Freed hostage apologizes to Japanese government

A Japanese man who was kidnapped by a Pakistan-based gang of bandits while traveling in Iran last year has finally been released. After gaining his freedom, one of his first acts was to appear before cameras and apologize for all the trouble he had caused:

“I am very sorry that I caused a great deal of trouble to the Iranian government, the Japanese government and all others,” Satoshi Nakamura, a 23-year-old student at Yokohama National University, said Monday at a news conference in Tehran.

“I was never treated in a violent way (by the bandits),” he said. “I tried to keep my nerve by thinking about my family.”

The kidnapping had taken place when Nakamura went traveling alone in remote areas of Pakistan and Iran after finishing a volunteer English teaching program in Nepal.

7 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - June 17, 2008 at 2:11 pm

Categories: General Japan Tags: japan, tourist

Oops

Wow, this is one very easygoing person.
Vonskippy

Maybe just a touch of Stockholm Syndrome going on there eh?
_rem

simple japanese etiquette:
- voluntary work in a foreign country is not “seen” as a generous and boldly good act (which is a christian/western state of mind) but as selfish and irritable act because there are also plenty of needs inner Japan
- the fact of feeling as burden a strong uncomfortable feeling in Japan. The fact that he alone required so much energy and money must have been hard on him

http://pontasmemorandum.blogspot.com/ ponta

I think that voluntary work in a foreign poverty-stricken country is “seen” as a generous and boldly good act but doing the voluntary work in a country where you know it is highly probable you might be abducted, thereby causing troubles to others is not seen as a generous and boldly good act.

helical

He must have been aware of how the string of Japanese NGO volunteer abductions caused a storm of online bashings a few years back.
The abductees were portrayed as irresponsible and troublesome kids who pranced off to the most dangerous location in the world ignoring the wise advice of the government to stay the hell away from there, got themselves kidnapped (surprise, surprise), and now were being used as hostages to try to force the JSDF out of Iraq amidst what was already a touchy situation with the left-wingers yelling that was the application of military force overseas and equated to an invasion … or something like that. The word of the day back then was “自己責任 (self-responsibility)”, which went something like “We told them not to go but they didn’t listen. So if they get themselves killed, tough shit–they’re on their own”.
Apologizing for causing troubles draws on the age-old wisdom of kind of glossing over the whole thing and attempts to avoiding unpleasantness of pointing fingers.
http://alecinjapan.com Alec

Am I the only one wondering what a Japanese guy’s doing teaching English? Poor Nepalese kids.

Irene

Well maybe his English is good, I don’t know.

Freed hostage apologizes to Japanese government

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