Yukika Sohma, who died on 8th November aged 96, was a Japanese politician's daughter who, though she never held public office, revolutionised Japan's approach to refugees and devoted herself tirelessly to helping Japan take responsibility on the world stage, commensurate with its economic power. She was a pioneer of MRA/IC in Japan, having met the ideas of Frank Buchman before World War 2.
Throughout her life she poured out her energies in an effort to encourage the Japanese to open their hearts to other Asians and to see that Japan made its fullest contribution to the welfare of its neighbours. For many years she was President of the Federation of Asian Women's Associations, and later honorary Vice-President; she was also President of the International MRA/IofC Association of Japan, and later honorary President, also Chairperson of the Japan-Korea Women's Friendship Association, and Vice-Chair of the Yukio Ozaki Memorial Foundation, dedicated to the advance of democracy.
In 1978 Mrs Sohma received a letter from a friend in Canada enclosing a report on Asia that harshly criticised Japan for its refusal to take in refugees from Southeast Asia, after the fall of Vietnam to communism at the end of the Vietnam War. She spoke to government officials and found they were unwilling to take the problem seriously, so she decided to take action by herself. She began to talk publicly, engaging her numerous influential friends. She told the press that Japan would become isolated if it did not learn to care for others; money was needed not only from business but from ordinary people. "If every Japanese gives one yen, we will have at least 120 million yen." Offers of help came in from all sides, and within three months she had reached her financial target. In 1979 Sohma founded the Association to Aid Refugees (AAR), later expanded to form the Association for Aid and Relief, providing humanitarian relief and supporting landmine clearance. She remained its President until she died.
Yukika Sohma's father was Yukio Ozaki (1859-1954), revered as the father of Japanese parliamentary democracy. He set a world record in parliamentary participation, serving for sixty-three years in the Diet, having been returned for twenty-five consecutive terms. He was also the mayor of Tokyo for nine years, during which time he presented Washington DC with its cherry trees as a gesture of gratitude to Theodore Roosevelt, who had initiated the peace talks that ended the Russo-Japanese War. Ozaki spent a lifetime opposing war, even when it was politically and personally dangerous to do so.
In August 1931, Yukika accompanied her father to the United States, where he had been invited by the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, and where her mother was undergoing medical treatment. She and her father went on to England, where she attended a finishing school. Her mother followed them, but her condition worsened and she died there. Yukika and her father then returned to Japan.
In 1937 she married Viscount Yasutane Sohma (the peerage was abolished after World War 2), the heir to a leading land-owning family with feudal estates in Fukushima Prefecture in central Japan. It says much for Yasutane that, in spite of his conservative background and retiring nature, he went ahead with the marriage, which was a love match rather than the traditional arranged marriage, and that he supported Yukika wholeheartedly in all the ventures which were the outlet for her ebullience and abounding energy.
The years leading up to the outbreak of World War 2 were, as Yukika said, "like living in suffocation". One after another, laws were passed to crush liberal thinking. It was at this point that Yukika encountered the ideas of Dr Frank Buchman, initiator of Moral Re-Armament (MRA), now renamed Initiatives of Change (IofC). The idea, in particular, that if one wanted to see change in others the place to start was with oneself gave her the hope of being able to affect society and the encouragement of knowing that one was engaged with like-minded people around the world in attempting to bring solutions to long-standing problems. She realised that though passionate about peace in the world, she sometimes contributed to war at home. She apologised to her mother-in-law and to her grandmother-in-law for saying one thing and thinking another.
During the war, Yasutane was conscripted and sent to Manchuria, where Yukika joined him for two years. She returned to Japan in 1945 before the end of the war, with four children, the youngest less than a year old, and Yasutane returned after the war. In the post-war years MRA was engaged in the work of reconciling former enemy nations, particularly in its international centres at Caux, Switzerland, and Mackinac Island, Michigan, USA. The conferences at these centres were attended by Japanese leaders from all areas of society, in particular a delegation of 64 in 1950, said to be the largest and most representative group of political, industrial and civic leaders to leave Japan after the war. This delegation needed the approval of General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces occupying Japan, and he gave it his warm endorsement. Yukika was active as an interpreter (she was one of the first to prove that simultaneous interpretation between Japanese and English was practical and effective). She also took the opportunity to express her own convictions. As she said later, there were times when she wanted to excuse herself from taking responsibility and apologising for the suffering inflicted by Japan during the war because she was not part of the establishment, but she decided to identify herself with her country and humbly apologise. Through such actions, she and Senator Shidzue Kato, who was equally so moved, did much to create better relations between Japan and Korea, a country that had especially bitter memories of Japanese colonial rule. These two ladies were also instrumental in challenging Prime Minister Kishi to apologise for Japan's actions during the war, when he made a journey through South-East Asia and Australasia in 1957. They had seen the effect of the apology given by Mr Niro Hoshijima, Speaker of the Diet, in Manila a few months earlier, where Yukika acted as interpreter.
When asked by the press where she got her energy from at her advanced age, she said that it came from a deep desire to see that Japan learnt to care for the world, and in particular for the children of the world. She did not regard herself as someone special, but held that everyone could do something useful and helpful in the world. As she said simply, "I get ideas of what should be done, and my friends do them."
Her husband predeceased her in 1994; she is survived by two sons and two daughters and their children.
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