EFL:
It takes some doing to find a country whose citizens risk their lives thousands of miles from home, bringing hope to the wretched people of a war-ravaged land, only to be treated as personae non gratae on their return. Last week, that country was Japan.
| al-Guardian seems to be upset, wonder why? |
Relief that three of its nationals were released unharmed by Iraqi militiamen late last week has quickly given way to criticism of the hostages for putting themselves in harm's way.
For a few days, though, it was not only the hostages' wellbeing that was threatened. TV footage of three young Japanese kneeling blindfolded on the floor of a dark room, surrounded by armed men, did not just horrify their compatriots; it plunged the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, into a crisis many said he would be lucky to survive. The gunmen, members of a previously unheard of group calling itself the Mojahedin Brigades, had threatened to burn the hostages alive unless Tokyo withdrew its 550 ground troops from Iraq within three days.
| Which... uhhh... didn't happen. |
Mr Koizumi's position looked near-impossible. As an unstinting supporter of the US-led war in Iraq and of a more visible role for Japan in even the messiest international hotspots, he was never going to bow to the kidnappers' demands. Yet the alternative to deal-making looked equally unpalatable: three executed civilians, including a woman and a teenager who had left school only weeks earlier.
As the deadline approached, thousands took to the streets to call for an immediate troop withdrawal. Peace campaigners kept vigil outside the prime minister's office, and the hostages' relatives appeared on television to urge Mr Koizumi to swallow his pride and spare their children. An opinion poll suggested fewer than half the population was behind their leader. Last Thursday, despair turned to joy as news broke of the hostages' release following the intervention of the Muslim Clerics Association, a moderate Sunni organisation.
| They're the bunch that organized the late festivities... |
Soon after, two other Japanese - a freelance journalist and a human rights activist - were also released. It was an ending Mr Koizumi would not have dared envisage a few days earlier. He not only survived the biggest test of his three years in power, but emerged with his international and domestic standing enhanced. Newspaper poll results released this week show a clear majority of Japanese - between 62 and 74% - backed his hardline stance on the hostage takers' demands.
| And there is the reason for al-Guardians depression. |
Though doubts persist about Mr Koizumi's handling of the economy, his domestic reform programme and his support for George Bush's foreign policy, it is the image of a man prepared to face down terrorists that will be freshest in the minds of voters when they go to the polls, first in three lower house by-elections this Sunday and then in nationwide upper house elections in July.
For the hostages, though, the happy ending turned sour almost overnight. No sooner had they tasted freedom than Liberal Democratic party figures and rightwing editorial writers were queuing up to label them reckless and irresponsible, even self-righteous, for ignoring warnings not to travel to Iraq. They have been prevented from answering their critics, silenced, for now, by stress and their legal advisers.
| Oh, the poor misunderstood hostages, brutally supressed and villified by the Republicans and Rush Limbaugh.......sorry, wrong country. |
Even their relatives, figures of sympathy a week ago, have been vilified. Along with the thousands of supportive emails they received were those telling them, in no uncertain term, to stop whining. The message, though couched in more polite terms, was the same in the editorial pages of the conservative press.
| They have a different take on family honor in Japan. |
The parents of 18-year-old Noriaki Imai, who had planned to produce a picture book about Iraqi children poisoned by depleted uranium shells, were called irresponsible as a weekly magazine poured scorn on their leftwing credentials.
| Bet it would make the NYT bestseller list. |
| I think the Japanese are on to the goobers' connivance in their own kidnapping. |
As the crisis entered its final two days, the families' tactics changed. There were no more angry demands for a troop deployment; no more calls for a personal meeting with the prime minister. Just personal pleas, and thanks for the efforts being made on their behalf. Their cause was not helped when two of the hostages - aid worker Nahoko Takato and Soichiro Koriyama, a freelance photographer - said, in telephone calls to their families, that they wanted to stay on in Iraq to complete their work. "No matter how much goodwill they might have had, how can they say such a thing after so many people in the government went without food and sleep to secure their release," Mr Koizumi fumed.
| Hummm, depends on what they are really working for. If it is to really help Iraq become a better place, then I applaud them. If it is to try to undermine the US war effort (if those rumors about faking their capture are true), then I don't. Still should have gone home first and thanked everyone, Japanese are very big on that. |
Praise for the hostages came from an unlikely source. "If nobody was willing to take a risk then we would never move forward, we would never move our world forward," the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said in a television interview in Washington. Now that all five hostages are home, the media is turning its attention to the process that led to their release. While the intervention of the clerics association was instrumental, there is media speculation that a ransom was paid - a claim angrily denied by officials in Tokyo.
| Yes, there is that. That would also be the Japanese way, a polite payoff that is denied. |
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