Essay Shaken by Terrorist Attack

Newspapers decorated the front page with huge headlines and photographs, reporting simultaneous terrorist attack in Paris followed by criminal statement by Islamic State. While French President, François Hollande, recognized the terrorism as war in France, the Japanese media realized the attacks on civil society as retaliation against France’s involvement in concerted effort to eliminate Islamic extremist terrorism. However, no prescription for protecting the country from terrorist attacks has been found in Japan.

Japanese newspapers reported that the attacks killed one hundred twenty-seven people, Hollande immediately issued the declaration of emergency on all over the country and IS warned the world that the event was simply the beginning of a storm. Eight terrorists at least were committed to the consecutive assaults in six places including soccer stadium in exhibition match between France and Germany, night club in a concert of American rock band or café and restaurant clouded in a Friday evening. The attack obviously targeted innocent civilian life in Paris.

Why Paris, anyway? Japanese media connected the event to current involvement of France in the operation of air raid on IS in Syria or Iraq and terrorist assault on a satirical weekly newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris. It was stressed that France has been embracing potentiality of terrorism with growing immigrants that had caused public frustration stemming from the gap between the rich and poor. France was depicted as one of the soft targets in the Western world.

Major countries denounced the terrorism and expressed solidarity with the French. President of United States, Barack Obama, called Hollande and offered every support for investigation on the criminals. Russian President, Uladimir Putin, send Hollande a telegram to require international cooperation to fight those terrorisms. Even Chinese President, Xi Jinping, expressed “the strongest accusation against this barbaric activity.”

Japan joined the collective denouncement on the terrorist organization. “No matter what the reason, this kind of devilish and contemptible terrorism cannot be tolerated and I firmly criticize it,” told Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a message to Hollande. He was in Istanbul to attend G20 Summit Meeting in Turkey. “Japan will closely cooperate with France and international society to deter terrorism,” said Abe to the reporters in Istanbul.

However, Japan can actually not join air raid on IS. It can do mostly nothing in military operation to dismantle the terrorist organization. One shocking thing was that the terrorism in Paris occurred under tight security for coming international conference on climate change later this month. An immediate headache for Japanese government is how to protect world leaders in G8 Summit Meeting in Japan next May.