[lit-ideas] Re: Japan & hostages(McCreery?)
- From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 09:52:25 +0900
On 2004/04/24, at 0:07, JulieReneB@xxxxxxx wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/international/asia/23JAPA.html
> This is difficult for me to really understand -- John? can you help?
>
> Julie Krueger
>
Here is a piece that I published on BestoftheBlogs in response to a
similar request.
======
What's this about?
It's a question Jerry Bowles put to me about the treatment of the
Japanese hostages once they got home, i.e.,
> The first three hostages, including a woman who helped street children
> on the streets of Baghdad, first appeared on television two weeks ago
> as their knife-brandishing kidnappers threatened to slit their
> throats. A few days after their release, they landed here on Sunday,
> in the eye of a peculiarly Japanese storm.
>
> "You got what you deserve!" one Japanese held up a hand-written sign
> at the airport where they landed. "You are Japan's shame," another
> wrote on the Web site of one of the hostages. They had "caused
> trouble" for everybody. The government, not to be outdone, announced
> it would bill them $6,000 for airfare.
>
> Treated like criminals, the three have gone into hiding, effectively
> becoming prisoners inside their own homes. The kidnapped woman was
> last seen arriving at her parents' house, looking defeated and dazed
> from taking tranquilizers, flanked by relatives who helped her walk
> and bow deeply before the media, as a final apology to the nation.
One possible explanation is that causing trouble for a group to which
you belong is a big-time sin in Japan, especially when the perpetrator
is seen has having acted arbitrarily in defiance of guidance from the
group's leaders. In this case the group was the nation, the government
had issued warnings against travel to Iraq, that the three hostages had
gone off on their own in defiance of these warnings....
But this all sounds a bit too culturological. At the very least it
avoids mentioning the obvious--that the majority of Japanese either
oppose or have very mixed feelings about SDF ("Self-Defense" Force)
troops being sent to Iraq. A campaign by government spokesmen, reported
in the main, highly deferential to government mass media, and
reinforced by right-wing rants on the Internet is a marvelous way to
deflect public anger and to portray the government has the supportive
but stern traditional parent who bales out the errant children but then
gives them absolute hell once they have been rescued.
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