Oct. 23, 2009 (The Yomiuri Shimbun) -- West Japan Railway Co. officials may have been thinking only of protecting their company. However, their repeated chanting of "change our corporate culture," following the 2005 railway derailment that killed 106 passengers on the Fukuchiyama Line in Hyogo Prefecture, now sounds very hollow.
Current President Takayuki Sasaki made a progress report to Construction and Transport Minister Seiji Maehara on Friday regarding a leak of the draft final report on the accident to the then president of the company by a government investigation panel.
On the day of Sasaki's briefing, two board members--including Masao Yamazaki, who earlier this year stepped down from the post of president after being indicted over the accident--resigned in what were seen as de facto dismissals.
Yamazaki approached a member of the government's then Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission and obtained the draft report before it was made public in 2007.
He then demanded that the statement "it was necessary to give priority to the installation of the automatic train stop [ATS] system [at the accident site]" be deleted from the report.
Given that the credibility of the investigation into the case was significantly undermined, we regard the dismissals as a matter of course. ===
Murky payments
Obtaining the document was not the only maneuvering by JR West.
Prior to a public hearing by the government investigation panel, the company asked four railway experts, including former Japanese National Railways (JNR) officials, to apply to become witnesses at the hearing.
The company paid 100,000 yen each to two of them, despite the fact they were not selected as witnesses. The company may have initially approached the four in an attempt to get them to offer testimony that would have been advantageous to the railway company. Yamazaki also was involved in this process.
The company also has been criticized for not having submitted to the government panel and the Hyogo prefectural police sections of a document presented at a company meeting held after a 1996 derailment accident on the JR Hakodate Line in Hokkaido.
The unsubmitted information included a statement that the accident could have been prevented had an advanced ATS system been installed at the accident site.
JR West said it did not intentionally fail to submit that part of the document. However, the omitted information was in fact a focal point of the investigations into the Fukuchiyama Line accident. ===
Heading off investigators
The company distributed internal documents to its employees that could be seen as a kind of manual to guide employees should they face questioning by investigative authorities.
The Kobe District Public Prosecutors Office notified the company that such an act was considered an obstruction of the investigation.
It also has been learned that Takeshi Kakiuchi, who headed the railway operator at the time of the accident, dined with a member of the government investigation panel.
This series of organizational manipulations cause distress to those who suffered injuries and to families who lost loved ones in the accident. The company has yet show real remorse over the derailment.
Many of those whom JR West officials approached were former JNR officials. Yamazaki said the company "acted foolishly, relying on its ties with the JNR 'family.'" His remarks indicate that such connections previously had produced desired outcomes for the firm.
A Kobe-based inquest committee, meanwhile, has recommended that three former JR West presidents be indicted, deeming an earlier decision by Kobe prosecutors not to indict them as inappropriate.
A factor attributed to the accident was the company's management policy that made profits the firm's top priority. The prosecutors tasked with reinvestigating the case following the inquest committee's decision must keep in mind this aspect of the firm's ethos.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Oct. 24, 2009)
