Cuba's Mesa Redonda, today at 6:15 P.M., will transmit the encounter of Fidel Castro with more than 700 crew members of Japan's Peace Boat

CubaVision Internacional will transmit the program.

This meeting comes at a very opportune time. Peace in our planet is being threatened by Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, potential partners in crime against all of humanity. LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD. We have to repudiate and condemn these two warmongers.

Announcement in Spanish by Granma:

Esta tarde, primera parte del Encuentro de Fidel con los integrantes del Crucero por la Paz

Hoy, a las 6:15 p.m., en el espacio de la Mesa Redonda, Cubavisión, Cubavisión Internacional, Radio Rebelde y Radio Habana Cuba transmitirán la primera parte del emotivo Encuentro sostenido por el líder de la Revolución Cubana Fidel Castro Ruz con más de 700 integrantes del Crucero por la Paz, el cual tuvo lugar el pasado jueves 1ro. de marzo en el Palacio de Convenciones.

El Canal Educativo retransmitirá este importante material al final de su programación.

Peace Boat arrives in Cuba to denounce nuclear arms

(AFP) – 13 hours ago

HAVANA — The Peace Boat, a Japanese ship that sails around the world to promote disarmament, docked in Havana Thursday with hundreds of activists aboard to speak about the dangers of nuclear weapons and energy.

Among them were 130 World War II atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and survivors of the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor accident in Japan.

They met later in the day with former Cuban leader Fidel Castro as part of an international forum against nuclear weapons.

Castro urged them to describe the horrors of the US nuclear bombings of Japan and to denounce the presence of nuclear weapons in the world.

The Japanese Peace Boat activists were joined by victims of radiation poisoning from nuclear accidents and tests in other countries during the forum.

The Peace Boat is a Tokyo-based non-governmental organization that has sponsored global voyages each year since 1983 to speak publicly about the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, and to promote peaceful conflict resolution.

Japanese Ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e (浮世絵, literally "pictures of the floating world"?) (Japanese pronunciation: [ukijo.e] or [ukijoꜜe]) is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints (or woodcuts) and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters. It is the main artistic genre of woodblock printing in Japan.

Usually the word ukiyo is literally translated as "floating world" in English, referring to a conception of an evanescent world, impermanent, fleeting beauty and a realm of entertainments (kabuki, courtesans, geisha) divorced from the responsibilities of the mundane, everyday world; "pictures of the floating world", i.e. ukiyo-e, are considered a genre unto themselves.

The contemporary novelist Asai Ryōi, in his Ukiyo monogatari (浮世物語, "Tales of the Floating World", c. 1661?), provides some insight into the concept of the floating world:

... Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves in just floating, floating; ... refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current: this is what we call the floating world...[1]

The art form rose to great popularity in the metropolitan culture of Edo (Tokyo) during the second half of the 17th century, originating with the single-color works of Hishikawa Moronobu in the 1670s. At first, only India ink was used, then some prints were manually colored with a brush, but in the 18th century Suzuki Harunobu developed the technique of polychrome printing to produce nishiki-e.

Ukiyo-e were affordable because they could be mass-produced. They were mainly meant for townsmen, who were generally not wealthy enough to afford an original painting. The original subject of ukiyo-e was city life, in particular activities and scenes from the entertainment district. Beautiful courtesans, bulky sumo wrestlers and popular actors would be portrayed while engaged in appealing activities. Later on landscapes also became popular. Political subjects, and individuals above the lowest strata of society (courtesans, wrestlers and actors) were not sanctioned in these prints and very rarely appeared. Sex was not a sanctioned subject either, but continually appeared in ukiyo-e prints. Artists and publishers were sometimes punished for creating these sexually explicit shunga.

Source: Wikepedia