This is the eleventh month of the year, on the eleventh day of which, at the eleventh hour, the world pays homage to those who died in the first great war in the century of wars.
Before coming to Tokyo, I used to be director of the Peace Research Center in Canberra. The Australian National University also has a Strategic and Defense Studies Center. When people asked me for the difference between the two, I used to reply jokingly that we were on the side of the angels.
The serious point of the question is still relevant to my present position. The central problem for peace research is violence: the nature, causes, consequences, management and resolution of conflict. It seeks not just to understand violence, but to eliminate or tame it. Its task is to challenge the basic tenets of the conventional analyses of violence and offer critical alternatives. The most important point is that our primary motivation is to improve the human condition, to aim for a better life in a safer world for all.