[Songs Praying for Peace] To Prevent Repeating Tragic History | A Collection of Peace Songs That Resonate with the Heart
Songs of peace that resonate in our hearts in every era.
Many timeless classics that wish for a world without war or conflict and embody the preciousness of peace in song have long continued to stay close to people’s hearts.
In this article, we introduce songs—mainly from Japanese music—that are imbued with prayers and hopes for peace.
Powerful messages like “Don’t forget the painful history,” and warm sentiments such as “Let’s build a Japan and a world without conflict together.” You’re sure to find a message of peace that resonates with your heart.
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[Songs Wishing for Peace] To Prevent Repeating Tragic History | A Collection of Moving Peace Songs (91–100)
Horse Ridingthe HIATUS
Opening with a majestic acoustic guitar tone, this piece is a sweeping epic that feels as if it’s racing through the great currents of history.
The earnest wish to “break the cycle of repeated conflict and protect peaceful days” comes through vividly in both the music and the visuals.
Released in July 2013 by the HIATUS, this track is the title song of an EP that reached No.
10 on the Oricon charts.
The addition of new member Ichiyo Izawa enriches the sound with the timbre of piano.
Even as your heart aches at the world’s injustice, this song is sure to kindle a strong light within you as you take a step toward tomorrow.
NO WAR in the futureKeyakizaka 46
“NO WAR in the future,” included on Keyakizaka46’s debut album “Hashiridasu Shunkan,” released in 2018.
The song is also well-loved as the walk-out music for Tokyo Yakult Swallows pitcher Hiroki Hasegawa.
Why must we fight? If there were just a little kindness and love, conflict wouldn’t arise—this song conveys that universal desire for peace.
It’s a track that makes you want to be gentle and considerate in your everyday life, starting from the people and places close to you.
Far from Kyivsadamasashi
In old atlases, “Kyiv” still appears as “Kiev,” and in Japan—a distant island nation where many can do nothing more than send what support they can—there are surely many who are heartsick over this brutal, senseless war.
Masashi Sada’s 43rd album, Ko-hi (Kohi), includes a song titled “Far from Kyiv.” While many artists tacitly avoid political songs, Sada’s message took the form of music and reached people’s hearts.
“Even after people die, flowers still bloom”—it’s a song in which, amid sorrow, he weaves a thread toward the future: a piece into which Sada poured his whole being.
Join the Self-Defense ForcesTakada Wataru
The original song is “Andorra,” an anti-war song satirizing the United States that was released by Pete Seeger.
In Wataru Takada’s version, it contains irony directed at Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.
However, the irony was not understood, and he was mistakenly offered to use it as a PR song for the Self-Defense Forces.
DON’T CRY HIROSHIMATEE
DON’T CRY HIROSHIMA, sung by singer-songwriter TEE from Hiroshima City.
It’s a peaceful reggae number that vows never to forget August 6, the day an atomic bomb was dropped on his hometown, and sings of everlasting peace.
The song carries a message to ensure the sorrow of that day is never repeated and to keep passing on the peace we have now.
It also weaves in the Hiroshima dialect, conveying his love for his hometown.
It engraves in our hearts a gratitude for peace that we tend to forget in our everyday lives.
NO ~The Flower That Bloomed in the Wake of Life~sutoreitenaa
NO ~A Flower That Bloomed in the Trace of Life~ is the song that reminds us of the connection between past and present.
Released in 2015 by Straightener, an alternative rock band active since the 1990s, it resonates with a warm band sound steeped in nostalgia.
You’ll also find comfort in Atsushi Horie’s emotional vocals laid over the mid-tempo track.
The song depicts the strength to live without forgetting the wars of the past.
Please give it a listen—a song that wishes for a world where everyone can live happily.
Dead girlHajime Chitose
This is a song by female singer Chitose Hajime, whose debut single “Wadatsumi no Ki” created a buzz and drew attention to the unique melodic inflections of Amami folk music, which had not been considered very mainstream until then.
The piece sets music by Yuzo Toyama to a poem published in 1956 by Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet, and it centers on a girl who fell victim to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
The profound despair wrought by weapons that produce nothing but tragedy may carry a truly anti-war meaning when sung by a Japanese artist from the world’s only country to have suffered atomic bombing.
It is a song that conveys to the next generation a message we must never allow to be born again—one that deserves to be revisited precisely in our present time.
