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On Valentine's Day, February 15th, 2015, a lecture on Raymond Peynet's message of love and peace was given by a group of speakers, including Raymond Peynet researcher and Kobe Women's University lecturer, Tomoko Moriya, Mayor Sugano of Iitate Village, which suffered from the radiation disaster, and myself (Galerie Adeka, Takeda Yasuhiro) at the Maison Franco-Japonaise in Ebisu, Tokyo.
The incident began on January 7, 2015, when extremist Islamic terrorists stormed into the weekly satirical newspaper Charles Ebido, pronounced Charlie Hebdo in English, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, and shot dead 12 people, including employees and police officers.
That day, I was having a party at our gallery with friends from the Paris Club (a club for people studying or working in France). The founder of the Paris Club, former NHK news anchor, first director of the Japan Cultural Center in Paris, and chairman of the Friends of Michel Henry, a contracted artist of our company, Mr. Hisanori Isomura, was also at the party. Most of the people there had lived in France and loved France, so I felt surprised, worried, and angry.
Mr. Naonori Isomura had been asked to give several lectures in Paris and was scheduled to leave for Paris on January 9th, two days after the event. Mr. Isomura was 85 years old at the time and in good health, but I still thought that his plans to go to Paris would be canceled.
However, he went to Paris as planned, in the midst of chaos. This was probably because he had made a promise, but also because of his journalistic spirit. After all, he also served as a war journalist during the Indochina War, and even had an exclusive interview with Colonel Gaddafi, who was on the verge of losing power. He was 85 years old at the time, and one can only take his hat off to his courage and curiosity.
I immediately got in touch with Raymond Peynet researcher Moriya Tomoko and Iitate Village Mayor Kanno Norio, and we decided to hold "Raymond Peynet: A Message of Love and Peace from France" at the Maison Franco-Japonaise as an antithesis to the terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalist organizations in my beloved Paris.
Ms. Tomoko Moriya spoke about the works of Raymond Peynet. She is a graduate of Tokyo University of the Arts, so her explanation of the works was interesting. Mayor Kanno of Iitate Village spoke about the peaceful daily life that has been taken away. Iitate Village's peaceful daily life was taken away by the radiation disaster of the Great East Japan Earthquake. The people of Charles Ebideau in Paris were taken away from their peaceful daily life by a terrorist attack, and many people died. I spoke about Raymond Peynet's message of love and peace in the love of lovers in his works, and the peaceful daily life of nature and small animals, and at the same time, I shared a groundbreaking idea to eliminate war.
Here is the revolutionary idea I came up with to abolish war: Create an international peace-promoting organization (since the current UN has the victorious nations of World War II as permanent members, we should create a more democratic organization, or abolish the UN's permanent member system), and have all countries participate. Then, have them donate an amount equal to their military budget to this international organization, and use that money for world peace, eradicating poverty, and promoting culture and the arts. In other words, if they want to increase their military budget, they should be required to spend an equivalent amount on peaceful activities.
I had a vague idea about the current CO2 purchase system more than 30 years ago. I said that it would be better for non-industrialized countries with abundant greenery, such as the Amazon in South America, to create a system where they can charge industrialized countries, which consume large amounts of oxygen and emit CO2 , for the oxygen that their natural environment produces, and now this has become a reality.
It is urgent to create a global system that protects the environment while preventing war.
Raymond Peynet continued to paint messages of love and peace and harmony with nature. We in the 21st century are now in a position to take his message more seriously.
