Speaking to the wildly divergent cultural perspectives held by Japan and the United States regarding the three Japanese hostages who were recently held and released in Iraq, The New York Times published a piece that highlights the crippling shame that these newly released hostages face at home in Japan.

Lauding the three hostages for their courage, Colin Powell cheerfully and bullyingly declared: Well, everybody should understand the risk they are taking by going into dangerous areas … But if nobody was willing to take a risk, then we would never move forward. We would never move our world forward.”

In Japan, however, the situation is neither as transparently jingoistic nor as simplistically reassuring. As Norimitsu Onishi reports in The New York Times, these released hostages — Nahoko Takato, 34, a member of a non-profit organization; Soichiro Koriyama, 32, a freelance photographer; and Noriaki Imai, 18, a freelance writer — face scrutiny and confront a deep and abiding shame now that they have returned home.  

Mr. Onishi’s cultural analysis is that these hostages, in flouting the Japanese government’s travel advisory to steer clear of Iraq, defied “what people call here ‘okami,’ or, literally, ‘what is higher.’” In Mr. Onishi’s analysis, these civilians “acted selfishly.” Mr. Onishi accurately captures the frustrated indignation of a certain segment of the Japanese population and quotes Yuriko Koike, the environment minister, who lambasted the hostages for being “reckless.”

Mr. Onishi’s analysis is certainly cogent, but he fails to mention the phenomenon of “meiwaku,” a Japanese term loosely translated as “nuisance.” Not only was the hostages’ belligerent — if well-intentioned and generous — defiance of the Japanese travel advisory condemned by the government and some citizens, but there is also a strong horror in Japan of creating a nuisance of oneself, and this is precisely what these hostages can be seen to have done. At a time when a large number of Japanese are appalled by the nation’s remilitarization and its deployment of troops to what is very arguably a war zone — something that is still prohibited by the Japanese constitution — these citizens traveled to Iraq, had the great misfortune of being kidnapped, and subsequently whipped the nation into a state of worried frenzy. In the crudest terms, these well-intentioned citizens can be accused of creating a colossal and national nuisance.

“You got what you deserve!” and “You are Japan’s shame,” were among the comments that these hostages encountered when they returned home to Japan.  

Tabling the debate of whether the actions of these civilians were responsible, appropriate, or praiseworthy, the harsh condemnation and Japanese perspective on the incident should at least give Mr. Powell pause before he launches into official pronouncements of delighted praise. Mr. Powell and members of the coalition should certainly offer their support to these hostages for the horror they have had to endure. However, given that these hostages have claimed they have had to battle greater stress upon their return to Japan than they faced as hostages in Iraq, threatened with knives and the prospect of being burned alive, Mr. Powell must — particularly at such a politically, socially, and emotionally charged moment in Japan — be sensitive to the cultural and social perspectives that he happily and arrogantly tramples upon.  

Mimi Hanaoka