Japan’s outrage over the slaying of two Japanese hostages by the Islamic State group is settling into a heightened awareness of risks associated with the country’s pursuit of lucrative energy projects and other economic ties in the Middle East.
Tokyo’s No. 1 salesman, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was wrapping up a six-day Middle East tour with executives of several dozen Japanese companies in tow on Jan. 20, when the Islamic State group purportedly issued a demand for US$200 million in exchange for the two hostages.
The apparent beheadings of journalist Kenji Goto and gun aficionado Haruna Yukawa in Syria shattered the sense of security among Japanese and raised questions over Abe’s effort to sell nuclear power technology in the region that supplies more than 80 percent of Japan’s oil and gas.
On Tuesday, a Japanese government committee began investigating the killings and is also to assess ways to better protect Japanese overseas.
“Japan is keen to play a more active role in the world and it will be exposed to more dangers than it is accustomed to and it needs contingency plans for the future,” said Yoel Sano, global head of political risk at Business Monitor, a London-based research consultancy.
About 800 Japanese businesses are operating in the Middle East-North Africa region and about 12,000 Japanese live there, according to the government.
Huge conglomerates such as Mitsubishi Corp and Hitachi Corp, and retailers including Muji and confectioner Yokumoku are finding opportunities in a market of 500 million people stretching from Mauritania to Afghanistan.
Surging auto shipments boosted Japan’s exports to the Middle East by 21 percent last year to about ¥3 trillion (US$25.3 billion), while imports from the region, almost all oil and gas, inched up 1 percent to ¥15.83 trillion thanks to lower oil prices, according to the Japanese Ministry of Finance.
Abe is fending off criticism that he drew unnecessary attention to Japan during his Middle East tour with a speech mentioning a new US$200 million contribution to countries struggling with the fallout from the conflict with the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Japanese have been taken hostage before, but usually only by happenstance. Since the Japanese constitution limits its military to domestic defense, it provides only non-military support to the US-led alliance against the Islamic State group.
However, the final message purportedly from the hostages’ captors, announcing the killing of Goto, included a dire threat to “let the nightmare for Japan begin.”
Sano said that Asian targets will increasingly draw attention, but the greatest threats still are to Western and other Middle Eastern countries.
“The bigger risk is not that they [Japanese] will be targeted, but that they will be caught up in incidents where they are playing a bigger role,” Sano said. “Japan needs to develop greater awareness and greater ability to solve or act upon these situations.”
The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs also elevated alerts for areas affected by the conflict with Islamic State group and other extremists.
As individuals used to living in a low-crime society, Japanese tend to be less aware of risks than some other nationalities. Compared with US corporations, Japanese companies are not as prepared to give intensive training for traveling abroad.
They are even less equipped to handle crises like hostage-taking, said Tsuyoshi Takemura, a crisis-communications expert at public relations firm Burson-Marsteller in Tokyo.
However, since the killings of Yukawa and Goto, many Japanese companies have been trying to develop specific guidelines for their employees abroad to stay safe, he said.
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