Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a daily column that runs on Page 1 of The Asahi Shimbun.
February 24, 2022 at 18:07 JST
Security forces stand guard in a residential district of Novoluganske in the eastern Ukraine region of Donetsk on Feb. 19. (Hiroki Endo)
I imagine many people have an established morning routine, for example, washing their face, turning on the TV and then drinking coffee.
Fourteen-year-old Katya would walk to the local bakery to buy freshly baked bread.
One morning, she was passing homes decorated with flowers along the way.
Her peaceful routine was abruptly shattered when a friend she met on her way told her, “The war has begun.”
Katya’s recollection of the day when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 can be read in “Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II” by Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, who was born in Ukraine.
If Katya is still alive today, I wonder how she would feel about the de facto abrogation of the Minsk agreement signed in her native city in 2015.
In violation of the cease-fire agreement, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 21 ordered the deployment of troops in eastern Ukraine.
Every time the folly of invading another country is repeated, children are invariably made to suffer.
According to an Asahi Shimbun report datelined eastern Ukraine several days ago, an 11-year-old girl in a town of buildings with boarded-up windows said, “I’m a little worried. At school, our teacher told us not to panic.”
I pray she will wake up to a morning that’s no different from usual.
A poem by Shuntaro Tanikawa goes to the effect: “While a youth in Kamchatka dreams of a giraffe/ A girl in Mexico awaits her bus in the morning mist/ ... / We relay the morning from longitude to longitude/ Taking turns, so to speak, to protect the Earth.”
It is not easy to keep passing the baton of a peaceful daily life. But we cannot allow the relay to stop.
--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 24
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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.
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