The Islamic State and Japan

JoseMari T. Melgarejo 2/12/2015

POLISCI 11341432

Just in the past five years, there have been many important international developments that have occurred that somehow show a continuation and worsening of situations that happened in the past decade. One of the most widely known and interesting developments so far in this first half of the decade was the creation of the Islamic State and the re-election of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2012, who also first served as Prime Minister from 2006-2007. Just recently, the Islamic State initially took two Japanese citizens as hostages in exchange for ransom and, later on after killing one of the hostages, a prisoner exchange with Sajida al-Rishawi, a prisoner and convicted terrorist in Jordan. Unfortunately, the Islamic State would later on resort to kill the remaining hostage after a given deadline was not met. This whole event would challenge Japan as a nation and might push the nation to change its stance in global affairs in the near future.

After losing in the Second World War, Japan has driven itself in an isolationist mindset. However, for the past 20 years, Japan is finally trying to venture out to the world. The re-elected Prime Minister has been trying to push Japan to play a larger part in the world through means of expanding Japan’s businesses and giving out more financial, civic opportunities and aid to other nations in the world. These moves, however, have risks and one of these risks became a real problem when Abe pledged a humanitarian and development aid worth 200 million U.S. dollars last month for the nations who are fighting and going against the Islamic State in order to help build humanitarian capacities and infrastructure for those who are negatively affected by the war. Unfortunately, the Islamic State took this as a threat from Japan and accused Japan of giving money in order to kill ISIS’ women and children and therefore threatened to kill two Japanese citizens, Kenji...