Japanese confirmed dead in Afghanistan

[Nothingness]

http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20050904a1.htm

This is a sad story...

 

[Limonette]

That is very sad - tragic. I wonder why they were going there - to help teach I imagine.

 

[Nothingness]

Here is another source: MSN | Outlook, Office, Skype, Bing, Breaking News, and Latest Videos

 

[lexico]

The Sept. 4 Japan TImes article says Jun Fukusho, 44, and Shinobu Hasegawa, 30, were visiting the Bamiyan Ruins in ...

Fukusho and Hasegawa had been missing since Aug. 8 when they checked out of a hotel in Quetta, western Pakistan, and told officers at an Afghan border checkpoint that they intended to visit the Bamiyan ruins. They set off for Afghanistan in a taxi.

They wrote in the hotel guest book, "We are going to Kandahar," according to hotel sources.

The rare Buddhist site was destoryed by the Taliban; hence the visiting teachers might have triggered, taken as something that would expose the Taliban iconoclasm.

It appears that the two teachers were interested in the sacred Buddhist site that would be studied by Ryukoku University archeoligists and Afghanistan's National Institute of Archaeology later this year in September.

Now with the two teachers murdered, I wonder what will happen to the Afganistan-Japan joint research project which appears to have been taken as politically damaging for the Taliban.

Ryukoku University team to explore rare Buddhist ruins in Afghanistan

Ryukoku University, a Buddhist school in Kyoto, and Afghanistan's National Institute of Archaeology have signed an accord to survey and excavate newly found Buddhist relics lying west of the famed Bamiyan ruins that were destroyed by the Taliban.

The Chehel Burj fortress, 126 km west of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, was photographed by Atsushi Naka in June 2003.

The ruins are in Keligan, 120 km west of Bamiyan, and in Chehel Burj, 6 km west of Keligan.

Photographer Atsushi Naka, a Ryukoku University graduate, came upon them in June 2003 based on a tip from locals.

Bamiyan had till then been regarded as the westernmost point in Afghanistan where Buddhism spread.

The two large Buddhist statues carved into the mountainside in Bamiyan, one 55 meters tall and the other 38 meters, were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.

The excavation is expected to shed new light on the transmission of Buddhism, including a possible link with Buddhist relics in Turkmenistan.

 

[Limonette]

Oh I see that puts a new light on it. I hate it when people destroy ancient things like that. You can't get them back.