Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has admitted it’s a “race against time” to free two hostages snatched by Islamist militants, who are demanding $US200 million for their lives.

A defiant Mr Abe said he would not bow to “terrorism” as he took charge of the crisis that Japan was thrust into with the release of a chilling video apparently showing two Japanese men kneeling in the desert of Syria or Iraq.

• Abe ‘won’t give in’ to ISIL ransom demands
• ISIL threatens to kill Japanese hostages
• Terror threat against police raised to high


”This is a very tough race against time, but the government will do its utmost,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

“I have ordered the government to use all diplomatic channels and routes possible … to ensure the release of the two people.”

Mr Abe, who rushed home from a tour of the Middle East, said he had sought help from Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, as well as from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“Japan will never yield to terrorism. Japan will do its best in the battle against the cowardice of terrorism, hand in hand with the international community,” Mr Abe said.

ISIL has murdered five Western hostages since August last year, but it is the first time that the jihadist group – which has seized swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq – has threatened Japanese captives.

In footage posted on extremist websites on Tuesday, a black-clad militant brandishing a knife addresses the camera in English, standing between two hostages wearing orange jumpsuits identified as journalist Kenji Goto and military contractor Haruna Yukawa.

“You now have 72 hours to pressure your government into making a wise decision by paying the $200 million to save the lives of your citizens,” he says.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe insists he won’t bow to terrorism as ISIL members hold two Japanese hostage. Photo: AAP

Tokyo said on Wednesday it believed the deadline would expire at 2.50pm (0550 GMT) on Friday.

The militant says the sum is equal to the aid that Mr Abe pledged in support of the fight against ISIL jihadists, money Japan says is to help refugees fleeing the fighting in Iraq and Syria.

It emerged on Wednesday that Mr Goto, a freelance broadcast journalist whose work has appeared on major Japanese outlets, told an acquaintance in Turkey that he had been sold out by a fixer.

“I was betrayed by a guide who accompanied me to Syria and I was captured by a military group,” Mr Goto told the acquaintance, the Mainichi Shimbun reported, citing unnamed government sources.

A few days later, Mr Goto’s family in Tokyo received an email from a self-proclaimed ISIL member demanding some Y2 billion ($A21.11 million) ransom money, the paper added.

Hiromasa Nakai, chief spokesman for the Japan Committee for the United Nations Children’s Fund, insisted Mr Goto was a peace-loving man.

The release of a video on the day Abe was in Jerusalem and due to give a major press conference is a grim reminder of the well-oiled PR machine of the ISIL group.

It follows a pattern established last year with the killings of US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, American aid worker Peter Kassig and British aid workers Alan Henning and David Haines.

All were beheaded.

The man who appeared in the video threatening the Japanese hostages spoke with a very similar southern English accent to the militant who appeared in the footage posted of the executions of the Britons and Americans.

– AAP