I did not quote the part that blames the disaster on Japanese culture: "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.
Had other Japanese been in the shoes of those who bear responsibility for this accident, the result may well have been the same." This is asinine. It is like saying that the American public and our culture is responsible for the idiotic mistakes described in the book "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005." Or that any administration would have made the same mistakes. I will grant that course of events in gigantic fiascos such as the Iraq war, Three Mile Island or Fukushima do tend to reveal cultural trends. TMI played out differently from Chernobyl or Fukushima because of cultural differences. Then too, the Titanic disaster both reflected and shaped the Edwardian era, and it foreshadowed the unthinkably worse tragedy that soon followed. But these events were caused by specific organizations and by specific people, not by the zeitgeist. They might easily have been prevented. If the Titanic had not hit the iceberg, or if all of the passengers and crew had been rescued (as might easily have happened if only the Californian captain had ordered the radio operator to turn on his set) there would have been no tragedy and only a handful of people would remember the Titanic. - Jed
