TAE: Welcome to The Atomic Village

[GliderGuider]

This article by Stoneleigh of The Automatic Earth looks at the intersection of the Fukushima nuclear disaster with Japanese social structures and customs. It's a fascinating read, and illuminates why the Japanese response has taken the shape it has (i.e. an amorphous blob of apparent incompetence and dissembling). I'd be very interested in the comments of anyone who has first-hand knowledge of Japanese society.

Welcome to The Atomic Village

Since the disaster of March 11th, the world has been watching Japan struggle to deal with an unanticipated eventuality that greatly exceeded the design-basis accident for the 40-year old Fukushima plant and overwhelmed its inadequate defences. Japan is in uncharted waters, attempting to control several badly damaged reactors and several spent fuel pools simultaneously, under circumstances for which there is no rule book to follow. Criticism is mounting as to the way the catastrophe is being handled, and the Japanese nuclear governance record is coming under sharp scrutiny.

In order to fathom the Japanese approach to these events, it is necessary to understand aspects of Japanese culture, especially as it manifests in terms of corporate culture.

People's sense of identity and worth is tightly bound with membership of strong, cohesive groups. Japan is an insular and collectivist society which prizes conformity, loyalty, harmony, obedience, consensus, teamwork, stability and homogeneity, and strongly discourages deviation from the norm or standing out from the crowd. Originality, initiative, freedom of expression and openness to outside influences are therefore not generally rewarded. There is an old Japanese proverb encapsulating this attitude:

出る杭は打たれる。 ("Deru kui wa utareru"), or in English, "The stake that sticks up gets hammered down."

[hunter]

1. Similar to undocumented farm workers in the USA.

They suffer working conditions that wear out their bodies prematurely and they are exposed to hazardous chemicals that cause cancer and other grave diseases, but when they get sick and can't work anymore we don't support them, we send them "home" to die, even though their homes have been in the USA their entire working lives.

I don't think there's anything unique about Japan maintaining disposable underclasses of people to do their dirty work. We do the same thing here. The only thing that's different is the stories the ruling classes tell themselves to justify their own despicable behavior.

[pscot]

2. There doesn't seem to be much Zen

in modern Japanese culture. But my understanding is based on perceptions of an earlier era formed by haphazard reading.

[txlibdem]

3. The Japanese auto industry sure kicked us in the tail for decades

Perhaps there is less of "the nail that sticks up gets pounded down" in their auto industry than in their nuclear industry but I doubt it. Employees regularly take the blame to save face for the bosses there. But the problems with those reactors are that they were designed in the 1960s, installed in 1971 through 1974. There may not be anyone but the top bosses still there from that time - no credible way to save the bosses' honor.