The "Japanese Women's Association for Peace and against Military Expansion " was launched by several women on January 11, 2023, and began an online signature campaign. On February 8, 2023, they held a press conference based on the collected signatures. At present, there is such association in each of the seven locations in Japan, including Tokyo, Kansai, Kumamoto, Hokkaido, Ibaraki, Miyazaki and Oita. These associations (collectively, “our Association”) are engaged in activities in cooperation with each other. We are the "Women's Association" for several reasons, as described below.

The Kishida administration has decided a plan for increasing defense spending by 43 trillion yen, or 2% of GDP, over five years up to the 2027 fiscal year, but this decision did not happen suddenly. In 2015, a new interpretation of the Broadcasting Act was introduced, and in the same year, the security legislation was enacted, the door to military research was opened, and the deployment of the Self-Defense Forces to the Nansei Islands started. In 2020, the Government also intervened in the Science Council of Japan.

In 2022, the Council of Experts on Strengthening Defense Forces announced the expansion of the military industry and the export of weapons, and the Government approved the three security documents at a cabinet meeting. In 2024, Japan, along with the United States and Europe, moved even faster toward military expansion. Japan entered a "new prewar" period.

However, there is one big difference from the previous prewar period. Women did not have the right to vote then, but they do now.

Women can now speak out. The members of our Association feel a serious sense of crisis about such situation that military expansion will have a negative impact on the countermeasures for the declining birthrate and the raising of workers' wages, as well as public support policies for the socially vulnerable, such as women, single-parent families, non-regular workers and children, and that public spending on education in Japan is the lowest among the developed countries.

With everyone's help, we want to change this new "prewar" period, which we have been experiencing for the first time since women gained the right to vote, into a new era when missiles are transformed into flying doves, so that we can extinguish the word "prewar" forever!　

Joint Representative
Yuko Tanaka
Former President of Hosei University