It is obvious that Japanese culture lies firmly behind the JCO accident. This means that the JCO accident is not merely due to JCO's organisational peculiarities. It would he better to understand this accident as a 'culture-caused' accident. Both the Snow Milk accident and JCO accident are examples of accidents caused by the Japanese safety culture. When we consider such serious industrial accidents as the Bopal disaster in India in 1954, the Chernobyl accident in 1956, and of course the JCO accident and so on, we notice that they all have their roots in the respective culture. Of course, each culture should not be merely criticised but be respected. However, cultures, in a sense, turn out to be the nation's personality to determine the behaviour of the nation people. Personality has both strong and weak sides. The weak side may cause its nation's specific accidents unless the nation takes notice of the weakness and makes an effort to conquer it. Based on this understanding, every country, including Japan of course, must recognise the profound idea of 'safety culture' proposed by the IAEA in 1991, and also recognise its own nation's personality to prevent occurrence of culture-caused accidents like that of JCO.
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