Examining Darkness of Audit/Policy/Ethics in Investigations of the incidents

Abstract

In this summer 2017, a book, titled ‘JAL 123 flight, New Facts of the Crash: Approaching the Truth through Eye Witnesses,’ was published. The author, Tohko Aoyama is a JAL ex-cabin attendant who lost 15 colleagues in the worst aircraft crash in history, which happened on August 12, 1985. This best-selling book has generated broader concerns about the incident again and evoked a lot of doubts about the official report of the investigation of the crash. In this paper, rather than probing the truth which is suggested by Aoyama and some private investigations, I will focus on the audit censorship in the official report of the accident investigation, while referring to Aoyama’s research and eyewitnesses including elementary and middle high school pupils close to the crash site, and an ex-first lieutenant of the U.S. Air Force at that time. I am going to examine not only the problematic narrative of the accident investigation commission, but also the audit culture which covers the authorities’ investigation reports such as the Fukushima nuclear plant incident in 2011, as an aggregation of scientism, constriction by experts, and politics determined by US-Japan relationship. Here, I am going to discuss a politics of academic research which makes an irreparable darkness by means of self-reference or self-observation in intellectual production.