page_title: Peace Pagoda
section_title: Ampara, Sri Lanka
hierarchical_section_title: Peace Pagoda / Asia / Ampara, Sri Lanka
caption_attribution_description: සිංහල: අම්පාර ජපාන සාම චෛත්‍යය English: Peace Pagoda, Ampara
context_page_description: A Peace Pagoda is a Buddhist stupa; a monument to inspire peace, designed to provide a focus for people of all races and creeds, and to help unite them in their search for world peace. Most peace pagodas built since World War II have been built under the guidance of Nichidatsu Fujii, a Buddhist monk from Japan and founder of the Nipponzan-Myōhōji Buddhist Order. Fujii was greatly inspired by his meeting with Mahatma Gandhi in 1931 and decided to devote his life to promoting non-violence. In 1947, he began constructing Peace Pagodas as shrines to world peace. The first was inaugurated at Kumamoto in 1954.
  Peace Pagodas were built as a symbol of peace in Japanese cities including Hiroshima and Nagasaki where the atomic bombs took the lives of over 150,000 people, almost all of whom were civilian, at the end of World War II. By 2000, eighty Peace Pagodas had been built around the world in Europe, Asia, and the United States.
  The Nipponzan-Myōhōji monks of the New England Peace Pagoda were awarded the Courage of Conscience award June 5, 1998 in Sherborn, Massachusetts.
context_section_description: The Ampara Peace Pagoda (7.2852855°N 81.6539499°E) was built by Nipponzan monks under the leadership of Nichidatsu Fujii and was inaugurated on February 27, 1988. Ceremonies here are attended by large numbers of people.
caption: Peace Pagoda, Ampara, Sri Lanka
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:10:26 16:27:00", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4159", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2655", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1728"}