Reply #13: In Japan, never is a good time for a proper explanation

[Someguyinjapan]

What we are seeing is all highly ritualized behavior; the apology plays a role difficult to fully understand by Westerners who haven't spent time here and it's impact cannot be underestimated. Quite often, once a public apology has been offered it is considered an end to the matter. The offending party has "taken responsibility" (to borrow that horribly abused and overused phrase from political/corporate law breakers), and as such suffered the ignominy of public humiliation-the "loss of face". Retribution has been exacted, and the offending party can go back to freely engage in whatever behavior they did beforehand that resulted in the situation requiring the apology in the first place. Think of it-quite literally, in some cases-as a "get out of jail free" card.

Many facets of Japanese culture are long on aesthetics and short on substance. In my opinion, what I am seeing play out here is the same. Instead of offering an explanation as to how future explanations concerning radiation forecast data are to be conducted, the spokesperson/talking head merely states he "believes" this can help. Again, no substantive action is forwarded, only the appearance of thus. Same thing happened with the president of TEPCO, remember him? In a particularly contemptible display of this trait, he disappeared for days in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima only to be comfortably ensconced in a hospital where he was said to be recovering from the "stress" of the situation. And what has been his most notable activity since then? Making a highly publicized appearance at an evacuation centre in Fukushima, where he made an apology. Instead of holding press conferences detailing exactly what went wrong, what their plan(s) were in moving forward trying to contain this, he left that to someone else to do. Which is incredibly curious behavior, considering how Japan prizes the top-down management style.

So, if you are thinking there's going to be a proper explanation as to all of this, don't hold your breath. This may be as close as you get to one. And even if they did give an explanation, this is yet another case of corporate/governmental mismanagement of information which only serves to undermine whatever credibility they have left.