The aftermath of a nuclear war would entail far more than just the extinction of humanity!

If the territorial boundaries between Ukraine and Russia were to be fixed as they currently stand, it would amount to the international community condoning the alteration of the status quo by force. There is a risk that Russia might invade other countries again, and such a move would effectively validate Russia's ambitions to invade other nations... While I understand there are various arguments, all I can do now is pray for a ceasefire to be achieved as soon as possible.

Mr. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu—you launched military attacks right in the middle of nuclear talks and diplomatic negotiations with Iran, claiming countless ordinary lives in the process.
You are in no position to criticize Russia.

I have written at length criticizing Mr. Putin, but I absolutely cannot condone what you are doing, either.

As an ordinary citizen, I will say this clearly: War must not be waged. Stop it immediately! Even if I am laughed at for having no power, I will say what needs to be said.
With wars continuing in so many places like this, it would come as no surprise at all if World War III were to break out.
 

If the United States and Russia were to engage in a full-scale nuclear war, all of humanity would perish. Moreover, every living thing on Earth—animals, plants, and all forms of life—would be wiped out.

Among all the myriad forms of life on Earth, humanity is unique in having purposes beyond mere reproduction. We can laugh. We can write and appreciate literature. We can create and enjoy sports. We are truly the pinnacle of creation—a unique and singular existence.
It is time we realized just how foolish it is for this "pinnacle of creation" to kill one another out of greed.

Let us all come to this realization. Like the parable of the water in the tub told by Ninomiya Sontoku, let us share our resources and food rather than fighting to snatch them away. Let us unite our hearts and minds, turning away from the path to destruction, so that we may welcome the 22nd century—a future that is peaceful, prosperous, and bright.

"We must never wage war!"—hoping that this sentiment spreads across the globe and that I might live to see the day when war vanishes from the world...

August 15, 2026

Yamato　Aichi　Japan

※This Japanese text was translated using Google Translate. Please let me know if there are any unnatural expressions.

It is highly likely that all of us humans are blood relatives.
Especially in regions connected by land, one could safely assert with 100% certainty that we share a blood connection somewhere along the line.
Are you really going to make such distant relatives kill one another?

I would like to ask the powerful figures around the world who seek to instigate wars:

You were born of the love between your father and mother.
Your father and mother had parents of their own—your grandparents.
And those grandparents had parents, too—your great-grandparents.

Naturally, those great-grandparents had parents as well.

If you trace your lineage back ten generations, you have 1,024 ancestors. That is a number one can still visualize.
However, go back thirty generations, and the number of ancestors exceeds one billion. At thirty-one generations, it is two billion; at thirty-two, four billion; at thirty-three, eight billion; at thirty-four, sixteen billion; at thirty-five, thirty-two billion; at thirty-six, sixty-four billion. Go back forty generations, and the figure reaches 1.024 trillion; go back fifty generations, and the number of ancestors actually exceeds two quadrillion...

These are numbers beyond imagination. Yet, unless that vast multitude of ancestors had existed, you—as you are today—could not exist.

Let’s consider the span of thirty generations. If we assume an average age of twenty for childbirth, that takes us back to 1426—a mere 600 years ago. Even with an average age of twenty-five, it goes back only to 1276—750 years ago. Thirty-five generations back would be 1326 or 1156; forty generations back would be 1226 or 1026...

In Japan, forty generations back lands us in the Kamakura or Heian periods—eras for which historical records exist and the timeline is clearly understood. This pattern likely holds true globally as well.

The numbers are staggering: 8 billion people thirty-three generations back, over a trillion forty generations back, and 2 quadrillion fifty generations back... Of course, this does not mean that so many distinct individuals actually existed. There would have been cases where different people shared the same father. There were undoubtedly countless instances where individuals who were actually distant relatives married without realizing it, just a few generations down the line.

One billion, two billion, four billion, eight billion, 16 billion, 32 billion, one trillion, ten trillion, 100 trillion, 1,000 trillion... When you consider the sheer number of ancestors involved, if you were to glance at the person next to you, it is highly likely that you share a blood connection somewhere—whether 600, 750, or 1,000 years ago. In fact, given the vast number of ancestors, it would actually be stranger *not* to be blood-related in some way.

There is a saying that "all humanity are brothers," but perhaps we are all actually relatives.
It is true that many Japanese and Russian people likely do not share a blood connection within the last thousand years or so. But who knows? There might have been Russians who migrated to Japan in the distant past, and following the Russo-Japanese War, many people of mixed Japanese and Russian heritage were born.

What about Russia and Ukraine? They were originally part of the same country—the Soviet Union. Wasn't it quite common for Russians and Ukrainians to marry one another?

That is certainly true; yet, when you consider the span of one or two thousand years for the people living in these contiguous regions, it is likely that very few—if any—do not share some ancestral blood ties, even if they currently identify as Russian or Ukrainian. In fact, it is surely more natural to assume that they are indeed connected by blood somewhere along the line.

And yet, look at the situation now: people who almost certainly share ancestral ties are being forced to kill one another—people who, left to their own devices, harbor no mutual resentment or bitterness. The very act of "war" itself is wrong! That is what I want to strongly assert.

Even the powerful figures who make the decision to go to war likely owe their current status to the efforts of ancestors from a few generations back. However, it is highly improbable that the descendants of those ancestors' siblings—for instance—all hold positions of power today.

There are surely many instances where even those with close blood ties are sent off to war at the stroke of a command. Just because someone happened to rise to a position of power, they take the lives of others... Is that right?

Let me say this once more.

It is the young who are sent to the front lines of war. It is always the young. And it is young people who end up taking each other's lives.

Why must young strangers—people who do not even know each other's names, who harbor no mutual grudges or grievances—kill one another for the sake of someone else's profit or someone else's desire for glory?

People need to realize this; the citizens of the very nation waging such a foolish war must rise up and speak out against it.



That is the first step toward eliminating war from the world.

If not for war, the young men sent to the battlefield would not have lost their lives.
Had they not lost their lives in war, they might have married the people they loved.

Had they not lost their lives in war, they might have built warm, happy homes filled with laughter and family togetherness.

Had they not lost their lives in war, they could have pursued the work they loved and fully tested their potential!

Had they not lost their lives in war, they could have dedicated their entire lives to the work they truly wanted to do.

If only there were no war!
If only there were no war!!
If only there were no war!!!

Mr. Putin, you worked incredibly hard and rose to become the President of Russia in a single generation. Yet, you were not born into royalty or anything of the sort; you come from an ordinary background. Surely, you understand the hardships and joys of the lives led by ordinary people.

Aren't most of your relatives and friends from your youth just ordinary people? Aren't you sending the children and grandchildren of such people to the battlefield?

Why do you rob ordinary people of their modest dreams?

I repeat: Russians and Ukrainians share 100 percent of the same bloodline. I say this with certainty. After all, their lands are contiguous.

Even Mr. Putin surely has the blood of people born in Ukraine running through his veins. Given the shared landmass, it is impossible that their ancestors did not intermingle over the course of one or two thousand years.

It is only natural to assume that Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelenskyy are connected somewhere along the line within the last millennium or two.

Russia may have its own arguments—claiming, for instance, that Ukraine provoked the conflict first. However, it was Russia that struck the first blow this time. And it is a fact that Russia has destroyed numerous Ukrainian urban areas and killed many civilians, including children.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　（To be continued in the next installment.）

※This Japanese text was translated using Google Translate. Please let me know if there are any unnatural expressions.

As many as 81 years have passed since the end of World War II.
Reflecting on the lessons of World War II, the United Nations was established in October 1945 with the aim of maintaining international peace and security and fostering international cooperation in economic, social, cultural, and human rights matters; the world was supposed to move toward peace—yet, wars and conflicts have not disappeared from the globe.

In recent years, we have seen Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Gaza-Israel conflict, US attacks on Venezuela, and US-Israeli attacks on Iran—a series of events creating a perilous situation where a single misstep could plunge the world into a third world war.

I am just an ordinary Japanese citizen—an ordinary citizen with no power whatsoever. But please, let me speak.We simply must not wage war!The cause of war is someone's greed, isn't it?　It’s absurd for people who bear each other no grudge or ill will to kill one another just for someone else’s greed!What is the purpose of war?A desire for territory, a desire for resources, or—for those in power—the prestige of victory...For the military-industrial complex and the nations (or individuals—arms dealers) that sell weapons internationally, there is likely no greater way to make money.Modern wars are waged for the sake of someone's "greed." To put it bluntly, war is simply a way for someone to make money.What are the reasons for becoming a soldier? Is it because the pay is good? Or because there are no other jobs available? I imagine there are many people who join for reasons like those.However, conscription systems still exist, and there are likely many people who are forced to go to war against their will, having no choice but to obey orders.You are ordered to go and kill. If you don't go, you will be killed. So, you have no choice but to go and kill... and in doing so, you kill "young people from another country—total strangers with whom you have no personal grudge or grievance."Why must we engage in a life-or-death struggle—killing or being killed—just so someone else can make money?That is why you must not throw away your life for the sake of someone else's profit. Nor must you take another person's life for the sake of someone else's profit．Whether it is the war between Russia and Ukraine or the conflict between Japan and the United States during the Greater East Asia War, young people who are complete strangers—with no personal grudges against one another (and nowadays, it is not just the young being mobilized, but older people too)—are forced to kill each other at the behest of those in power. That is the nature of war.A desire to expand territory? A craving for resources? A hunger for glory? ...Aren't these all simply the "greed" of those in power—nothing more than their own self-serving whims?It is one thing to kill the citizens of another country out of such greed, but surely it is fundamentally unacceptable to mobilize people for war and send so many of one's own young citizens to their deaths, isn't it?

I can hear voices saying, "That’s just idealistic talk! It’s a pipe dream! International politics is a brutal business. There is absolutely no way war will ever disappear from this world!"It is true that, up until the 20th century, nations that won wars expanded their territories, plundered resources, colonized the conquered lands, and treated the local populations like slaves.Humanity—having gone through two world wars that turned the globe into a battlefield in the pursuit of vast territories and resources—vowed, based on deep reflection, never to let war happen again.And yet, regrettably, even after 55 years passed, the 21st century arrived, and another 26 years have since gone by, nothing has changed. The world still sees attempts to alter the status quo by force go unchecked. At the same time, however, there are also calls insisting that such changes to the status quo by force must not be permitted.

Furthermore, Article 25 of the Hague Convention on Land Warfare—a matter of international law—prohibits the attack or bombardment of undefended cities, villages, dwellings, or buildings by any means.

Article 27 also stipulates that buildings not used for military purposes—such as religious facilities and hospitals—must be spared from damage as much as possible; taken together with Article 25, these provisions place great importance on protecting non-combatant civilians.

Yet, in reality—whether we look at Ukraine, Iran, or Gaza—civilian facilities are repeatedly coming under attack. News footage showing the resulting heavy casualties is broadcast day after day.

How are ordinary Ukrainian citizens supposed to attack Russia? How are ordinary Iranian citizens supposed to attack the United States? The same applies to the Gaza Strip. This is nothing short of a massacre.
I want this situation to end as soon as humanly possible.

（To be continued in the next installment.）

『万策尽きて、志』。

　まさに、『志』を立て直すべき時がきたのである。企業としての新しい志、新しい理想、新しい価値観、新しい目標を立て直すこと。そこまで立ち戻らなければ、事態を打開できない時がきたのだ。

　「今こそ、志の時代」の到来である。