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Julian Ryall

When Yuji Makano and his girlfriend, Mina Takahashi, strolled up to the birthplace of Jesus Christ in April 2002, journalists, Palestinian gunmen and the Israeli army looked on in wonder.
Tourist guidebooks in their hands and ignoring the stench of tear gas and bullet holes stitched across buildings surrounding Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, the pair had no idea that they had walked into a 16-day siege of one of the holiest sites in Christianity.
Ushered away by journalists, the couple caught their breath before wandering off in search of a new adventure.

Makano and Takahashi were fortunate. Plenty more Japanese - seeking adventure or to help in parts of the world a lot less peaceful than their homeland - have been far less lucky, as the plight of Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto in Syria today demonstrates.
But still they go.
"It's a different situation with journalists, although I think some reporters are over-confident and even arrogant to think they will not be harmed in some of these places, but it's clearly crazy to try to visit places like Syria today and expect to come out unharmed," Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University, told The South China Morning Post.
Professor Shimada believes the cosseted and sheltered lives that post-war Japanese have led is in part to blame for a good degree of their naivety.
"The pacifist education that young people have received since the war has misled these people," he said. "Socialist and communist politicians here claim that Japan's peace constitution means that we shall never again be involved in a war, but that's a foolish, even childish, way of looking at the world.
"The sort of education that teaches young people solely about peace is to blame for putting young Japanese in dangerous places," he said.
Until now, the most high-profile Japanese victim of Middle East extremists was Shosei Koda, who was taken hostage in Iraq in October 2004 by a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In a video message, 24-year-old Koda's captors demanded that then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi withdraw Japan's troops from the logistics mission they were carrying out for the Allied nations operating in Iraq.
In Amman, Koda had brushed off warnings not to enter Iraq and told friends he wanted to know what was really happening in the country. Nine days after he left the Jordanian capital, his captors held him down on an American flag and cut his head off with a knife.
A few months earlier, three Japanese aid workers, Nahoko Takato, 34, Soichiro Koriyama, 32, and 19-year-old Noriaki Imai, were seized by another extremist group in Iraq and another video demanded that Japan withdraw its troops or they would be executed.
The government continues to deny that a ransom was paid for their freedom.
Alongside those who are drawn to conflicts are camera-toting tourists, such as Toshifumi Fujimoto.
Speaking to Agence France-Presse in war-torn Aleppo last year, Fujimoto said he saved up money from his job as a truck driver to fund trips to the front line in Syria, Yemen and Egypt. "It's very exciting and the adrenaline rush is like no other."
Fujimoto added that he was not afraid of being shot at or even killed - "I'm a combination of samurai and kamikaze."
Tetsuo Kotani, a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, said people who head off to war zones or even, in some cases, express a desire to sign up to fight alongside outfits like Isis, "are not thinking like traditional Japanese."
Citing the case of the 26-year-old student who was detained by Japanese police in October, shortly before he was scheduled to travel to Syria to join the militant group, Kotani believes that the man found himself to be an outcast in Japanese society.
 


	Abe's 72 hour race to free Japan's two Islamic State hostages
Japan was doing all it can to free two hostages the Islamic State group was threatening to kill within 72 hours, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said yesterday, vowing never to give in to terrorism.
Abe returned to Tokyo from a six-day Middle East tour slightly ahead of schedule and convened a cabinet meeting soon after.
"We are fighting against time, and we'll make an all-out effort and use every diplomatic route that we have developed to win the release of the two," he said.
Abe and other Japanese officials have declined to discuss whether Japan will pay the US$200 million ransom for the captives, 47-year-old freelance journalist Kenji Goto and 42-year-old Haruna Yukawa, the founder of a private security company.
The militants' threat to kill the two Japanese hostages sparked expressions of fear and outrage across the country.
"Once Japanese become targets, it could happen here," said Mio Nakashima, 26, an IT saleswoman waiting at Tokyo's central railway station. "I was thinking terrorism is something happening outside Japan."
The video emerged days after Abe pledged to extend US$200 million to countries confronted by the al-Qaeda breakaway group.
"I feel like Abe's decision to provide US$200 million is just an excuse to attack Japan," said Youkou Imada, a 32-year- old construction company employee. "I'm just wishing Abe would focus on the Japanese economy rather than committing us to those complicated situations outside the country."
Some comments on stories at the Yahoo Japan website expressed surprise that Japanese were even in the area.
"Why did these men visit such a dangerous place," asked someone called Edokko. "We should decline the ransom demand."
Associated Press, Bloomberg


How Japan's pacifist education could be putting young explorers at risk

People look at a large TV screen in Tokyo on Tuesday showing news reports about the two Japanese men (in orange) who have been kidnapped by the Islamic State. Photo: AFP

Mina Takahashi and Yuji Makano (left) in Bethlehem. Photo: Reuters

Executed Shosei Koda. Photo:AP

Two Japanese men went to the Middle East looking for action now both face the possibility of being decapitated

Haruna Yukawa aims a Kalashnikov. Photo: SCMP

Haruna Yukawa is shown captured in Syria.

Kenji Goto said he went to the Middle East to report on the Syrian war.

Japan weighs US$200m ransom in Islamic State threat to kill hostages

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Tuesday. Photo: EPA

A man watches a television airing news about the two Japanese detained by islamic State at an electronics store in Tokyo on Tuesday. Photo: AP

Hostage Haruna Yukawa took several videos and photos of himself with an AK-47 while in Syria and Iraq and posted them online. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Hostage Kenji Goto speaks about the Middle East at a public event in Tokyo in March 2014. Photo: AFP

Islamic State demands US$200 million ransom for Japanese hostages

A masked person threatens to kill two Japanese men Kenji Goto Jogo (left) and Haruna Yukawa. Photo: AP

A masked person threatens to kill two Japanese men Kenji Goto Jogo (left) and Haruna Yukawa. Photo: Reuters

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (left) and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a joint press conference in Jerusalem on Monday. Photo: AFP 

Captive British journalist John Cantlie has appeared in a number of extremist propaganda videos produced by Islamic State. Photo: AP

News

Asia

Experts believe Japan's post-war generation is sheltered and teaching young people only about peace is misleading them about the world


When Yuji Makano and his girlfriend, Mina Takahashi, strolled up to the birthplace of Jesus Christ in April 2002, journalists, Palestinian gunmen and the Israeli army looked on in wonder.


How Japan's pacifist education could be putting young explorers at risk

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Experts believe Japan's post-war generation is sheltered and teaching young people only about peace is misleading them about the world

Experts believe Japan's post-war generation is sheltered and teaching young people only about peace is misleading them about the world