The Summary Execution of Common Sense

There's a massive stink being kicked up in Oita Prefecture stemming from a bus accident that occurred Saturday morning near Beppu. Students from Yanagigaura High in Usa City were being bussed to Oita City for their scheduled Koshien (the name of the stadium located in that Mad Max wasteland between Osaka and Kobe where the annual, massively popular, national high school baseball tournament is held) preliminary game against...who cares...when the thing flipped and slid in heavy rain and fog. The bus was driven by one of the boys' coaches who was trying to make up time lost on being late...by speeding through fog and rain. Fucking. Idiot. One boy is dead, the other twenty or so are seriously injured.

Above simply parroting the headlines of the local news rags I'm writing this as yet another demonstration of the utter lack of an consequences in Japan; the coach whose actions cost a life, injured many others and cost the school their one shot at Koshien (most schools with even a good baseball team only ever get one chance a decade to go) will not be prosecuted. The reason: He never intended to cause harm. So the hell what? He was acting reckless and staggeringly stupid when he drove a multi-ton vehicle barreling through a fog bank that I've experienced before many times and let me tell you, you slow down for that sucker on the hill. Five meter visibility, no joke, and strong enough wind that they have vehicle arrestors dangling over the railing in case your car is blown off the road! He should be tried just on general principal, if such a thing existed here. Do they realize the precedent this sets for involuntary manslaughter?

This is just another chapter in the very long Japan Book of Unaccountability. While driving to work today I happened to be reminded of another auto-related travesty that is pervasive throughout the nation, namely the almost complete lack of child seats. There's a preschool near Yahata JHS that I pass on the way to either that school or Kogo JHS that buses in their charges via colorful van that gets stuffed to the gills with screaming kids. They are standing on the seats and climbing from one area to another, not a single one strapped in. Parents often have their kids on their laps in the front seat—the parents being equally sans seatbelt—or, in one chilling scene, crawling on the dashboard. These people are legion and yet I see them given the pass by cops while speeders are reigned in.

For once I can say concretely this is not some situation where I'm trying to impose my society's values and standards on this one, these issues are just plain common sense.

--Matt