train crash tragedy in Japan and the corporate response

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=716&e=13&u=/nm/20050426/ts_nm/japan_train_dc

i must be japanese then

I don't think it's especially noble as it's to be expected in Japan. Also, does it really improve the company (or other org) when a leader does that?

OTM!

It's only "noble" when viewed from a Western perspective. He had no choice as Japanese culture dictates that he had to bear the responsibility. Like so many other aspects of Japanese culture which Westerners perceive as being "noble" or indicative of some superior politeness, it's mostly just window dressing.

I'd still say it's better than some of the behavior we see over here.

but yeah, this train wreck thing, yeesh. i feel like american airline companies tend to apologize (unless it's the manufacturers' fault or something), but it's not covered so much. maybe american culture just isn't about apologizing. there are a lot of assholes here, or something.

i was gonna write something the other day on the amtrak thread about how japan is the only company that has successfully privatized its rail system (and why this one former 'trak dudes op-ed in the times was ludicrous). glad i held off.

I'd still say it's better than some of the behavior we see over here.

On a surface level perhaps, but there's really nothing behind it. It's like when you walk into a store in Japan and the sales staff all shout the equivalent of "thanks for coming in" at you when really they're thinking: "fuck, i want to go home". It just doesn't mean anything.

With regards to the JR West CEO resigning, I think he might be able to help more by staying on, trying to get to the bottom of what happened and instituting whatever changes are deemed to be necessary to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

anyway, that's neither here nor there is it? but maybe, just maybe, we can progress down this road and we'll end up with someone making a hitler analogy! wouldn't that be awesome?!?!

but i don't really know beyond this, so i ain't gonna argue.

all the press i've read suggests that at least at first, the anti-japan protests were largely stage managed (again, not "officially," but that's par for the course in china) by the PRC.

although i think this may have changed recently, and the government actually doesn't want the protests to get out of control.

and it could very well be that different elements in the governement alternately encouraged and then discouraged the protests.

it all sounds more than vaguely cultural revolution-esque.... very disturbing.

you must've went to different schools than me. even a cursory glance at the history of the civil war, or the jim crow era, or the civil rights movement (to name but 3 connected times) shows students a lot of "negative things."

ww2 was 60 years ago. there are still plenty of people alive who were involved.

like notices in party newspapers reading, "the protest scheduled for tomorrow at such-and-such time in such-and-such place is not supported by the Party," which serve simultaneously as nominal disavowals AND announcements).

i thot there was no coverage, period - no disavowals, etc. but i haven't been following it to closely.

legal liability in class action suits (e.g., helluva lotta good 'fessing up has done for merck!)

This is wrong. The Japanese governemtn has apologized in one form or another 17 times, including the emperror apologizing in Beijing. The point about many Japanese not knowing what happened doesn't correspond with my experience or any poll I've ever seen (and I've seen quite a few). Try asking the average American about the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII or the details of the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That textbook is used in less than 1%, not 10% of schools.

these are all very well documented and still even talked/written about a lot! esp. japanese-american internment in contrast with post-9/11 shenanigans and bush administration/pentagon plans to develop small strike nuke capability.

(not to say that these are moral equivalents, but both instances of deliberate mass killings during WWII).

1995 -
Japan's former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama apologized to the victims of Japan's aggressive war. His apology should be welcome.
However, as already been pointed out, his apology was only a personal one. His feelings were obviously not shared by the majority of his colleagues in the Japanese government. He failed to make a formal and official apology in the so-called No War Resolution. Only 26% of the diet members supported the Resolution and 47% were against it.

2005 -
Koizumi's expression of "deep remorse" at a summit of Asian and African leaders in Jakarta did not go beyond what Japanese leaders previously have said.

About 80 Parliament members made the pilgrimage to the shrine, which honors Japan's 2.5 million dead from World War II. The group visited in observance of an annual spring festival. Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Taro Aso, a Cabinet minister, visited the shrine alone later.

thinking that japan should finally, after 60 years, suck it up and as a government issue an apology /= supporting damage to embassies or de facto alignment with china's even more ass-backward gov't. hell, it's not like the chinese communist party has ever truly apologized for its actions against its own people (small regrets here and there post-mao, sure, but only to discredit the dead).

i just don't see why it's that difficult for japan. clearly the other axis powers don't have this problem. i can't imagine schroeder going to visit bitburg (as our knucklehead prez reagan did, oi vey). and quite honestly, while i have very little faith in the chinese gov't (see above), i think some of the stuff on this thread is nixon 1949, not nixon 1972. china is not some "other." china's concerns are not all ulterior motives. and it's going to be more and more important going forward to realize that, i think.

xpost i would sure that the average japanese person has received a far better education in general than the average american person. that doesn't really prove anything except america's educational system blows. nor does it justify not actually apologizing for nanjing.

as for who knows less about world war two - americans or japanese - maybe it's a dead heat. china's current tizzie over textbooks in japan is well founded - japanese are simply not told many basic facts about what they did during and in the build up to world war two, or they are lied to. but why do so many americans still go with the idea that hiroshima and nagasaki were bombed (not to mention the fire bombing of tokyo and bits of kansai (including spectacularly amagasaki, the site of monday's train crash)) to save both japanese and american lives? it's rot and you should know better.

tragedy is tragedy. when it's inflicted by humans on other humans -- whether an accident or not -- someone has to be accountable.

singapore has also protested japan's textbooks

and from that 2005 ap story upthread, why i tied it with 95:

Japan's Kyodo News Agency said Koizumi's remarks were based on a 1995 speech made by Tomiichi Murayama, the prime minister at the time, marking the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Some members of Japan's government clearly need to do better in the areas of sensitivity and demonstrating proper levels of remorse. But those are politicians who belong to a certain political party and have a particular view. Japan is a complex society that includes varying viewpoints. The many pacificists in the country (including huge numbers of school teachers) don't get talked about. I am consistently shocked at reports of "growing nationalism in Japan." Nationalism in Japan? The country with a peace constitution? The country where singing the national anthem is controversial?

I bristle at the young Chinese people who appartently chanted, "Die Japanese dogs" during the demonstrations. I am far more concered about the Chinese government's use of nationalism to curtail growing social unrest, then I am about how sincere Japanese government official's apologies appear to be.

Nationalisim will kill us all.

btw, does anyone else feel like it's 1899? Is Old Tzu Hsi risen from her grave?

Consider that this is also the first time that the US has had a tax cut during a time of war. During World War II, the rich paid exceedingly high marginal tax rates. They may not have liked it, but they acceped it, because they knew how ingracious it would be for them not to shoulder some of the burden when so many of their countrymen were laying down their lives for their country. Nowawadays we have the sons and daughters of the working class getting their asses shot off in Iraq while CEOs (and their GOP accomplices) give themselves ever larger tax cuts. So much for noblesse oblige, I guess.

I taught in Japanese schools and I can really say that this is not the case. It's rote learning and memorization. From my experience, Japanese people in general aren't really bothered about these issues at all. Just as the majority of Americans aren't really bothered. In one of the schools I taught at a coworked went to a human rights conference and it was a huge deal--extremely against the grain.

I don't have any experience with CEOs but just speaking in terms of the principals in Japanese schools--they are treated with the utmost respect, they are like mini gods. But they are by and large tools. The people know that they are tools, but they respect the position, if not the person. I'd imagine the CEO of the company is similar, ineffectual, blowhard.

okay sorry, that really is tangential.

thanks for clarifying, mary - your posts are enlightening (per usual!).

Obsession With Punctuality.

JR West said it expects them to show their management skills in the subsidiaries, but families of some of the 107 people who died in the accident in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, expressed anger. "JR West does not seem to reflect on its misconduct at all," one relative said.

It was a very strange sight in Osaka while I was there: nobody would sit in the first 3-4 cars leaving them almost totally empty...

It's pretty sad that this new-jobs-for-old-execs news doesn't shock or surprise me at all.