世界平和 sekai heiwa World Peace

Peace among the nations and the wish for it, a word that no party owns: it has been the aim of Christian reformers and peace societies, the word diplomats gave to tsars and foreign secretaries, a nationalist's program and a socialist's hope, an emperor's word to his envoys, a postwar parliament's resolution and Hiroshima's first peace declaration, and each has used it against the others, which is why it can belong to anyone. What it means has not moved, the absence of war and the wish for it; whose wish it carries is the part that is yours. World Peace is the English every Japanese-English dictionary gives, and it is right; in this compound 平和 is the absence of war, and harmony is its older sense, not the one the compound carries.

世界平和 is composed of the words 世界 (read sekai) meaning "the world" and 平和 (read heiwa) meaning "peace; harmony".

First found in 1879, in two Japanese translations of European political writing, one of them carrying John Stuart Mill's the peace of the world; 平和 in its sense of the absence of war is itself first found in 1868.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 世界平和.

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