September 1, 2022 • 32 mins
Learn about this leading Japanese scientist’s work through the Pugwash Conferences and the World Federalist Movement to persuade countries to renounce war, as Japan had done in its Article 9 of the Constitution.
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In this video we are going to look at the life and thoughtof another important world federalist, Hideki Yukawa,
a world leading physicist and Japan’s first Nobel Prize winner.
Yukawa, like Einstein, felt that the world needed to be organised into one federation
in order to bring an end to war in general, and the threat of nuclear war in particular.
(00:33):
And as a citizen of Japan, the countrythat suffered the devastating destruction
of the American atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
his voice had a particular weight and importancein the post-world war peace movements
for nuclear disarmament and world federation.
Yukawa was born in Tokyo in 1907 to a family of scholars.
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He was the fifth of seven children,most of whom also went on to become scholars.
His father was a geologist, studying the nature of the Earth,
and soon after Yukawa’s birth he took up a positionas Professor of Geography at Kyoto Imperial University,
and the family moved to Kyoto.
His grandparents also lived in the householdand had a great influence on Yukawa as he grew up,
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immersing him in traditional Japanese and Chinese thinking.
His father’s mother had been a samurai warrior at the Wakama castleuntil the Meiji regime abolished the samurai class,
and he had a great knowledgeof both Chinese and Western thought.
His father’s father was a retired Confucian scholarand teacher of Chinese classics.
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Thus the young and super-talented Yukawalearnt to read kanji, the Chinese characters,
and indeed to read the Chinese classics,even before he entered school.
He found the Taoist worksof Lao-tse and Chuang-tse particularly interesting,
as they focussed on man’s relation with the world of nature,and his oneness with it.
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Their holistic style of thinking and their useof parable and metaphor also enchanted the young Yukawa
and deeply influenced his later thinkingand approach to both physics and world affairs.
Yukawa was a quiet and bookish child. He found it hard to express himself and was often silent and withdrawn.
He was not very sociable and while at High Schoolhe took little notice of the normal run of student life around him.
(02:25):
He took little interest in student politicsor in the momentous social changes
that were taking place in Japan at the time,as the country industrialised,
workers moved from the countryside to urban factories,and agitation for both labour rights and democracy started.
Instead, Yukawa immersed himself in the world of books and ideasabout the fundamental nature of the material world.
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He even taught himself German,the leading language of science at the time,
so that he could read the most updatedand advanced theories of physics that were available.
He found in a local bookshop a copyof Max Planck’s 'Introduction to Theoretical Physics'
and poured over it for hours, finding it fascinating and inspiring.
In 1926, at the age of 19, he went to Kyoto Universityto study a degree in Physics, graduating in 1929.
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And then in 1932 he took up a positionas a lecturer at the same university
and married his wife, Sumi.
Even as the political situation in Japan started to change in the 1930s,
with the rise of ultra-nationalism,militarism and imperialist moves into Manchuria,
Yukawa stayed in his ivory towerand focused all his attention on the world of particle physics.
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In 1933 he moved to Osaka and joined themodern new university that was being built up there.
It was a stimulating place with a strong Physics department,
and Yukawa began to focus on the question of howprotons and neutrons were actually bound together in the nucleus of atoms.
In 1932 the leading German physicist, Werner Heisenberg, had proposed that this binding force was created
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through the exchange of electronsbetween the protons and neutrons.
But there were many problems with this theoryand Yukawa was convinced that there was an alternative explanation.
Yukawa reasoned that a very strong force was required to keepneutrons and protons from flying apart due to electromagnetic repulsion
and this force was far stronger than the forcethat could be supplied by the exchange of electrons.
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One night he woke up with an insight,
there must be a relationship betweenthe intensity of that force and the mass of the binding particle.
And thus drawing on his distinct ability to think outside the box,
he suggested the existence of a new sub-atomic particlewith a mass some 200 times that of an electron.
He called this particle the meson.
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In 1935, at the age of 28,he published his first major academic paper
in which he proposed a new field theory of nuclear forces and predicted the existence of the meson.
This paper would eventually go on to earn him the Nobel Prize for Physics
and win him fame in the national and international scientific worlds,
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but at this point in time it was simply ignored. For two years it had absolutely no impact at all.
Nicolas Kemmer, one of the first Western physiciststo work on meson theory, later wrote that
“Yukawa in 1935 was ahead of his timeand found the key to the problem of nuclear forces
when no other theoretical physicistin the world was ready to accept it.”
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Yukawa was not deterred, because he was completely convinced that his ideas were correct
and he believed that what was truemust sooner or later be understood and accepted.
Then in 1937, American physicists Carl Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer,who were studying cosmic rays in cloud chamber experiments,
found particles that appeared to fit Yukawa'srequirements and had the mass he predicted.
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Suddenly his theory began to receive a lot of attention,
but it was still highly debated and controversialbecause the other properties of the newly discovered particle
did not quite match up with Yukawa’s predictions.
In 1938 he received his PhD from Osaka University
and in 1939, at the age of 32,he took up a position as Professor at Kyoto Imperial University.
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His reputation was beginning to grow now, and that same year he was invited to attend the Solvay Conference in Brussels,
a highly prestigious meetingof a small number of world-leading physicists.
This was Yukawa’s first trip outside of Japanand he was excited to meet and network with foreign scientists.
However, the conference was disruptedby the outbreak of World War Two,
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and all the Japanese who were in Central Europeat the time were evacuated to the United States.
And so, unexpectedly, Yukawa suddenly found himself in New York.
He made good use of the opportunityand spent a month visiting nine universities
and meeting many eminent physicists,before returning to Japan.
On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese armybombed Pearl Harbour in the United States
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and officially entered the war, allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
Yukawa, like most Japanese nuclear physicists,continued on with his research work
and also did not refuse to engage in wartime military research for the government.
There was a strong team of Japanesetheoretical physicists involved in nuclear research
and they were well aware of the significanceof the discovery of nuclear fission in Germany in 1938.
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Several of these scientists were asked to look into the possibilityof the development of an atomic bomb by the Japanese government.
Yukawa himself was involved in anuclear bomb project organised by the Japanese navy,
and they tentatively concluded that it wasnot possible to make a nuclear bomb at the time.
However in 1945 they were proved wrong.
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Even as Germany and Italy surrenderedand the leaders of many countries had met in San Francisco
to draft the United Nations Charter, and then sign it in June,
Japan continued to fight
On August 6th, airplanes of the US army droppedan atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima,
immediately killing around 80,000 people and causingtens of thousands more to later die of radiation exposure.
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Three days later, on August 9th, they dropped a second atomic bombon the city of Nagasaki, killing another 40,000 people.
A few days later Japan’s Emperor Hirohitofinally announced his country’s unconditional surrender.
After the war Japan was occupied by US forces until 1952.
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During this period a new constitution was written,which included the famous Article 9, which states that:
“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order,
the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation
and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.”
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This path-breaking article received widespread support from the Japanese public,
who were by now war-wearyand keen to rally around peace and pacifism.
It also seemed important and sensibleto many nuclear scientists, including Yukawa,
who were still reeling from the shockand surprise of the US-created atomic bomb.
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And as we shall see, it came to play an important partin Yukawa’s thinking about the route to world federation.
The post-war years were a time of great reflection and debate in Japan,as intellectuals, scientists and the broader public
pondered on the effects of ultra-nationalism,militarism, and the devastation caused by the war.
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A wide and popular peace movement began to develop,
initially springing out of the labour movement,but quickly spreading more generally across the society.
A central slogan was ‘No more Hiroshimas’.
The huge suffering and destructioncaused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
was initially censored by the occupying US forces,
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but as the terrible and terrifying news became apparent
a strong movement not just for peace,but specifically for nuclear disarmament, also began to develop.
In these early days, the peace movementwas heavily tinged with remorse over the war and the misuse of science,
as well as a sense of human conscienceand an uncontrollable fury against atomic bombs.
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Scholars and scientists, particularly nuclear scientists, took a leading role in these discussions.
They were still shocked that the results of their researchhad been used to cause such devastation and suffering,
and they felt a new social responsibilityto lead the way towards peace.
In 1948 over fifty leading Japanese scholarsmet to discuss the conditions of peace,
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and in December they issued‘A statement by scientists in Japan on the problem of peace’.
They wrote (11:05):
“War is originally a method, a most primitive method,
resorted to by man in an attempt to solve certain problems….
Today both winners and losers alike …suffer from almost incurable wounds from war.
Furthermore, inasmuch as any future waris bound to be atomic and/or biological,
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humanity faces the danger of extermination once it breaks out…
Therefore, it devolves as an urgent responsibility upon present-day scientists …
that they make vividly clear the tragic consequences of any future war
and carry on the task of enlightening the public
and statesmen of every nation upon this matter”.
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Following this they createda permanent study group of scientists,
known as The Peace Study Group,to continue discussing these issues.
Yukawa mainly kept quiet at this timeand was not involved in most of these early initiatives.
The one major exception was his supportof the movement for world federation as a route to peace,
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which was also coalescing in Japan at this time, as in many other countries around the world.
While there had been earlier discussions about world federation in Japan in the 1930s,
particularly with Indian colleaguessuch as Mahatma Gandhi and Raja Mahendra Pratap,
it is perhaps not surprising that the world federalist movementgrew quickly in Japan in these post-war years.
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As the first and only target of the new and powerful nuclear weapons,
it was in many respects a natural place from whichnew and creative proposals for a political re-ordering of the world
that would prevent a finalapocalyptic clash between nations should arise.
Many leading Japanese intellectuals at this time supported world federation,
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including Economics Professor, Masamichi Rōyama,Sociology Professor, Sugimori Kōjirō,
and future Supreme Court judge, Yokota Kisaburō.
In the early post-war years a numberof world federalist organisations were formed in Japan,
including the Association for World Peace, formed in 1946by Christian evangelist, labor activist and social reformer, Kagawa Toyohiko,
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who had been calling for world peacethrough world cooperatives since the 1930s,
and The Institute for Permanent Peace,formed in early 1948 by Morikatsu Inagaki,
a leading publisher, friend of Einstein, and translator of Emery Reves’famous book about world federalism, 'The Anatomy of Peace', into Japanese.
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But perhaps the leading voicefor world federalism was that of Yukio Ozaki,
a long serving parliamentarian, former mayor of Tokyo
and champion of democracy, civil rights and liberty.
During the 1930s he had been a vocal and consistentsupporter of parliamentary government
and against the autocratic politics of the Imperial regime.
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He had pressed for universal suffrage,for both men and women, and for liberal freedoms.
In the post-war years he worked to promote world federalism,
both inside the Diet, the Japanese parliament and outside in wider society.
Already in December 1945 he moved a resolutionin the Japanese Parliament, backed by some 30 supporters,
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proposing the establishmentof a world federation in order to keep the peace.
And in the following years he published prolificallyin a variety of journals calling for world federation.
For Ozaki, world federation was the natural productof an evolution in mankind’s capacity to identify and show compassion
for an ever-growing community,beginning with the self, then the family,
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and then expanding to one’s village,the nation, and finally the whole world.
He looked at Japanese history and recalled the transformation that took place at the beginning of the Meiji period,
starting around 1868, when the separate ‘han’ domainsruled by local lords united to form the modern state of Japan.
For him, uniting the currently separatecountries of the world into a world federation
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was the obvious next step along this path and the next step of human progress.
In many respects, these viewsdrew on ideas in Confucian philosophy,
which called on people to climb further upthe hierarchy of relationships into a greater and greater whole.
In 1948 several of the nascent world federalist organisations in Japan
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came together to form the Union for World Federal Government.
Ozaki became its first President,and Tagawa became its Vice-President
Along with Morikatsu and several others,Yukawa was also a founding member.
Soon afterwards the organisation became a memberof the World Movement for World Federal Government,
the international umbrella movement that had been formed in Montreux, Switzerland in 1947,
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and which would later change its name tothe World Association for World Federation,
and then again to the World Federalist Movement.
In 1949 the world federalists establisheda multi-party body in the Japanese parliament, or Diet,
called the Diet Members’ Committee for World Federation,with around 100 parliamentarians from across the political spectrum.
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The movement grew quickly and by 1950the Union for World Federal Government in Japan had over 4,000 members,
organised in 50 chapters,and a lively monthly journal called The World State.
That same year they held a public meeting in Tokyo and some 5,000 people attended.
The crowds were so large that the police had to turn people away.
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Like many in the wider peace movement, the world federalistssought to use Hiroshima as a symbol for future world peace.
In 1950 a group of young people begana protest fast in front of Hiroshima station, with the slogan:
“The way to realise ‘No more Hiroshimas’is to build a world federation!’
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In 1952 the Union for World Federal Government organisedthe first Asian Congress on World Federation and held it in Hiroshima.
This Congress was attended by Redhabinod Pal,Justice of the Supreme Court of India,
Abdul Rehman, later the Prime Minister of Malaya, and other leaders of several Asian countries.
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John Boyd-Orr, former Director-Generalof the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation
and then President of theWorld Movement for World Federal Government, also attended.
The Congress issued the Hiroshima Declaration,a particularly Asian and post-Hiroshima take on world federalism,
with an emphasis on nuclear disarmament, ending racial discrimination
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and building understanding between the world’s different religions:
“The Asian Congress for World Federationin the atom-bombed Hiroshima,
recognising the historic significance of this Congress,vowing solemnly to work for the abolition of war
and in order to strengthen the spirit of brotherhoodamong men which is basic to world federation
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unanimously declares to the entire world its determination to strive for:
(1) Prohibition of the production as well as the use of atomic weapons;
(2) Drastic reduction of existing armaments leading to their total abolition in each nation;
(3) Elimination of racial discriminationand establishment of fundamental human rights;
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(4) Removal of religious prejudiceand promotion of cooperation among all faiths of the world;
(5) Release in the immediate future of war criminalsas well as prisoners of war detained in various countries;
(6) Opening up of natural resources for the solution of population problems.
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For implementation of the principles enunciated above and the matters agreed upon,
we hereby resolve, basing our effortson Mahatma Gandhi’s Sutya Graha (Power of Truth),
to promote with all our strengththe movement for the establishment of world federation.”
Whilst Yukawa had been present in 1948as a founding member of the Union for World Federal Government,
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he was only marginally involvedin these subsequent activities in the next few years.
This was because he spent the years 1948 to 1953 in America.
From 1948 to 1949 he was a Visiting Professor at Princeton University’s Institute of Advanced Study.
It was here that he met Albert Einstein, and developed a friendship that would last until Einstein’s death in 1955.
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Both men were nuclear physicists who felta sense of responsibility after the detonation of the atomic bomb,
and both had come to the conclusionthat nuclear disarmament and world federation
were necessary to maintain world peaceand stop humankind from obliterating itself.
While Einstein had encouraged the Americans to develop an atomic bomb
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so that they would have one before the Nazis,he was filled with remorse at its use in Japan.
When he first met Yukawa, he took his hand, apologised and cried.
In 1947 a group of experimental scientists had finally found the meson,
the particle that Yukawa had predicted in 1935.
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His theory was finally proved correct,
and in 1949 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
He was the first Japanese to receive a Nobel Prize,
and he immediately became a national hero,well-known across all of Japan.
He stayed in America a few more years,as a Professor at the University of Columbia,
and only returned to Japan in 1953,after the American occupation had come to an end.
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To honour him the Japanese government established the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics at Kyoto University,
and invited him to be its first Director.He stayed there until his retirement in 1970,
continuing his research into theoretical physicsand making several further advances.
On his return to Japan he initiallycontinued to stay silent regarding the atomic bomb.
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and was little involved in the ongoingdiscussions and debates about peace and disarmament.
But this was soon to change.
In 1949 the Soviet Union had succeeded in developing their own atomic bomb,
and since then a nuclear arms race had developedbetween the USA and the USSR,
with each country developing and testingbigger and more powerful nuclear bombs.
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In 1954 the US carried out a test explosion of a hydrogen bomb on the Bikini Atol of the Marshall Islands.
The estimated yield of 15 megatons was much larger than predicted
and consequently 23 Japanese fishermenon the Lucky Dragon tuna-fishing boat
were exposed to radioactive fallout,and became ill from radioactive poisoning.
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One of them, Aikichi Kuboyama, died some months later.
The Japanese public were enraged.
It was simply intolerable that their countrymenshould fall victim to the dangers of nuclear weapons again.
Many were also panicked about the radiationthat was detected in the contaminated tuna fish
and in radioactive rainfall in some parts of Japan.
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They began to feel that their daily liveswere directly threatened by nuclear weapons.
And thus numerous groups, including labour unions,women’s groups, religious groups,
pacifist groups, academic societiesand many local assemblies of cities and prefectures,
started to call for a ban on the use,production, and testing of nuclear weapons.
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The Lucky Dragon event,and the suffering it caused, also deeply shocked Yukawa.
It was the tipping point that started himto break his silence about the atomic bomb
and to speak publicly about disarmament,peace, and the social responsibility of scientists.
A few weeks later he published a piece in a leading newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun,
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called ‘Atomic Energy and the Turning Point for Mankind’,
in which he argued that humanity needed to come together
in order to protect itself from the potential destruction of nuclear weapons
and that scientists had a particular responsibility to be involved in these efforts.
Later that year he and Saburo Yamada,President of Japan’s Academy of Arts and Sciences,
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established the Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs,
and they coordinated with many Japanese anti-nuclear groups
to organise the first World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs,
which was held in Hiroshima in 1955.
Also in 1955 Yukawa became one of the founding membersof the Committee of Seven for World Peace.
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This was, and still is, a group of seven influential Japanese public figures that were brought together by Yasaburo Shimonaka,
a leading publisher and the then Directorof the Union for World Federal Government.
The group started to publish appeals calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons
and the peaceful resolution of international conflicts
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based on the humanism and pacifismcontained in Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.
The impact of the radioactive poisoning of the Lucky Dragon crewstretched far beyond Japan and reverberated around the world.
It led to the formation of many anti-nuclear groups and campaigns,
including the international Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the CND.
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In 1955 the renowned British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote to Albert Einstein,
suggesting that scientists should take a leading rolein campaigning for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
He proposed that a group of eminent scientists should issue a Manifesto on the matter
and then set up regular conferences in orderto get into the details about how this should be achieved.
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Einstein of course agreed and some months later they issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.
Yukawa was one of the eleven scientists,almost all Nobel Laureates, who signed the manifesto.
This manifesto led to the establishment of a seriesof high-level conferences on Sciences and World Affairs,
in which a small group of elite scientists would meetto discuss what humanity should do about nuclear weapons.
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The first conference was held in the town of Pugwash, in Canada,
and the conferences have since then been known as the Pugwash conferences.
Yukawa was one of the 22 scientiststhat attended the first conference in 1957.
Shimonaka, his wealthy world federalist colleague, covered his travel costs
and together they drafted an appeal from theCommittee of Seven calling for a ban on nuclear testing.
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But in Pugwash, the scientists had a wide arrayof opinions on how to deal with nuclear weapons,
with many Americans arguing that each sidein the Cold War should maintain their weapons as a deterrent.
While Yukawa, and several of his Japanese colleagues,argued strongly against the policy of nuclear deterrence,
this eventually became the dominant view of the Pugwash scientists.
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For Yukawa, the notion that peace could be brought aboutby two enemies arming themselves to the teeth seemed just ridiculous.
In contrast to the more ‘pragmatic’ scientists, Yukawa was a man of vision.
And for him, world peace was not just about the balance of power,
but about creating the right kind of world structurewhich would make war impossible.
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This, he believed, was a world federation,
in which each country would give up some of its sovereigntyto a higher body, disarm itself, and renounce its right to wage war.
And he strove to promote this idea among bothJapanese scientists and among the broader population.
In 1962 Yukawa and two of his colleagues initiated a similar series of conferences for Japanese scientists in Japan,
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which informally became known as the Japanese Pugwash.
The final statement of the 1962 conferenceargued against the principle of nuclear deterrence
and instead emphasized the significance of theJapanese constitution’s Article 9, which stipulates the renunciation of war.
It said, “As the country which has experiencedthe disastrous effects of nuclear weapons,
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and which has openly renounced war in its constitution,
Japan is in a position to make a special contribution to world peace.”
They went on, “Today, when the danger of the destructionof the human race by nuclear warfare is growing ever more serious,
Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution has a new significance,even greater than when the Constitution was first adopted.”
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The statement also criticized traditional thinking and practicesof international politics based on the concept of national sovereignty.
Instead it claimed, “Confronted as we are by many pressing problems, our thinking must advance to a new dimension,
transcending the current habit of looking uponnational sovereignty as the highest of all values.”
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He brought his particular views about world federalism and world peacealso to the World Movement for World Federal Government,
which by now had changed its nameto the World Association for World Federation.
In 1961 he was elected as President of the Associationand held this role until 1965,
with Senegalese President, Leopold Senghor, as his Vice-President.
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In 1963 he presided over the 11th Congressof the World Association for World Federation, which was held in Tokyo.
This was a huge Congress, with around 1,800 delegates from Japan
along with well over a hundred delegates from some 20 other countries.
In his speech, Yukawa again set forth his idea that the best way to realise a world federation
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would be for each country to renounce its right to wage war.
Japan had already done this, in its Article 9,
and he suggested that it waseminently possible for other countries to follow suit.
This, accompanied by a massive global reduction in armaments,
could pave the way for the UN to transform into a true world federation.
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Yukawa retired in 1970, but he continuedhis involvement with the world federalist movement
and his writing and speaking about peace, nuclear disarmamentand world federation through the renunciation of war.
In 1980, just months before his death,he gave a powerful speech at the 30th Pugwash Conference
In it he asked why, after all these years,there was still an arms race? What had gone wrong?
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I will quote directly from his answer:
“One of the fundamental causesof the present awful situation of the arms race, I think,
is that we have rejected as unrealistic the original idea of Bertrand Russell
that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil and must be eliminated….
Another fatal cause may be that we have beenso indolent, if not rather timid, in pursuit of a new world order
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where one can live without armaments…
Designing such a new world order is indeed a difficult task
because it will be associatedwith some change of the present political status…
A future scenario is not explicitly depicted in the Manifesto.
Insofar as I know however,Russell and Einstein were considering this problem.
In fact in order to control the sovereignty of states both were thinking of a world federation,
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an idea with which I am also sympathetic…”
Yukawa died in September 1981 in Kyoto.
His wife, Sumi, long his ally and supporterin the cause of world federalism,
continued his activities in the peace movementand in the World Federalist Movement for many years more.
There is much that we can learnfrom Yukawa’s approach to world federalism.
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For him, world federation was necessary to bring about an end to war
and particularly to the potential total destruction of a nuclear war,
a shadow which still hangs over our heads today.
Yukawa was not interested in ideological issues and ideological divides,
he was perhaps somewhat unaware of important social and economic issues,
and he spoke little about colonialism, equality and justice.
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But he was motivated by a deep love of humanityand a desire for humanity to continue
and not blow itself up in a huge explosion,derived from the results of his academic research.
He drew on both Eastern and Western forms of thought,
combining scientific rationalism with the more holistic and intuitive approaches of Taoism.
He saw the world as a whole and believed that the most sensible,
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balanced and peaceful way to organise itwas as a world federation.
For many people, across all cultures and political flavours,
his vision can remain an inspiration.
In this video we are going to look at the life and thoughtof another important world federalist, Hideki Yukawa,
a world leading physicist and Japan’s first Nobel Prize winner.
Yukawa, like Einstein, felt that the world needed to be organised into one federation
in order to bring an end to war in general, and the threat of nuclear war in particular.
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And as a citizen of Japan, the countrythat suffered the devastating destruction
of the American atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
his voice had a particular weight and importancein the post-world war peace movements
for nuclear disarmament and world federation.
Yukawa was born in Tokyo in 1907 to a family of scholars.
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He was the fifth of seven children,most of whom also went on to become scholars.
His father was a geologist, studying the nature of the Earth,
and soon after Yukawa’s birth he took up a positionas Professor of Geography at Kyoto Imperial University,
and the family moved to Kyoto.
His grandparents also lived in the householdand had a great influence on Yukawa as he grew up,
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immersing him in traditional Japanese and Chinese thinking.
His father’s mother had been a samurai warrior at the Wakama castleuntil the Meiji regime abolished the samurai class,
and he had a great knowledgeof both Chinese and Western thought.
His father’s father was a retired Confucian scholarand teacher of Chinese classics.
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Thus the young and super-talented Yukawalearnt to read kanji, the Chinese characters,
and indeed to read the Chinese classics,even before he entered school.
He found the Taoist worksof Lao-tse and Chuang-tse particularly interesting,
as they focussed on man’s relation with the world of nature,and his oneness with it.
(01:59):
Their holistic style of thinking and their useof parable and metaphor also enchanted the young Yukawa
and deeply influenced his later thinkingand approach to both physics and world affairs.
Yukawa was a quiet and bookish child. He found it hard to express himself and was often silent and withdrawn.
He was not very sociable and while at High Schoolhe took little notice of the normal run of student life around him.
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He took little interest in student politicsor in the momentous social changes
that were taking place in Japan at the time,as the country industrialised,
workers moved from the countryside to urban factories,and agitation for both labour rights and democracy started.
Instead, Yukawa immersed himself in the world of books and ideasabout the fundamental nature of the material world.
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He even taught himself German,the leading language of science at the time,
so that he could read the most updatedand advanced theories of physics that were available.
He found in a local bookshop a copyof Max Planck’s 'Introduction to Theoretical Physics'
and poured over it for hours, finding it fascinating and inspiring.
In 1926, at the age of 19, he went to Kyoto Universityto study a degree in Physics, graduating in 1929.
(03:17):
And then in 1932 he took up a positionas a lecturer at the same university
and married his wife, Sumi.
Even as the political situation in Japan started to change in the 1930s,
with the rise of ultra-nationalism,militarism and imperialist moves into Manchuria,
Yukawa stayed in his ivory towerand focused all his attention on the world of particle physics.
(03:41):
In 1933 he moved to Osaka and joined themodern new university that was being built up there.
It was a stimulating place with a strong Physics department,
and Yukawa began to focus on the question of howprotons and neutrons were actually bound together in the nucleus of atoms.
In 1932 the leading German physicist, Werner Heisenberg, had proposed that this binding force was created
(04:06):
through the exchange of electronsbetween the protons and neutrons.
But there were many problems with this theoryand Yukawa was convinced that there was an alternative explanation.
Yukawa reasoned that a very strong force was required to keepneutrons and protons from flying apart due to electromagnetic repulsion
and this force was far stronger than the forcethat could be supplied by the exchange of electrons.
(04:32):
One night he woke up with an insight,
there must be a relationship betweenthe intensity of that force and the mass of the binding particle.
And thus drawing on his distinct ability to think outside the box,
he suggested the existence of a new sub-atomic particlewith a mass some 200 times that of an electron.
He called this particle the meson.
(04:53):
In 1935, at the age of 28,he published his first major academic paper
in which he proposed a new field theory of nuclear forces and predicted the existence of the meson.
This paper would eventually go on to earn him the Nobel Prize for Physics
and win him fame in the national and international scientific worlds,
(05:13):
but at this point in time it was simply ignored. For two years it had absolutely no impact at all.
Nicolas Kemmer, one of the first Western physiciststo work on meson theory, later wrote that
“Yukawa in 1935 was ahead of his timeand found the key to the problem of nuclear forces
when no other theoretical physicistin the world was ready to accept it.”
(05:37):
Yukawa was not deterred, because he was completely convinced that his ideas were correct
and he believed that what was truemust sooner or later be understood and accepted.
Then in 1937, American physicists Carl Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer,who were studying cosmic rays in cloud chamber experiments,
found particles that appeared to fit Yukawa'srequirements and had the mass he predicted.
(06:02):
Suddenly his theory began to receive a lot of attention,
but it was still highly debated and controversialbecause the other properties of the newly discovered particle
did not quite match up with Yukawa’s predictions.
In 1938 he received his PhD from Osaka University
and in 1939, at the age of 32,he took up a position as Professor at Kyoto Imperial University.
(06:26):
His reputation was beginning to grow now, and that same year he was invited to attend the Solvay Conference in Brussels,
a highly prestigious meetingof a small number of world-leading physicists.
This was Yukawa’s first trip outside of Japanand he was excited to meet and network with foreign scientists.
However, the conference was disruptedby the outbreak of World War Two,
(06:49):
and all the Japanese who were in Central Europeat the time were evacuated to the United States.
And so, unexpectedly, Yukawa suddenly found himself in New York.
He made good use of the opportunityand spent a month visiting nine universities
and meeting many eminent physicists,before returning to Japan.
On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese armybombed Pearl Harbour in the United States
(07:14):
and officially entered the war, allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
Yukawa, like most Japanese nuclear physicists,continued on with his research work
and also did not refuse to engage in wartime military research for the government.
There was a strong team of Japanesetheoretical physicists involved in nuclear research
and they were well aware of the significanceof the discovery of nuclear fission in Germany in 1938.
(07:40):
Several of these scientists were asked to look into the possibilityof the development of an atomic bomb by the Japanese government.
Yukawa himself was involved in anuclear bomb project organised by the Japanese navy,
and they tentatively concluded that it wasnot possible to make a nuclear bomb at the time.
However in 1945 they were proved wrong.
(08:01):
Even as Germany and Italy surrenderedand the leaders of many countries had met in San Francisco
to draft the United Nations Charter, and then sign it in June,
Japan continued to fight
On August 6th, airplanes of the US army droppedan atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima,
immediately killing around 80,000 people and causingtens of thousands more to later die of radiation exposure.
(08:27):
Three days later, on August 9th, they dropped a second atomic bombon the city of Nagasaki, killing another 40,000 people.
A few days later Japan’s Emperor Hirohitofinally announced his country’s unconditional surrender.
After the war Japan was occupied by US forces until 1952.
(08:48):
During this period a new constitution was written,which included the famous Article 9, which states that:
“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order,
the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation
and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.”
(09:11):
This path-breaking article received widespread support from the Japanese public,
who were by now war-wearyand keen to rally around peace and pacifism.
It also seemed important and sensibleto many nuclear scientists, including Yukawa,
who were still reeling from the shockand surprise of the US-created atomic bomb.
(09:32):
And as we shall see, it came to play an important partin Yukawa’s thinking about the route to world federation.
The post-war years were a time of great reflection and debate in Japan,as intellectuals, scientists and the broader public
pondered on the effects of ultra-nationalism,militarism, and the devastation caused by the war.
(09:53):
A wide and popular peace movement began to develop,
initially springing out of the labour movement,but quickly spreading more generally across the society.
A central slogan was ‘No more Hiroshimas’.
The huge suffering and destructioncaused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
was initially censored by the occupying US forces,
(10:14):
but as the terrible and terrifying news became apparent
a strong movement not just for peace,but specifically for nuclear disarmament, also began to develop.
In these early days, the peace movementwas heavily tinged with remorse over the war and the misuse of science,
as well as a sense of human conscienceand an uncontrollable fury against atomic bombs.
(10:36):
Scholars and scientists, particularly nuclear scientists, took a leading role in these discussions.
They were still shocked that the results of their researchhad been used to cause such devastation and suffering,
and they felt a new social responsibilityto lead the way towards peace.
In 1948 over fifty leading Japanese scholarsmet to discuss the conditions of peace,
(10:59):
and in December they issued‘A statement by scientists in Japan on the problem of peace’.
They wrote (11:05):
“War is originally a method, a most primitive method,
resorted to by man in an attempt to solve certain problems….
Today both winners and losers alike …suffer from almost incurable wounds from war.
Furthermore, inasmuch as any future waris bound to be atomic and/or biological,
(11:27):
humanity faces the danger of extermination once it breaks out…
Therefore, it devolves as an urgent responsibility upon present-day scientists …
that they make vividly clear the tragic consequences of any future war
and carry on the task of enlightening the public
and statesmen of every nation upon this matter”.
(11:49):
Following this they createda permanent study group of scientists,
known as The Peace Study Group,to continue discussing these issues.
Yukawa mainly kept quiet at this timeand was not involved in most of these early initiatives.
The one major exception was his supportof the movement for world federation as a route to peace,
(12:09):
which was also coalescing in Japan at this time, as in many other countries around the world.
While there had been earlier discussions about world federation in Japan in the 1930s,
particularly with Indian colleaguessuch as Mahatma Gandhi and Raja Mahendra Pratap,
it is perhaps not surprising that the world federalist movementgrew quickly in Japan in these post-war years.
(12:32):
As the first and only target of the new and powerful nuclear weapons,
it was in many respects a natural place from whichnew and creative proposals for a political re-ordering of the world
that would prevent a finalapocalyptic clash between nations should arise.
Many leading Japanese intellectuals at this time supported world federation,
(12:53):
including Economics Professor, Masamichi Rōyama,Sociology Professor, Sugimori Kōjirō,
and future Supreme Court judge, Yokota Kisaburō.
In the early post-war years a numberof world federalist organisations were formed in Japan,
including the Association for World Peace, formed in 1946by Christian evangelist, labor activist and social reformer, Kagawa Toyohiko,
(13:20):
who had been calling for world peacethrough world cooperatives since the 1930s,
and The Institute for Permanent Peace,formed in early 1948 by Morikatsu Inagaki,
a leading publisher, friend of Einstein, and translator of Emery Reves’famous book about world federalism, 'The Anatomy of Peace', into Japanese.
(13:41):
But perhaps the leading voicefor world federalism was that of Yukio Ozaki,
a long serving parliamentarian, former mayor of Tokyo
and champion of democracy, civil rights and liberty.
During the 1930s he had been a vocal and consistentsupporter of parliamentary government
and against the autocratic politics of the Imperial regime.
(14:02):
He had pressed for universal suffrage,for both men and women, and for liberal freedoms.
In the post-war years he worked to promote world federalism,
both inside the Diet, the Japanese parliament and outside in wider society.
Already in December 1945 he moved a resolutionin the Japanese Parliament, backed by some 30 supporters,
(14:25):
proposing the establishmentof a world federation in order to keep the peace.
And in the following years he published prolificallyin a variety of journals calling for world federation.
For Ozaki, world federation was the natural productof an evolution in mankind’s capacity to identify and show compassion
for an ever-growing community,beginning with the self, then the family,
(14:48):
and then expanding to one’s village,the nation, and finally the whole world.
He looked at Japanese history and recalled the transformation that took place at the beginning of the Meiji period,
starting around 1868, when the separate ‘han’ domainsruled by local lords united to form the modern state of Japan.
For him, uniting the currently separatecountries of the world into a world federation
(15:13):
was the obvious next step along this path and the next step of human progress.
In many respects, these viewsdrew on ideas in Confucian philosophy,
which called on people to climb further upthe hierarchy of relationships into a greater and greater whole.
In 1948 several of the nascent world federalist organisations in Japan
(15:36):
came together to form the Union for World Federal Government.
Ozaki became its first President,and Tagawa became its Vice-President
Along with Morikatsu and several others,Yukawa was also a founding member.
Soon afterwards the organisation became a memberof the World Movement for World Federal Government,
the international umbrella movement that had been formed in Montreux, Switzerland in 1947,
(16:01):
and which would later change its name tothe World Association for World Federation,
and then again to the World Federalist Movement.
In 1949 the world federalists establisheda multi-party body in the Japanese parliament, or Diet,
called the Diet Members’ Committee for World Federation,with around 100 parliamentarians from across the political spectrum.
(16:23):
The movement grew quickly and by 1950the Union for World Federal Government in Japan had over 4,000 members,
organised in 50 chapters,and a lively monthly journal called The World State.
That same year they held a public meeting in Tokyo and some 5,000 people attended.
The crowds were so large that the police had to turn people away.
(16:47):
Like many in the wider peace movement, the world federalistssought to use Hiroshima as a symbol for future world peace.
In 1950 a group of young people begana protest fast in front of Hiroshima station, with the slogan:
“The way to realise ‘No more Hiroshimas’is to build a world federation!’
(17:08):
In 1952 the Union for World Federal Government organisedthe first Asian Congress on World Federation and held it in Hiroshima.
This Congress was attended by Redhabinod Pal,Justice of the Supreme Court of India,
Abdul Rehman, later the Prime Minister of Malaya, and other leaders of several Asian countries.
(17:29):
John Boyd-Orr, former Director-Generalof the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation
and then President of theWorld Movement for World Federal Government, also attended.
The Congress issued the Hiroshima Declaration,a particularly Asian and post-Hiroshima take on world federalism,
with an emphasis on nuclear disarmament, ending racial discrimination
(17:51):
and building understanding between the world’s different religions:
“The Asian Congress for World Federationin the atom-bombed Hiroshima,
recognising the historic significance of this Congress,vowing solemnly to work for the abolition of war
and in order to strengthen the spirit of brotherhoodamong men which is basic to world federation
(18:12):
unanimously declares to the entire world its determination to strive for:
(1) Prohibition of the production as well as the use of atomic weapons;
(2) Drastic reduction of existing armaments leading to their total abolition in each nation;
(3) Elimination of racial discriminationand establishment of fundamental human rights;
(18:35):
(4) Removal of religious prejudiceand promotion of cooperation among all faiths of the world;
(5) Release in the immediate future of war criminalsas well as prisoners of war detained in various countries;
(6) Opening up of natural resources for the solution of population problems.
(18:55):
For implementation of the principles enunciated above and the matters agreed upon,
we hereby resolve, basing our effortson Mahatma Gandhi’s Sutya Graha (Power of Truth),
to promote with all our strengththe movement for the establishment of world federation.”
Whilst Yukawa had been present in 1948as a founding member of the Union for World Federal Government,
(19:20):
he was only marginally involvedin these subsequent activities in the next few years.
This was because he spent the years 1948 to 1953 in America.
From 1948 to 1949 he was a Visiting Professor at Princeton University’s Institute of Advanced Study.
It was here that he met Albert Einstein, and developed a friendship that would last until Einstein’s death in 1955.
(19:44):
Both men were nuclear physicists who felta sense of responsibility after the detonation of the atomic bomb,
and both had come to the conclusionthat nuclear disarmament and world federation
were necessary to maintain world peaceand stop humankind from obliterating itself.
While Einstein had encouraged the Americans to develop an atomic bomb
(20:04):
so that they would have one before the Nazis,he was filled with remorse at its use in Japan.
When he first met Yukawa, he took his hand, apologised and cried.
In 1947 a group of experimental scientists had finally found the meson,
the particle that Yukawa had predicted in 1935.
(20:25):
His theory was finally proved correct,
and in 1949 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
He was the first Japanese to receive a Nobel Prize,
and he immediately became a national hero,well-known across all of Japan.
He stayed in America a few more years,as a Professor at the University of Columbia,
and only returned to Japan in 1953,after the American occupation had come to an end.
(20:51):
To honour him the Japanese government established the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics at Kyoto University,
and invited him to be its first Director.He stayed there until his retirement in 1970,
continuing his research into theoretical physicsand making several further advances.
On his return to Japan he initiallycontinued to stay silent regarding the atomic bomb.
(21:14):
and was little involved in the ongoingdiscussions and debates about peace and disarmament.
But this was soon to change.
In 1949 the Soviet Union had succeeded in developing their own atomic bomb,
and since then a nuclear arms race had developedbetween the USA and the USSR,
with each country developing and testingbigger and more powerful nuclear bombs.
(21:36):
In 1954 the US carried out a test explosion of a hydrogen bomb on the Bikini Atol of the Marshall Islands.
The estimated yield of 15 megatons was much larger than predicted
and consequently 23 Japanese fishermenon the Lucky Dragon tuna-fishing boat
were exposed to radioactive fallout,and became ill from radioactive poisoning.
(22:00):
One of them, Aikichi Kuboyama, died some months later.
The Japanese public were enraged.
It was simply intolerable that their countrymenshould fall victim to the dangers of nuclear weapons again.
Many were also panicked about the radiationthat was detected in the contaminated tuna fish
and in radioactive rainfall in some parts of Japan.
(22:23):
They began to feel that their daily liveswere directly threatened by nuclear weapons.
And thus numerous groups, including labour unions,women’s groups, religious groups,
pacifist groups, academic societiesand many local assemblies of cities and prefectures,
started to call for a ban on the use,production, and testing of nuclear weapons.
(22:44):
The Lucky Dragon event,and the suffering it caused, also deeply shocked Yukawa.
It was the tipping point that started himto break his silence about the atomic bomb
and to speak publicly about disarmament,peace, and the social responsibility of scientists.
A few weeks later he published a piece in a leading newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun,
(23:05):
called ‘Atomic Energy and the Turning Point for Mankind’,
in which he argued that humanity needed to come together
in order to protect itself from the potential destruction of nuclear weapons
and that scientists had a particular responsibility to be involved in these efforts.
Later that year he and Saburo Yamada,President of Japan’s Academy of Arts and Sciences,
(23:28):
established the Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs,
and they coordinated with many Japanese anti-nuclear groups
to organise the first World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs,
which was held in Hiroshima in 1955.
Also in 1955 Yukawa became one of the founding membersof the Committee of Seven for World Peace.
(23:51):
This was, and still is, a group of seven influential Japanese public figures that were brought together by Yasaburo Shimonaka,
a leading publisher and the then Directorof the Union for World Federal Government.
The group started to publish appeals calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons
and the peaceful resolution of international conflicts
(24:13):
based on the humanism and pacifismcontained in Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.
The impact of the radioactive poisoning of the Lucky Dragon crewstretched far beyond Japan and reverberated around the world.
It led to the formation of many anti-nuclear groups and campaigns,
including the international Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the CND.
(24:35):
In 1955 the renowned British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote to Albert Einstein,
suggesting that scientists should take a leading rolein campaigning for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
He proposed that a group of eminent scientists should issue a Manifesto on the matter
and then set up regular conferences in orderto get into the details about how this should be achieved.
(24:57):
Einstein of course agreed and some months later they issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.
Yukawa was one of the eleven scientists,almost all Nobel Laureates, who signed the manifesto.
This manifesto led to the establishment of a seriesof high-level conferences on Sciences and World Affairs,
in which a small group of elite scientists would meetto discuss what humanity should do about nuclear weapons.
(25:20):
The first conference was held in the town of Pugwash, in Canada,
and the conferences have since then been known as the Pugwash conferences.
Yukawa was one of the 22 scientiststhat attended the first conference in 1957.
Shimonaka, his wealthy world federalist colleague, covered his travel costs
and together they drafted an appeal from theCommittee of Seven calling for a ban on nuclear testing.
(25:45):
But in Pugwash, the scientists had a wide arrayof opinions on how to deal with nuclear weapons,
with many Americans arguing that each sidein the Cold War should maintain their weapons as a deterrent.
While Yukawa, and several of his Japanese colleagues,argued strongly against the policy of nuclear deterrence,
this eventually became the dominant view of the Pugwash scientists.
(26:08):
For Yukawa, the notion that peace could be brought aboutby two enemies arming themselves to the teeth seemed just ridiculous.
In contrast to the more ‘pragmatic’ scientists, Yukawa was a man of vision.
And for him, world peace was not just about the balance of power,
but about creating the right kind of world structurewhich would make war impossible.
(26:30):
This, he believed, was a world federation,
in which each country would give up some of its sovereigntyto a higher body, disarm itself, and renounce its right to wage war.
And he strove to promote this idea among bothJapanese scientists and among the broader population.
In 1962 Yukawa and two of his colleagues initiated a similar series of conferences for Japanese scientists in Japan,
(26:57):
which informally became known as the Japanese Pugwash.
The final statement of the 1962 conferenceargued against the principle of nuclear deterrence
and instead emphasized the significance of theJapanese constitution’s Article 9, which stipulates the renunciation of war.
It said, “As the country which has experiencedthe disastrous effects of nuclear weapons,
(27:20):
and which has openly renounced war in its constitution,
Japan is in a position to make a special contribution to world peace.”
They went on, “Today, when the danger of the destructionof the human race by nuclear warfare is growing ever more serious,
Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution has a new significance,even greater than when the Constitution was first adopted.”
(27:45):
The statement also criticized traditional thinking and practicesof international politics based on the concept of national sovereignty.
Instead it claimed, “Confronted as we are by many pressing problems, our thinking must advance to a new dimension,
transcending the current habit of looking uponnational sovereignty as the highest of all values.”
(28:08):
He brought his particular views about world federalism and world peacealso to the World Movement for World Federal Government,
which by now had changed its nameto the World Association for World Federation.
In 1961 he was elected as President of the Associationand held this role until 1965,
with Senegalese President, Leopold Senghor, as his Vice-President.
(28:31):
In 1963 he presided over the 11th Congressof the World Association for World Federation, which was held in Tokyo.
This was a huge Congress, with around 1,800 delegates from Japan
along with well over a hundred delegates from some 20 other countries.
In his speech, Yukawa again set forth his idea that the best way to realise a world federation
(28:55):
would be for each country to renounce its right to wage war.
Japan had already done this, in its Article 9,
and he suggested that it waseminently possible for other countries to follow suit.
This, accompanied by a massive global reduction in armaments,
could pave the way for the UN to transform into a true world federation.
(29:18):
Yukawa retired in 1970, but he continuedhis involvement with the world federalist movement
and his writing and speaking about peace, nuclear disarmamentand world federation through the renunciation of war.
In 1980, just months before his death,he gave a powerful speech at the 30th Pugwash Conference
In it he asked why, after all these years,there was still an arms race? What had gone wrong?
(29:44):
I will quote directly from his answer:
“One of the fundamental causesof the present awful situation of the arms race, I think,
is that we have rejected as unrealistic the original idea of Bertrand Russell
that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil and must be eliminated….
Another fatal cause may be that we have beenso indolent, if not rather timid, in pursuit of a new world order
(30:08):
where one can live without armaments…
Designing such a new world order is indeed a difficult task
because it will be associatedwith some change of the present political status…
A future scenario is not explicitly depicted in the Manifesto.
Insofar as I know however,Russell and Einstein were considering this problem.
In fact in order to control the sovereignty of states both were thinking of a world federation,
(30:33):
an idea with which I am also sympathetic…”
Yukawa died in September 1981 in Kyoto.
His wife, Sumi, long his ally and supporterin the cause of world federalism,
continued his activities in the peace movementand in the World Federalist Movement for many years more.
There is much that we can learnfrom Yukawa’s approach to world federalism.
(30:55):
For him, world federation was necessary to bring about an end to war
and particularly to the potential total destruction of a nuclear war,
a shadow which still hangs over our heads today.
Yukawa was not interested in ideological issues and ideological divides,
he was perhaps somewhat unaware of important social and economic issues,
and he spoke little about colonialism, equality and justice.
(31:19):
But he was motivated by a deep love of humanityand a desire for humanity to continue
and not blow itself up in a huge explosion,derived from the results of his academic research.
He drew on both Eastern and Western forms of thought,
combining scientific rationalism with the more holistic and intuitive approaches of Taoism.
He saw the world as a whole and believed that the most sensible,
(31:43):
balanced and peaceful way to organise itwas as a world federation.
For many people, across all cultures and political flavours,
his vision can remain an inspiration.
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