Why did I become an activist?
It started because my school had a “peace studies club.” At most schools, the soccer club or brass band is the star — but at mine, the peace studies club was the flagship. In Nagasaki, its members often appeared on local TV and regularly traveled abroad. I joined simply because I admired those seniors — an entirely starstruck student.
Once inside, I found most of the work quietly persistent: street petitions every weekend, sit-ins and demonstrations alongside hibakusha. What changed me was meeting people who, grounded in their own harrowing experiences, had said NO to nuclear weapons for more than half a century. Watching them keep moving under the motto “powerless we are not, only small,” I came to respect them deeply — and to feel we must not leave the burden of that work to them alone.
Why Borderless Foundation?
At university, I founded KNOW NUKES TOKYO to contribute more concretely to disarmament. We joined the partner network of ICAN — the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its role in the treaty’s adoption — lobbied lawmakers, governors, and municipalities, visualized their support for the treaty online, spoke at the United Nations, and steadily built networks at home and abroad.
But a problem unsolved for nearly 80 years wasn’t going to be solved in my student years. Searching for a way to continue after graduation, I encountered the worlds of “social business” and “entrepreneurship” — fresh territory for someone raised in social movements. I took a year and a half off university, joined accelerators, and refined my plans. The people who sat with me and asked “how do we build a project that actually solves this?” were from Borderless Japan. Before I knew it, I had applied to Borderless — and with the Foundation launching at just that moment, I found myself starting both an NPO and my own project.
What’s my next challenge?
My ultimate goal remains a world without nuclear weapons. Given today’s security environment, abolishing them overnight may be neither easy nor wise. Yet no matter how many times I think it through, I can find reasons why we can’t eliminate nuclear weapons — but never a reason why we shouldn’t. Surely, when people anywhere imagine a peaceful world, they picture one without them. So that this wish does not end as only a wish, I will keep saying NO to nuclear weapons — creating opportunities, outside the bombed cities, for people to encounter the nuclear threat through all kinds of projects. One may appear in your town someday. Please come visit.
Borderless Foundation gathers people who earnestly wish for and act toward a peaceful world. When such people come together, collective wisdom may become the solution that changes the world. My greatest mission now is to grow this into an organization that you — the kind reader who has come this far — would want to join.
