Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for your kind introduction.

(Your Holy Highnesses,) My dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.

I am Masami Yatabe, President of Jinja Honcho, known in English as the Association of Shinto Shrines. I have come to this beautiful city of Lyon, on behalf of Jinja Honcho which represents about 80,000 Shinto shrines in Japan. I am very much honored and impressed to speak to you at this forum.

First of all, my deepest appreciation goes to the Community of Sant�Egidio, the host of this meeting, and its tremendous work and efforts to make this important meeting possible. Also, I am very much encouraged to see so many colleagues and friends gathering here.

But, ladies and gentlemen, what moves me the most is that all the attendants here share one common and noble goal�to make this planet a more peaceful one.

We the Japanese have always been grateful to the Mother Nature�s blessing from very ancient years. We the Japanese have always been praying for peace and tranquility. And the Shinto faith holds a belief that each presence in the nature, such as mountains, rivers and seas, has a deity in it.

The Japanese people�s prayers for these deities have been inherited by one generation after another�through festivals which abound.

Ladies and gentlemen; yes, Shinto is the oldest faith of Japan. Indeed, as early as in A.D. 712, our country�s oldest book�Kojiki, or the Record of Ancient Matters�frequently referred to this faith and its practices.

Japan also has the oldest monarchy of the world. And the monarch�His Majesty the Emperor�is indivisible from Shinto. In other words, His Majesty concurrently is the Supreme Priest of Shinto. The current Emperor is the 125th descendant of Emperor Jinmu, the first Monarch, but all the Imperial festivals and services are still conducted in the same manner as were in ancient years.

One example. The Grand Shrines of Ise, which enshrines Amaterasu Omikami (the Sun Goddess), the ancestor of His Majesty, is considered the most sacred of the 80,000 shrines. And, there, the shrine structures are newly built once every 20 years so that the deities can move into new shrines.

This �Regular Removal�, or Shikinen Sengu, is the holiest of all the Shinto festivals. The Removal, or scrap and build, has been conducted over many, many centuries.(Add? Actually, the first Shikinen Sengu was conducted in A.D. 690.)

Many centuries later, the Pacific War devastated our country. And the Grand Shrines of Ise�the focus of faith of all the Japanese�was �disowned� by the national government under the occupational policies. These were very difficult years, indeed. Consequently, the Regular Removal originally scheduled for 1949 had to be postponed.

However, respect and faith of the Japanese people toward the Ise Shrines remained intact. In 1953�four years behind schedule�the Regular Removal was successfully completed. A huge number of the Japanese made donations to the project. Probably, the Japanese saw in the Shikinen Sengu a springboard for rebuilding the country.

Six decades have passed since the end of the War. Japan achieved a spectacular growth, particularly in economy. But, in doing so, ladies and gentlemen, the country had to pay a very heavy price.

The Japanese started to become more affluent. Simultaneously, they started to seek more comfortable and convenient lifestyle. And in that materialism-oriented environment, they got less aware of the blessing of the nature, the meaning of community, and toils and efforts their predecessors paid. The results: wasting of natural resources, destruction of the Mother Nature and degeneration of heart and mind.

Behind the appearance of affluence, today�s Japan does suffer from a variety of problems: namely, delinquencies and crimes by young people, an annual 30,000 suicides particularly among middle-aged and elderly people. We did acquire a lot of materials. But, in return, people�s mind has gotten rougher, relations among people and the Mother Nature deteriorated. This is the situation we are faced with right now.

Ladies and gentlemen, Shinto shrines all over Japan have their own forests called Chinju-no-Mori, or forests of pacification. Until 20-30 years ago, they offered ideal playing grounds for children, where their merry voices were heard all day. Not any more. The fact that we cannot see children playing around in the nature is something that makes us concerned, particularly so when we think about the future of our society.

In that context, we grown-ups do have a very important role and responsibility�to protect the nature, which the forests symbolize, and to cultivate among children reverence to the nature.

At the Grand Shrines of Ise, every daily offering to deities, namely rice, vegetables, fruits and salt, is made in-house�at our own rice paddies and fields. I must add that all the lumbers we use in the Regular Removal once every 20 years are cultivated and harvested in our own forests which total 5,500 hectares.

Of course it is impossible for all the 80,000 shrines to adopt the same modus operandi, but we can set it as our goal. And we also believe it is very good for children to gather around in the Chinju forests, communicate with the Mother Nature and local residents, through festivals, and, ultimately gain the sense of the faith.

Mankind tends to satisfy his wild desires, even in violation of the cause of the nature, under the name of growth or development. But unlimited desires can lead to sowing new conflicts. I believe every faith has its own code of self-restraint, and I believe it is the duty of us, the religious community, to deal with such trends�with modesty and harmony.

To us the Japanese, this is the 60th year after the War ended. But we are seeing continuous conflicts and frequent terrorist activities in recent years�mankind still has a number of problems.

Every time we see repeated atrocities in what are called war activities, the starting point should be praying for each other, through his or her own faith, so that we can achieve universal peace.

Ladies and gentlemen, by surmounting differences of ideology, belief and faith, we have to ponder what we have to do and what we have to achieve so that every single life on earth�not only that of mankind�can enjoy co-existence and co-prosperity. By doing so, we can make sure that we can march on toward great steps toward real global peace.