Human beings and nuclear weapons cannot co-exist. I am writing from downtown Nagasaki where I have been attending the 2018 World Conference Against Atom and Hydrogen Bombs. Three days ago, we commemorated the 73rd anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima. There, on a hot, clear August...

Just as the initiation of recent student led advocacy from Parkland, Florida brings hope for positive change in this country, so too have students in Japan addressed the issue of nuclear disarmament in their country by sharing the stories of nuclear blast survivors.

On the morning of August 6, seventy years after the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb, I was in Hiroshima. I entered sacred time and space in a ceremonial ritual at a place called “The Mound”—said to contain remains of the 70,000 people incinerated in the blast. A Buddhist monk stood before an...

Florence Caplow is a Soto Zen priest in the Suzuki Roshi lineage, and a dharma teacher, field botanist, UU seminarian at Iliff School of Theology, essayist, and editor. She was the recipient of the UUA’s Tsubaki Grand Shrine Scholarship in 2015 and is currently on her visit with the Shrine.

The I am writing you this letter from the train station in Osaka, Japan, where thirty-seven All Souls pilgrims—ages 12 to 82—are waiting for a train to Kyoto. This morning as we departed Hiroshima Station, our host families from the Rissho Kosei Kai Dharma Center waved goodbye to us from the...

[gallery type="rectangular" ids="6718,6716,6717,6719,6721,6722,6720,6723"] The Heiwa Peace Pilgrimage delegation began its journey on August 1st and will be visiting with their interfaith partners in Japan for ten days....

Sarah E. Gillespie is a UU seminarian & 2014 M.Div candidate at Andover Newton Theological School. In July 2013 she was the recipient of the...

view our available interfaith and Unitarian Universalist (UU) resources. Perhaps one of the most inspiring stories to come out of this difficult time is the story of the Hiroshima Children's Drawings: Shortly after the bombing in Hiroshima in 1945, Rev. A. Powell Davies of the All Souls Church,...

Today is the second anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. The massive destruction and loss of human life was compounded by the threat of radiation from four damaged nuclear reactors....

Among the greatest gifts of crossing religious and cultural boundaries is that we come to understand ourselves more clearly. On this trip to Japan I had the opportunity to visit briefly other religious partners: the Konko Church of Izuo (a modern Shinto movement), the Tsubaki Grand Shrine (one of...