An odd mix of emotions

I was watching a NOVA documentary last night on the shutdown and recovery of the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan during the tsunami of 2011. The tsunami itself led to the loss of 16,000 lives.

As with the engineers and divers at the Chernobyl plant, one could not help but admire the overwhelming courage and selflessness of the workers on the scene doing all that they could do to mitigate the disaster unfolding around them. They were aware that each of their actions might lead to their death. And of course the Fukushima workers likely would have known that the Chernobyl divers did indeed die terrible deaths from their radiation exposure.

What struck me was a marked difference in sense of responsibility. As an American viewer, I am looking at these heroic workers. There is no doubt that they are heroes and would be heralded as such here in the US. But several of them went out of their way to explicitly disavow such status. Yes they had been in fear for their lives. They acknowledge that. However, what they indicated was that their company was responsible for the disaster. Not the tsunami of course but for inadequate disaster preparation. Consequently, in their mind, all they were doing was what should have been expected of them given how terrible a situation the company had created.

Now of course that might just be these selected interviewees, or it might be a product of the documentary editors.

But it rings true of what I have heard, read and experienced related to business in Japan, that there is (or used to be, I also get the sense that the phenomena is waning) an incredibly strong identification between employer and employee to a degree and of a nature different than in more individualistic countries in the West such as the US.

But it is one thing to know of that possible cultural difference and another to see it so explicitly. I am sitting there on the sofa with a lump in my throat from the brave actions of these fellows and then seeing them sincerely discounting that bravery because they had personal responsibility for decisions that had been made decades before by individuals far away at headquarters. An odd mix of emotions.