I just wanted to add my "Bravo!" to you, AmericanInTokyo.
The initial information I came across, and interviewing various contacts, showed me that it was most likely a "Jisaku Jien" (soley contrived and carried out by the "hostages"), from the get-go. It was an anti-Koizumi, anti-Self Defense Forces, anti-Coalition act in support of the terrorists and the whole "International A.N.S.W.E.R." type agenda. Other Freepers also chimed in with their reservations, too, some expressing their doubts about the Japanese hostages' video they saw where they were "threatened" and were "crying".
In fact, Freepers, here is the BIGGEST SCANDAL that shows you that outside of FR and some other sources, your slanted and leftist news media in the United States IS NOT TELLING YOU THE TRUTH and THE WHOLE PICTURE.
To simply live and breathe in Japan for the last two weeks as anybody, is to know from the start that these were classic ("Sa Ha") Japanese leftists/do-gooders who composed this scam as a conspiracy....wherever yhou could go, to bars, offices, on the train, coffee shops, in daily papers, on websites, in school, all the talk in Japan among the Japanese was that this was merely "detchi agei" (a staged shakedown). AND YET, THE AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA RAN NO ARTICLES OR REFERENCE TO THIS POSSIBILITY, regardless of the fact that the Japan man on the street's conversation was burning up with this possibility. Shame on the incompetent, irresponsible, Western liberal-controlled media. All they did for DAYS was to hype the psy war against us by the enemy, spin it that with the Japanese kidnappings, etc, things were going out of control in Iraq and that America's allies were being held hostage. "Held hostage" is RIGHT. They, Japan, were briefly held hostage by their own enterprising leftist do-gooder human shields who went down there to Iraq to stage this joke--not necessary the terrorists.
Other quickies heard today and in the last few days:
--Japanese police trying to debrief "hostages". Hostages trying to avoid police.
--Imai (the youngest hostage) has a brother who runs a "terekura" matchmaking/prostitution racket in Hokkaido.
--The whole Imai family, including the kid who went down there, have been solid Nihon Kyosanto (JAPAN COMMUNIST PARTY) Hokkaido cell members and activists.
--It was picked up on the tape of their "threatening with knifes" that one of the "captors" was giving them orders in THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE.
--The government is insisting the three "hostages" pick up all the charges they ran up for the Japanese Government for their rescue, and they take "responsibility."