'Left speechless': Latest beheading has shaken Japan to the core

From the prime minister to the populace, Japan responded with shock on Sunday after learning one of two Japanese hostages of the extremist Islamic State group had been killed. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said early Sunday that the latest video – showing that Haruna Yukawa, 42, had been beheaded – was likely authentic, though the government was still reviewing it. The hostage crisis comes over a decade since the last time Japanese nationals in the Middle East were taken hostage. Back then, in 2004, the foreign aid workers captured in Iraq were met back home with indifference, and even disapproval that they went to a hostile region where they put themselves in danger.

The Japanese government will not give in to terrorism and will continue to contribute to the peace and stability of the international community and the world.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to reporters

The hostage-taking may affect Abe’s plans to remove Article 9 of Japan’s constitution, a pacifist measure that has guided Japanese foreign policy since World War II. Because of restrictions on foreign intervention laid out in its constitution, Japan has maintained a neutral position on Mideast turmoil.

Many will realise out of this that they too are a part of global society, rather than an isolated island nation.

Kent Calder, director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at SAIS/Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C.

Asia-Pacific Islamic State