Thirty nongovernmental organizations and scores of people gathered in Tokyo's Meiji Park on Wednesday to ponder the state of the world one year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S.
The nine-hour peace event, dubbed "9.11 Be-in" in an effort to invoke the spirit of the antiwar, hippie gatherings of the late 1960s, opened at noon.
It kicked off with a series of musical events and "talk-in" sessions, featuring appearances by Mizuho Fukushima, secretary general of the Social Democratic Party, and sociologist Shinji Miyadai.