If something terrible happens and you are nominally in charge, the correct Japanese reaction is to roll over on your back and lie on your tummy – the president of Japan Air Lines personally visited every bereaved family to apologise after Boeing’s welds on its 747 came catastrophically apart, before resigning, and Toshiba Corp took full page ads in all the major US newspapers this week to apologise to the American people that one of its subsidiaries should so wickedly sell banned equipment to the Soviets; for those who have forgotten the ramifications, the Pentagon reckons it will cost $1,000m or more to develop sensors sensitive enough to detect Russian subs driven by new smooth propellers machined by the Toshiba machines.
