When three Japanese civilians taken hostage in Iraq returned home earlier this week, there were no well-wishers awaiting them. As they left the plane, the two volunteer aid workers and a freelance photojournalist hung their heads and kept silent.
Despite their safe release, it was a bleak homecoming. But it didn't end there.
The three -- Noriaki Imai, 18, Nahoko Takato, 34, and photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama, 32 -- have been accused of rashly ignoring government warnings to stay away from Iraq. They were blamed for imperiling the Japanese military's humanitarian mission to Iraq. Afterward, the government said it would bill them US$6,000 for their flights and other expenses.
Since their arrival last Sunday, the three have been caught in a maelstrom of public criticism that has made them virtual prisoners in their own homes and raised questions about just how far the government should go to warn its citizens about traveling to combat zones. On Friday, the head of a Japanese aid group said the backlash was overblown.
"The government has a duty to act if something happens to any of its citizens," said Michiya Kumaoka, president of the Japan International Volunteer Center, which supplied medicine to two children's hospitals in Baghdad until withdrawing its staff this month.
The national Asahi newspaper agreed.
"We cannot deny that the former hostages should have been better prepared," the liberal daily said in an editorial Thursday. "However, there is no way we could ever agree with any of the strident talk ... from members of the ruling coalition who are obviously taking an extreme position on what they think `personal responsibility' is supposed to mean."
Still, for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the hostage crisis could have been a political disaster.
The Japanese leader has pushed aggressively for the deployment of about 1,100 non-combat troops to support the US-led coalition in Iraq. About 550 Japanese ground forces are in southern Iraq purifying water and helping rebuild roads and schools.
Public opinion had been divided over the deployment -- the first to a combat zone since World War II -- and critics had warned the dispatch would make Japan a target for terrorists.
The hostage-taking appeared to justify the critics' view.
Imai, Takato and Koriyama were kidnapped by a previously unknown group that released a video showing the three blindfolded, forced to squat and being threatened with guns.
The gunmen threatened to burn them to death in three days unless Tokyo pulled its ground troops out of Iraq -- a demand that Koizumi rejected.
The abductions set off protests calling for a pullout, and drew tearful pleas from the hostages' families for Tokyo to withdraw. Six days later, two more Japanese were kidnapped.
By this week, all five hostages had been released unharmed with the help of Islamic religious leaders.
Reaction from Japan's closest ally, the US, was one of admiration for the former hostages.
"Everybody should understand the risk they are taking by going into dangerous areas," US Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters. "But if nobody was willing to take a risk, then we would never move forward."
"And so I'm pleased that these Japanese citizens were willing to put themselves at risk for a greater good, for a better purpose. And the Japanese people should be very proud that they have citizens like this willing to do that," Powell said, in remarks aired by TV networks in Japan.
But many Japanese questioned the ex-hostages' judgment.
"Even though their intentions were good, they should reflect on why they ignored the government's warnings against going to a place as dangerous as Iraq," the conservative Nihon Keizai, Japan's leading financial newspaper, said in an editorial after the hostages were freed.
"They could have compromised Japan's humanitarian mission in Iraq, and this country's foreign policy in general," the editorial said.
The families of the hostages said they had received numerous critical phone calls and e-mails, some slamming the families themselves for urging the government to bow to the gunmen's demand to withdraw troops.
They quickly eased off the pressure and later apologized to the public.
Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said Tuesday she might consider tougher travel warnings, and ministry officials said they were considering posting advisories cautioning that the government might not be able to rescue travelers who put their lives at risk.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS