Helmets, chanted slogans and clashes with police -- a common scene in Japan during demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Those days may be long gone, but after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States a new style of peace activism using the Internet and other technology has quietly been created.
A few hundred Japanese, mainly in their 20s and 30s but with a sprinkling of children, elderly and foreigners, have been parading through Tokyo's fashionable Shibuya and Harajuku districts on Sundays since the attacks, displaying peace messages on signs, banners and their T-shirts.
Instead of chanting slogans denouncing the government, they sing songs like John Lennon's "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance."