Representative of victims of major Japanese accidents who created 'task review committee' with offending company passes away

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Choong-won = After losing his wife and younger sister in the JR Fukuchiyama Line derailment (107 dead, 562 injured) that occurred in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan in 2005, Asano led a group of bereaved families and jointly formed a 'task review committee' with the offending company and issued a report. The Mainichi Shimbun reported on the 18th that Mr. Yasakazu (淺野彌三一) passed away from heart failure on the 13th. Age 84.

After graduating from Kobe University graduate school, the deceased worked at a consulting company in Kyoto, and in 1975, he founded the Regional Environmental Planning Research Institute, a company that creates urban redevelopment plans in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture. In Japan in the 1960s and 1970s, residents often protested against local government-led development projects. The theory was, "A democratic society is one in which citizens can communicate on equal terms with administrative agencies. I want to provide the wisdom of experts to create that foundation."

In 1991, we supported restoration of areas affected by the eruption of Mount Unzen in Nagasaki Prefecture and pollution lawsuits against Amagasaki City. In the Chitose district of Suma Ward, Kobe City, where more than 90% of the houses were lost due to the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, a reconstruction land readjustment project was carried out together with residents.

A derailment occurred on April 25, the day after he and his wife attended a ceremony commemorating the completion of roads and parks held in the Chitose district in 2005, 10 years after the earthquake. His wife, Yoko Asano, and his younger sister, Chizuko Sakamoto, died, and his second daughter, Nao, was seriously injured.

Immediately after the accident, he served as the representative of the '4/25 Network' created by the bereaved families and attended a meeting to listen to the opinions of the Air and Railroad Accident Investigation Committee (currently the Transportation Safety Committee), and interrogated the safety management status of JR West Japan, the perpetrator. At a press conference in 2010, five years after the accident, he said, "Finding the truth about the accident is a social responsibility. It should not end with individual compensation alone." As a result of their efforts, in December 2009, the offending company and the bereaved family jointly established a 'task review committee' to verify the accident. It was unprecedented in public transportation accidents.

After 16 rounds of discussion, the project review committee released a report on April 25, 2011, stating that because the company blamed the driver every time an accident occurred and imposed punitive weekly training, 'there is a possibility that the agitation due to (the driver's) fear of the weekly training may have had an effect (on the delay in braking operation in the field curve section).' It was also acknowledged that the lack of timetable schedule could have caused impatience or agitation in the driver. Taking this report as an opportunity, JR West Japan began studying the impact of overcrowded operation schedules on the psychology of train drivers and decided to establish a system to systematically identify potential risk factors, such as precursors of accidents.

The Mainichi Shimbun reported that the deceased participated as a key member in the 'Safety Follow-up Meeting' held following the project review meeting and worked to identify the cause of the accident and establish a safe corporate culture.