As one commentator noted, the cultural argument allows the claim that nuclear power is safe as long as you do not have it in the peculiar Japanese cultural context.

I have been "amused" to see English language media (The Guardian, for
example) that has run scores of articles explaining common social phenomenon as seen in Japan (low birth rates, for example) in terms of allegedly peculiar Japanese social and cultural attributes suddenly running articles that reject the cultural explanation for Fukushima. I have suggested to students that this contradiction results because of doubts about the overall safety of nuclear power generation. If the cultural argument is allowed to stand, it is in effect saying that nuclear power generation is basically safe as long as you have it outside the peculiar Japanese cultural context. So, media that seem to revel in articles that assert Japanese cultural peculiarities suddenly discover that Japanese culture does not in fact explain what happens in Japan.

My own view is that culture should only be used to explain the residual
- what you cannot explain adequately by reliance on widely observed patterns of human behavior. I see little or nothing in Fukushima that can be or should be explained in terms of cultural elements peculiar to Japan. But, I would also like to see some awareness that if culture does not apply to Fukushima, it probably does not apply in many, many other cases where it has been used to explain events or trends seen in Japan.

I would also note that the cultural explanation given in the English language report immediately made me think of the essays in Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics by Maruyama Masao. In explaining why Japanese leaders took Japan into a no win war, Maruyama ultimately absolves those leaders of personal responsibility placing the "responsibility" on Japanese culture in terms very similar to the Fukushima report.

Out of curiosity, I checked the age and education of the top figures in the panel that issued the report.
They are precisely of the age cohort and educational background that would have had a high probability of reading (and believing) Maruyama's supremely successful effort to absolve the "prize students" (aka "the best and the brightest") from responsibility for the "disastrous war" by ultimately placing responsibility on Japanese culture. (For a good account of Maruyama's influence on the educated elite in this age cohort, see TAKEUCHI Yo, Maruyama Maso no Jidai, Iwanami shinsho, 2005).

EHK