英文のサマリーも発表され、早速海外のメディアが取り上げている。報道される上でのひとつのキーワードになっているのが「文化」である。
報告書の前書きのなかで、調査委員会の委員長（黒川清）が以下のように書いている。
What must be admitted – very painfully – is that this was a disaster “Made in Japan.”今回の災害を"Made in Japan" と表現し、その根底に日本文化に根ざした慣習があったとしている。「根っこのところに、われわれ（日本人）の反射的な従順さ、権力者を疑問視したがらない態度、「計画を守り通す」ことへのこだわり、集団主義、島国根性があった」という分析は、日本社会の特性としてはその通りだけど、それが今回の事故のルーツだと結論づけられると、一般的すぎて次に何もつながらない気がする。
Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism; and our insularity.
Had other Japanese been in the shoes of those who bear responsibility for this accident, the result may well have been the same.
ましてや「他の誰がこの事故の責任者であったとしても、結果は同様であったかもしれない」などと書かれてしまうと、誰も反省がなく終わってしまう。外国メディアにとって格好のネタになるはずのこうした文化や精神性に拠った上記の文章は、なぜか日本語の報告書にはない。（日本語の報告書の「はじめに」では、50年にわたる一党支配、新卒一括採用、年功序列、終身雇用といった日本社会のシステムや制度とそこにある日本人の「思い込み（マインドセット）」が根底にあると表現している）。
海外のメディアでは、やはりここがポイントとして取り上げられている。例えば、以下はNuclear crisis 'made in Japan'と題したファイナンシャル・タイムズ紙の記事である。
'Ingrained' culture conventions blamed ; Tepco accused of 'wilful negligence'この記事が掲載された数日後、同紙に日本政治の専門家であるジェラルド・カーティス（コロンビア大教授）が、'Stop blaming Fukushima on Japan's Culture' と題する以下のコメントを寄せた。
The chairman of an investigation ordered by Japan's parliament into the Fukushima nuclear disaster has declared that it was a crisis "made in Japan" resulting from the "ingrained conventions of Japanese culture".
Kiyoshi Kurokawa, chairman of the Diet's Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, said the crisis was the result of "a multitude of errors and wilful negligence" by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power, regulators and the government.
In an English language summary of the commission's final report, Mr Kurokawa blamed the plant's failure on "our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to 'sticking with programme'; our groupism; and our insularity".
He added: "What must be admitted - very painfully - is that this was a disaster 'made in Japan'.
"Had other Japanese been in the shoes of those who bear responsibility for this accident, the result [might] well have been the same."
In his preface to the Japanese version of the report, however, Mr Kurokawa offered a more measured critique of the cultural background to the crisis, blaming the mindset created by postwar effective one-party rule, seniority systems and lifetime employment rather than the nation's culture as a whole.
Mr Kurokawa's commission is leading one of three investigations into the failure of Fukushima Daiichi, which suffered multiple reactor meltdowns and hydrogen explosions after its safety systems were knocked out by the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan's north-east coast on March 11, 2011.
A government-commissioned group issued an interim report in December and plans a final one this summer, while a separate committee established by an independent foundation concluded its investigation in February. All three have criticised the failure to prevent or prepare for such a crisis and its handling by Tepco, politicians and bureaucrats, although they differ on substantive details and none of the accounts is likely to be seen as definitive.
Other members of Mr Kurokawa's commission included a former diplomat, two lawyers, a chemist, a seismologist and a science journalist. Their report criticises regulators that colluded with utilities to reduce the burden of safety measures, inadequate government emergency planning, poor communication and decision-making by Tepco and bureaucrats and an ad hoc response to the disaster by Naoto Kan, Japan's then-prime minister. The report in effect accuses Tepco of covering up possible earthquake damage to Daiichi.
It cites plant worker accounts as suggesting the tremor may have disrupted cooling systems. Tepco's explanation for some actions after the earthquake is "irrational" and its overall insistence that only the tsunami caused critical damage is "an attempt to avoid responsibility", the commission's report says.
The claim that the earthquake may have caused a lot of damage is likely to fuel resistance to restarting other nuclear reactors in Japan that have been judged at lower risk of tsunami but which are located near seismic faults.
Tepco, which had for decades promised the public its plants were safe against any seismic event, says it was the unforeseen scale of the tsunami that caused the crisis and that it responded appropriately.
Asked on state TV about the Diet report, Naomi Hirose, Tepco president, said he had not yet read it.
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カーティスは委員会（正確には委員長の黒川だけど）が、事故の責任の根幹を「日本文化にある」と表現し、責任を負うべき者を明確にしようとしていない点を指摘している。原子力村が抱える文化は決して独自なものではないとし、リーマンブラザーズの破綻がきっかけで発生した経済危機を例に、今回の原発事故の原因が公共の利益より企業の利益を優先させる会社中心の「日本文化」だとするなら、「われわれはみな日本人である」と断じている。More than a year has passed since tragedy struck the Tohoku region of Japan. A huge earthquake and tsunami left 20,000 people dead and missing, hundreds of thousands homeless, and resulted in a nuclear accident at Fukushima that ranks with Chernobyl among the worst ever.The tragedy cried out for a rapid policy response: the government failed to meet this challenge. The authorities’ incompetence is chronicled in the report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Commission released this month. Its sobering conclusion is that this was not a natural disaster but “a profoundly manmade disaster – that could and should have been foreseen and prevented. Its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response.”The report documents the failings of Tepco, the power company that ran the Fukushima plant, the bureaucracy with regulatory responsibility for the nuclear industry and the government of prime minister Naoto Kan. It describes a culture of collusion inside Japan’s “nuclear village” that put the interests of power producers ahead of public safety and wilfully ignored the risks of a major nuclear accident in an earthquake prone country.But one searches in vain through these pages for anyone to blame. It “singles out numerous individuals and organisations for harsh criticism, but the goal is not to lay blame”. Why not? Because, the commission concludes, “this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.’ Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the programme’; our groupism; and our insularity. Had other Japanese been in the shoes of those who bear responsibility for this accident, the result may well have been the same.”I beg to differ. Had Mr Kan not stormed into Tepco headquarters and tried to exercise some authority over the company’s executives, the situation might have been far worse. If Tepco had had a more competent president, its communications with the prime minister’s office would have been better. People matter: one of the heroes in the Fukushima story was Tepco’s Masao Yoshida, the plant manager who disobeyed orders not to use saltwater to cool the reactors. Incredibly, Tepco’s management initially clung to the hope the reactors might one day be brought back to operation, something that would be impossible once saltwater was injected into them.To pin the blame on culture is the ultimate cop-out. If culture explains behaviour, then no one has to take responsibility. This is indeed what the report concludes when it says that the results would have been the same even with others in charge.Culture does not explain Fukushima. People have autonomy to choose; at issue are the choices they make, not the cultural context in which they make them. If obedience to authority is such an ingrained trait in Japan, how then is it possible for a group of Japanese to write a report that not only questions but lambasts authority, anything but an example of reflexive obedience? The culture argument is specious.Prime Minister Noda promised to have a new independent nuclear regulatory commission up and running by April of this year. The parliament’s lower house finally passed a bill to do that just last week. The government has decided to go ahead and restart two nuclear reactors at a plant that services Osaka and surrounding areas despite widespread public opposition. But it is unlikely that any of Japan’s other 51 nuclear power reactors will be brought online until after the commission is established and new safety standards announced. Culture does not explain this painfully slow response; politics do.Those inside the Japanese nuclear village do share a particular culture but it is hardly uniquely Japanese. What jumps out from this report are the parallels between the manmade causes of and responses to Fukushima and the “culture” that led to the financial meltdown in the US after the Lehman Brothers collapse and that continues to resist meaningful reform and the pinning of responsibility for this manmade disaster on specific individuals.The Fukushima Commission report “found an organisation-driven mind-set that prioritised benefits to the organisation at the expense of the public.” Well, if that is Japanese culture, then we are all Japanese.
それにしても、なぜ日本語版と英語版の内容を変えたのだろう。また、なぜ英語版で a disaster "Made in Japan" という「惹句」をわざわざ使ったのだろう（冒頭の委員長挨拶に一度出てくるだけで、全体で88ページある今回の英文の報告書本文には、この言葉は登場しない）。
