Head of Fukushima investigation commission defends report

In an age of Internet and information...this is a fax worthy report. Scew it into a ball put it in the bin. It's a system run by people who rely on abnormal business practice, example people living in school gyms, second biggest economy can't /will not help it's own. An obvious attempt to produce rems of paper that lead....nowhere. Problem solved.

The biggest guilty by accident fukushima nuclear plant is Mr. problem-kan-kan. Perhaps if he had not gone to the nuclear plant fukushima, screaming like crazy by forty minutes, disrupting the work of technicians and engineers,this accident could have been avoided.

issa1

Perhaps if he had not gone to the nuclear plant fukushima, screaming like crazy by forty minutes, disrupting the work of technicians and engineers,this accident could have been avoided.

Kan might not have helped the situation, but this was not an accident but a man-made disaster created by TEPCO and the regulators and actions they did and didn't take before the earthquake and tsunami.

The people complaining about the report are spot on. Criminal investigations of negligence should be launched against the key players.

“What must be admitted - very painfully - is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.’ Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program;’ our groupism and our insularity,” he wrote in the English version.

Surprising how Japan lags behind in accountability! A greedy, vote-seeking politician without any knowledge of how nuke reactors work can tomorrow call a press conference and announce that reactors ABC are safe and can be restarted. Nobody will even question how he comes to that conclusion! When the next catastrophe happens, u hear such things as ' nobody knew it could be to this extent' . Until culprits lose jobs, get imprisoned for life, Japan will continue in such a messy situation, where the destiny of the majority is in the hands of a few connected mafia behaving like stone age village chiefs.

“No one takes responsibility in Japan, even those in positions of responsibility,” Kurokawa told The Associated Press this week at his commission office in Tokyo. “This is unique to Japan, a culture that stresses conformity, where people don’t complain.”

Isn't this just beautiful??? No accountability! And, no foul! It's called, "Japathetiquette!" It was the same 50 years ago in Minamata. Blame everybody and everything except those that are actually responsible. Too easy!

He is mad or blind, thousands of people complain,just none listens

Issa you are brainwashed, it was released from recordings that if he wasnt there - Tepco were going to just evacuate everyone and see what happens He actually prevented that from happening

If anybody is to be blamed for anything ... hand that bit of criticism over to the Liberal Democratic Party. It was the LDP that set up Japan's nuclear energy program over the years and established the bodies such as TEPCO to run them. Several years ago while the LDP was still running Japan, the Communist Party warned that disasters were waiting to happen at the nuclear power plants ... and the LDP said this was nonsense, that everything was working okay.

Sure LDP people ... see what happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant last March 11 (2011).

And in their LDP presidential roundtable chats that were televised on Friday all five LDP candidates for the party's presidential election on Sept. 26 said nuclear energy cannot be abandoned here in Japan. They said it is a necessary operation to keep Japan supplied with electricity. So if they win the next general election, guess they will continue to go with their own nuclear energy program.

Alex - I have to agree. I was actually very impressed by Kan when he got peeved and started demanding answers and action from TEPCO. And, you are correct in stating the TEPCO management wanted to evacuate the plant. It just shows how unprepared and uneducated these cronies are and that they should not be in control of world altering installations. If they had gone through with their evacuation plan it would have resulted in a nuclear fire that would still be burning and half the population of Japan would be living in taiwan or dying from radiation poisoning. These old uneducated beurocrats should not be empowered with such responsibilty. I wouldn't trust them with a traffic control stick at Toys 'R' Us. They only care about the bottom line and the bottom line is, they don't care!

As usual, blame not single person so everyone can walk aware scot-free and guilt free. This is why the country is the way it is - no one ever takes responsibility for anything.

And Kan? Ha! Sorry, was he running the party who built all these places on fault lines? Was he the one who told them to ignore safety standards? Was he the one who gave direct orders to shut things down? Nope. Perhaps THOSE people should be the ones held responsible.

This is Japanese culture, corrupt criminals at top level protecting eachother at the expense of the rest of the population, sounds about right.

"This is unique to Japan, a culture that stresses conformity, where people don't complain"

Spoken like a true ignorant. He calls himself a doctor too. People were complaining between 2002 and 2006 to the ex-governor of Fukushima, Eisaku Sato(governor). "This was a disaster waiting to happen".

http://www.japanfocus.org/events/view/79

This was clear willful blindness. Fukushima NPP operators should have known.

Ahahahahahahah! This article should be in the entertainment section! This guy is really amazing in making good jokes. Soooooo funny!

“To pin the blame on culture is the ultimate cop-out. If culture explains behavior, then no one has to take responsibility.”

So true. And why Japan will never change and is incapable of producing real leaders.

Name the culprits...name the culprits! I want to get people out in front of their houses everyday, and make it so they can't even walk to the local 7-11 to buy an onigiri without having screaming people in their faces.

Kurokawa makes a good point, but its only one side of the coin. Individuals are in many ways products of their cultural milieu, but at the same time individuals should be held to account for decisions that deliberately take advantage of that 'culture' for personal gain.

Shimizu, the former head of TEPCO, for example, deliberately chose to bypass safety recommendations because he knew that he could rise to the top by cutting costs and maximizing shareholder profits, and that nobody would call him out for that. That's manipulating the system, and should be punished. However, Shimizu is a free man and enjoying his second life as a well-paid trustee for a TEPCO-owned firm.

His is not the only case.

If Japanese culture (bribery, corruption, a tendency to cover things up and tell blatant lies etc) is being blamed for the failures at Fukushima then this report would seem to imply that Japan is an unsuitable country to operate nuclear reactors. The culture will not change, indeed the government and bureaucrats spend their time defending its "uniqueness" and instilling it into schoolchildren.

If the culture cannot change we can expect the same thing to happen again, in which case all nuclear power stations should remain shut down.