Jun Okumura wrote:

> So Kurokawa wings it with two very different
forewords and they both
> become "the report"? Does either one actually have
anything to do with
> the the substance of the main text? Let's hear from
someone who
> actually bothered to read it.

As any bureaucrat (or, in the case of Jun, former bureaucrat), or commission chairman knows, the forewords and executive summary are what deadline-pressed reporters are going to cite and therefore what the vast majority of the population will hear as the take-home message.

What is the evidence that Kurokawa "winged it"? Has any member of the commisison claimed that Kurokawa distorted the message of the report?
When Kurokawa addressed the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, he repeated the same message, speaking, not as an individual, but as the chair of the commission.

The question remains: why one story for the foreigners and quite another for Japanese? Have any of the major Japanese media commented on the discrepancy, and, if so, what are they saying?

Personally, I find Kurokawa's message to the foreigners--"Had other Japanese been in the shoes of those who bear responsibility for this accident, the result may well have been the same"--to be very offensive.

First of all, as you and I agreed just a couple weeks ago over a sushi dinner with several others before my talk at Temple University in Tokyo, a similar disaster was prevented at the Onagawa nuclear plant because one determined former Tohuko EPCO VP insisted on a higher seawall, (see
http://mainichi.jp/english/english/perspectives/news/20
120319p2a00m0na020000c.html).
And Fukushima plant manager Yoshida, one of the few heroes in this story, asked for a much higher seawall at Fukushima way back in 2007, but was turned down by TEPCO execs. So, Kurokawa's slur on the Japanese people is blatantly untrue.

Secondly, if you buy Kurokawa's story, then all nuclear plants in Japan should be shut down because no Japanese can be trusted to run them properly.

Thirdly, it the primary culprit is Japanese culture, that semi-absolves the real individuals who make the actual mistakes. It's akin to Wall Street execs claiming the 2008-09 meltdown was an unforeseeable, unpreventable once-in-a-century crisis like a hurricane.

And, yes, I do admit that my jet-lagged brain has downloaded the 80-page English summary but has not yet read it. That's why I only commented on the gap between the two forewords, not on the substance of the report, except for my citations from Asahi.

Richard Katz
The Oriental Economist Report