Why Is It so Difficult to Learn from Accidents?

Abstract

After the Fukushima nuclear accident, the whole Japanese society swiftly achieved a consensus to have comprehensive accident investigations to identify the root cause of the disaster. The Government and other major actors established several accident investigation commissions to meet this public will. However, the author has to say the lessons have not been learned and absorbed well so far, with deep regret. Because the issues centering on responsibility and social justice have not been dealt with well, the outputs of the investigations transformed into alternative sanction on nuclear industry and poorly articulated regulatory reformation, for example. This trajectory has been considered as a result of the particular and common culture of East Asian societies, but the author would argue that it should become more and more important global problem in the future world with high-reliability and complicated technological systems and their failures. The integration of the concept of risk governance to build prescribed consensus of responsibility distribution is strongly suggested as a key idea of remedy to this problem.