August 6, 2021 Sendai City: The number of venues for the "Peace Tanabata" distributed exhibition doubles, expanding the circle of sympathy③

The Heiwa Tanabata festival began in 1976 when volunteers from the Sendai YMCA put up Tanabata decorations made from handmade paper cranes, and this year marks the 46th anniversary. Paper cranes gradually began to be donated from schools and churches across the country, and this year 400,000 paper cranes were collected.

At one of the distributed exhibition venues, the Sendai YMCA Nishi Nakata Nursery School in Taihaku Ward, Sendai City, two streamers were displayed at the entrance. The nursery school presented leis made from folded paper cranes to the homes of 90 children. The aim was to encourage parents and children to talk about the meaning of peace and nuclear abolition.

This morning, the 76th Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony was broadcast on television. The leader of this country, with a blank look in his eyes, did not respond to Hiroshima Mayor Matsui Kazumi's appeal for Japan to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. He even skipped over parts of his script. This is the same prime minister who has repeatedly wavered on COVID-19 countermeasures and pushed through the Olympics despite the opposition of many citizens. His heart was probably not in the place where people prayed for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Shigeo Araya (78), representative of the Citizens' Gathering of Tanabata Praying for Peace, which organizes the Peace Tanabata event, said the following:

"For the second year in a row, the exhibits were dispersed, but I think this has allowed the appeal for peace to reach a place closer to home. I would say that the circle of 'sowing the seeds of peace', conveying our thoughts to the generations that will lead the future, has expanded even further."

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Blog article: Earthquake diary in Sendai

Blog writer: A journal of the disaster area coverage by Sendai-based journalist Tadaki Matsudate (former NHK social affairs reporter). The journal, covering the six months from March 11, 2011 to the end of September, was published as a book by Sasaki Publishing in Sendai.

The blog contains interviews and personal notes from October 2011 onwards.