The government was thrown into confusion Saturday over the fate of a Japanese man who had been taken hostage by militants in Iraq threatening to kill him unless Japan withdraws its ground troops from the country.
In a hastily arranged news conference in the predawn hours of Saturday, officials had said that a body whose physical features partially matched those of Shosei Koda had been found Friday in Balad, north of Baghdad.
However, a body transported to Kuwait from Iraq by the U.S. military later in the day and shown to a Japanese medical staffer was not that of Koda, said Foreign Ministry Press Secretary Hatsuhisa Takashima.