Veteran freelance journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka was finally freed last month by kidnappers after five months of captivity in Afghanistan. Though the Japanese media reported the kidnapping when it happened last April, and then Tsuneoka's release on Sept. 6, any details about his confinement or what he was doing in Afghanistan when he was taken are more readily available through foreign news services. As he told Shukan Kinyobi magazine in a recent two-part interview, the only other vernacular Japanese news outlet that has done a story on him since his release is TV Asahi, which ran a brief feature on its Sunday news program.

According to Tsuneoka, the foreign ministry told its attached press club not to cover him. The Japanese government provides the current administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai with aid, and Tsuneoka's story might make people question the wisdom of such aid, since, as he told Kinyobi, the civilians living in those parts of Afghanistan controlled by the Karzai government hate the authorities, and they hate Karzai's American enablers even more.

"Last year, the people were happy when it was said that Karzai and the Taliban might negotiate," Tsuneoka says in the interview. Those positive feelings faded when the Taliban gave up on peace overtures after the United States announced increased troop levels last December.