Digital Commons Network^™

Realising Peace Potential Of Constitution, Tatsushi Arai

Tatsushi Arai

Alternative Perspectives On Conflict History: On The Methodology Of Peace Education And Dialogue, Tatsushi Arai

Tatsushi Arai

This essay, written in Japanese, is an attempt to construct an integrated framework for analyzing and engaging multi-faceted meanings of history that correspond to different communal experiences of social conflict. The concept of conflict history is introduced to describe a worldview of a conflict party in search of a coherent explanation of the conflict’s origin, evolution, and significance. Four interconnected approaches to conflict history – orthodox, different, mediative, and alternative – are explored to link the factual to the counterfactual, the manifest to the potential in an attempt to expand the scope of historical inquiry. This exercise of theory-building draws …

Give Peace A Channel: Launching An International Satellite Tv Channel For Conflict Resolution Dialogue., Tatsushi Arai

Tatsushi Arai

This is a call for concerted action to establish and institutionalize an international television channel for conflict resolution through which individuals and communities divided by social conflict can be brought together for face-to-face dialogue, in order to overcome geographic distances, prohibitively high travel costs, and inhospitable political realities that have kept them apart. The author's experience in co-facilitating dialogues that sought to connect the United States with the Middle East is discussed.

Beyond Nuclear Disarmament: Conflict Transformation On The Korean Peninsula., Tatsushi Arai

Tatsushi Arai

Envisioning A New East Asia: Some Concrete Steps Japan Can Take For Peace And Reconciliation, Tatsushi Arai

Tatsushi Arai

This is a policy proposal submitted to Japanese policymakers and opinion leaders concerned with the sustained controversy over the Yasukuni shrine and other issues related to the future of Japanese international relations with its neighboring countries in the Asia Pacific. Based on the insights into psychoanalysis and trauma healing, the paper explores how to use and transform historical symbols and discourses to facilitate long-term reconciliation.

Conflict Transformation In Nation Building: The Case Of East Timor., Tatsushi Arai

Tatsushi Arai

This essay analyzes challenges and opportunities of the newly independent East Timor, a territory in the process of nation-building and conflict transformation. The analysis focuses on two levels of tranformative capacity building—the formal government institutions and the social relationships outside the government. At the institutional level, East Timorese military personnel, political parties, and elected representatives possess the potential to develop dynamic relations conducive to the sustainable capacity of domestic conflict transformation. On the social relationship side, three sets of paradoxical orientations involved in conflict transformation—personal versus contextual change, justice versus mercy, and empowerment versus interdependence—are explored in the context of …