It is indeed significant that the Kurokawa commission report, while insisting that the disaster was "man made", still in its English translation attributed ultimate blame for the accident to Japanese culture and not individuals or organizations--but not in its Japanese version. In the Financial Times, Gerald Curtis strongly rebuts this cultural argument, saying that in any cultural context, people still make choices
with consequences. He compares Tepco's decision to
ignore government recommendations to strengthen disaster protections to the financial meltdown on Wall Street, also due to a rejection of due safeguards. In response to the Kurokawa report's specific attribution of the disaster to a Japanese cultural tendency for corporations to protect their own immediate interests above public welfare, Curtis concludes ironically, "in that case, we are all Japanese." In other words, the corporate self-protection tendency is a product of universal tendencies of social organization, not anything particular to Japan. This is a very interesting and logical argument with a lot of validity.

But it is also interesting to compare it with those made in studies of technological risk management by Charles Perrow and others. Perrow shows that Three Mile Island came within minutes of a total meltdown that would have had Chernobyl and Fukushima-like consequences. His student did a similar study of the space shuttle Challenger disaster. The explanation, as I recall it, is that the technology was so complex that it made human operational error highly likely. Even in a well run management system, at many points in design and operation, both manufacturers and operators have to make decisions about how much risk to allow in the production of a social benefit, in this case, electricity. With nuclear power, the consequences of error magnify enormously, so it is a very high-stakes game. And the degree of risk is magnified by the context in Japan-an earthquake and tsunami prone geography. The only way to totally eliminate the risk would be to not use the technology, and this may be the path Japan chooses. But this argument about the inherent difficulties in managing risky technology indicates that the disasters are not only the result of collusion and corporate self interest,which undoubtedly contributed heavily to the disaster. The disasters are also the result of the inherent risks of the technology, and the attendant difficulties and costs of risk management. These risks become especially poignant when the public need for the resource -- in this case electricity that has become the very basis of modern civilization -- is so great. This poignancy of the risk is further exacerbated by the risk of the major contending source of electricity, oil. Oil-poor Japan has been severely buffeted in the past by sudden oil price rises from politically-volatile Middle East.
That oil vulnerability and how to reduce it has been another kind of risk that Japanese leaders have had to weigh in making power source decisions.

In this light and with these uncertainties, it may be not just the desire to protect the corporation, but also the desire to use a trusted technology to keep the electricity flowing and to avoid rate hikes, that could have driven Tepco's reluctance to invest so much in further protections. The complexity of needs and risks could lead to wishful thinking by managers that minimized their assessment of the risk. This is not to excuse the collusion and mismanagement and also poor design (such as putting the backup generators on the ground floor). If it is to continue on the nuclear path, Japan desperately needs an independent nuclear regulatory commission. But even this may be no solution. Unfortunately, such commissions often end up getting captured by those they are supposed to
regulate. Perhaps the only real long-term solution
for Japan is a massive drive to develop and deploy safe alternative sources of electricity based on wind, sun, geo-thermal and tidal power.

Jeff Broadbent
Author, Environmental Politics in Japan (Cambridge U Press, 1998)