Ceremony marks 4th anniv of deadly derailment in Amagasaki; nothing for train driver

Saturday 25th April, 03:00 AM JST

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Apsara at 03:01 PM JST - 25th April

Makes me wonder about the concept of forgiveness- not so important in Japanese culture perhaps? He was a young guy who made a stupid mistake, unfortunately one with catastrophic results, but he did not set out to kill those people or himself. I think it's sad he was deliberately excluded.

Disillusioned, various mechanical safety precautions such as alarms for excessive speed on curves etc. that could have been installed were not- they can actually take concrete steps to reduce the occurrence of this kind of accident.
seesaw at 03:49 PM JST - 25th April

Relatives of Takami held a separate service for him at an undisclosed location

RIP. It wasn't your fault. It was an accident. And accident happens.
Disillusioned at 04:05 PM JST - 25th April

seesaw - RIP. It wasn't your fault. It was an accident. And accident happens.

Sorry seesaw. It was no accident. It was the result of a stressed out, suicidal kamikaze train driver that took 106 innocents to the grave and destroyed the lives of at least another thousand people. Hence, he was left out of the ceremony.
bamboohat at 05:00 PM JST - 25th April

What a petty, selfish, grudge filled gesture.
yomuri at 05:44 PM JST - 25th April

Sorry seesaw. It was no accident. It was the result of a stressed out, suicidal kamikaze train driver that took 106 innocents to the grave and destroyed the lives of at least another thousand people. Hence, he was left out of the ceremony.

u r basing this on what evidence?
taiko666 at 05:49 PM JST - 25th April

This is actually one of the most chilling things I've ever read about modern Japan.
Himajin at 07:04 PM JST - 25th April

Investigators have focused on speeding by the twenty-three-year-old driver, Ryūjirō Takami (who was among the dead), as being the most likely cause of the accident. It is claimed that he overshot the previous station on the line before the wreck, causing a ninety second delay. Investigators speculate that the driver may have been attempting to make up this lost time by increasing the train's speed beyond customary limits. Many reports from surviving passengers indicate that the train was travelling faster than normal. In mid-2004, the same driver had been reprimanded for overshooting a station by one hundred meters.

The Japanese culture is quite strict when it comes to punctuality, with commuters often depending on near-perfect timing on the part of trains to commute to and from work on time. This is because at stations (including the train's next scheduled stop, Amagasaki Station) trains meet on both sides of the same platform to allow people to transfer between express and local trains running on the same line. As a result, a small delay in one train can significantly cascade through the timetable due to the tightness of the schedule. Immediately after the rail crash occurred, some of the mass media pointed to the congested schedule of the Fukuchiyama Line as an indirect factor. In fact, cumulative changes over the previous three years had reduced the leeway in the train's schedule from 71 to 28 seconds over the 15 minutes between Takarazuka and Amagasaki stations.
Himajin at 07:05 PM JST - 25th April

second paragraph is also a quote from the same article, sorry.
aikisako at 07:50 PM JST - 25th April

inhumane
kaeru37 at 08:00 PM JST - 25th April

Disgusting!!!! that they excluded the driver. I feel sorry for the driver's family. This was an ACCIDENT caused by JR's scheduling pressures and strict training/management. JR is responsible for all, INCLUDING the driver's death.
bampaku at 08:22 PM JST - 25th April

JR had an assinie policy of making drivers who fell behind the timetable scrub toilets and write "I will not be late" 1000 times, and so on. This was deemed by the investigative commitee to be his reason for speeding after he over-ran the platform at the previous station and had to back up to let people on.

Yes, these punishments were ridiculous and even unfair, but the driver had unequivocally NO right to risk the lives of all those people just because he wanted to avoid them. I assume he had been educated as to what can happen if a train takes a turn too fast.

If one of my family members had been killed by such outrageous negligence, I'm not sure I would want their inadvertant killer honored along with them.
jeancolmar at 08:38 PM JST - 25th April

JR personnel who made errors were (and may still be) punished in particularly degrading ways. That was no doubt on the driver's mind when he caused the accident, as he had been punished before. The real culprits in this case are JR managers. JR West President Masao Yamazaki shouldn't have simply apologized for the accident. If he was a real Japanese man he should have disemboweled himself. Or worse, he should have resigned.
buddha4brains at 09:06 PM JST - 25th April

I can understand the bereaved not wanting the driver "there", but why was JR West involved in the ceremony? They share a large measure of the blame.
jacqueshellacque at 08:01 AM JST - 26th April

Undermines the old canard that the Japanese aren't religious. Only religion promises to punish in the afterlife. In this case, the punishment is that most awful to the Japanese: ostracism.
nasic at 11:53 AM JST - 28th April

japanese get so hung-up over following the rules that they ignore the bigger picture... safety, customer service. it makes me sick to hear conductor appologizing for a train that is a few minutes late when the trains are running every few minutes anyway. what's the difference?