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Peace pagoda teacher in accord with Rose
• MAY we, through your newspaper, thank those readers who remembered our teacher, Fujii Guruji, at a ceremony on the anniversary of his death, which was held in his birthplace, Aso, Kyushu Island, south Japan, in May and attended by the West End Extra’s Illtyd Harrington?
Fujii Guruji loved London and during the 1970s he was in your corner of the city, sharing accommodation with squatters and poor people.
He had vivid memories of Highgate. In the 1980s he organised the building of the Battersea Park Peace Pagoda, one of the many he caused to be built around the world.
Even after his death in January 1985 another 23 were built, making a total of more than 80 in locations as diverse as Himalaya and Comiso in Sicily.
Fujii Guruji enjoyed a mutual friendship with Mahatma Gandhi and Fenner Brockway.
It is also appropriate that at the annual commemoration of Hiroshima Day in Bedford Square two years ago, Rose Hacker, a centenarian, like Fujii, made a lucid, relevant speech. He would have enjoyed her weekly column.
Your government has begun a programme of rearmament of its Trident nuclear missiles while ours is busy removing article nine from our post-war constitution, a recipe for aggression in this part of the world.
Your venerable Rose and Fujii Guruji can teach succeeding generations a timely lesson about never relaxing vigilance.
GYOKO HANAWA
President of Nipponzan Myohoji
Inagi-shi, Tokyo
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