3.1 The Yoshida Testimony: A Narrative of the Accident
The hearings of Masao Yoshida have been carried out by ICANPS. The Committee
interrogated several political and technical actors, who were involved during the
accident management. The manager has been summoned five times by the
Commissions, between 22 July and 22 November 2011. These interviews lasted
28 h in total and primarily addressed the actions that were carried out in response to
the accident. The transcript of the hearing was made public by the Japanese government on 11 September 2014 in the form of eleven documents.
2
The content of these hearings can be regarded as a narrative of the nuclear
accident. A narrative corresponds to an oral, written, drawn or ritualised representation of real or fiction events, arranged according to a chronological organisation and forming a consistent whole [9]. A life history is defined as “a generic
expression where one person tells their life or a part of their life to one or more
interlocutors. This narrative may lead to a book, a recording or a film” (Legrand,
cited in Burrick [10]).
Yoshida’s life history is produced during a “semi-structured interview”. This
kind of interview is an “interaction close to conversation, thanks to the continuous
adaptation of interrogations and interventions of the researcher to the ongoing
exchange” [11]. In such a narrative, the person interviewed—Yoshida—leads his
discourse according to what he considers the investigator’s expectations are [12].
The semi-structured interviews also encourage the narrator to digress and tell
anecdotes [13].
These deviations from the main narrative plot are useful to add meaning to the
story, by providing explanations and/or comparisons. In his account, via the
addition of details and information, the narrator intends justifying the sequence of
events: this guarantees the overall outline and the intelligibility of the narration.
Yoshida selects the events he believes significant and establishes “specific connexions to provide consistency” [14].
Yoshida’s account is obviously based on his own memories. The facts are then
arranged according to the—necessarily subjective—point of view of a major
stakeholder of the accident management. Even though the main plot of the account
is led by the investigators, the overall meaning is instilled by the interviewee. The
manager resorts to his own representational system to build a consistency between
the facts reported.
The metaphors used and the reference to his states of mind reveals the complexity and the extent of the troubles that had to be dealt with during the
decision-making. It is interesting to note the deviations to the main plot since they
enable us to reveal the “absences” in the official investigation reports.
2
These documents are available in Japanese in the following address: http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/
genpatsujiko/hearing_koukai/hearing_list.html.
The Account of the Fukushima Daiichi Accident …
237
The hearings of Masao Yoshida have been carried out by ICANPS. The Committee
interrogated several political and technical actors, who were involved during the
accident management. The manager has been summoned five times by the
Commissions, between 22 July and 22 November 2011. These interviews lasted
28 h in total and primarily addressed the actions that were carried out in response to
the accident. The transcript of the hearing was made public by the Japanese government on 11 September 2014 in the form of eleven documents.
2
The content of these hearings can be regarded as a narrative of the nuclear
accident. A narrative corresponds to an oral, written, drawn or ritualised representation of real or fiction events, arranged according to a chronological organisation and forming a consistent whole [9]. A life history is defined as “a generic
expression where one person tells their life or a part of their life to one or more
interlocutors. This narrative may lead to a book, a recording or a film” (Legrand,
cited in Burrick [10]).
Yoshida’s life history is produced during a “semi-structured interview”. This
kind of interview is an “interaction close to conversation, thanks to the continuous
adaptation of interrogations and interventions of the researcher to the ongoing
exchange” [11]. In such a narrative, the person interviewed—Yoshida—leads his
discourse according to what he considers the investigator’s expectations are [12].
The semi-structured interviews also encourage the narrator to digress and tell
anecdotes [13].
These deviations from the main narrative plot are useful to add meaning to the
story, by providing explanations and/or comparisons. In his account, via the
addition of details and information, the narrator intends justifying the sequence of
events: this guarantees the overall outline and the intelligibility of the narration.
Yoshida selects the events he believes significant and establishes “specific connexions to provide consistency” [14].
Yoshida’s account is obviously based on his own memories. The facts are then
arranged according to the—necessarily subjective—point of view of a major
stakeholder of the accident management. Even though the main plot of the account
is led by the investigators, the overall meaning is instilled by the interviewee. The
manager resorts to his own representational system to build a consistency between
the facts reported.
The metaphors used and the reference to his states of mind reveals the complexity and the extent of the troubles that had to be dealt with during the
decision-making. It is interesting to note the deviations to the main plot since they
enable us to reveal the “absences” in the official investigation reports.
2
These documents are available in Japanese in the following address: http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/
genpatsujiko/hearing_koukai/hearing_list.html.
The Account of the Fukushima Daiichi Accident …
237