed national policy to enable the export of lethal weapons.
You can find Gerry’s speech in both Japanese and English here.
A reporter for a national newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun, interviewed some of the participants, including a 47-year-old Uzbek man who was visiting Japan for the first time to see his daughter. The man said, “I’ve never been to Palestine, but Muslims are my family. If we support them from our respective countries, like the people are doing here, justice and truth will prevail.” His 23-year-old daughter expressed her hope that “the day will come when Palestinians can walk freely without fearing another disaster, when children and everyone else will be safe.”
