Executive at bird flu-hit Japan farm hangs self

[kskiska]

TOKYO, March 8 (Reuters) - The chairman of a company running a poultry farm in western Japan that was recently hit by bird flu has committed suicide with his wife, police said on Monday.

Asada Nosan Co's Hajimu Asada, 67, and his wife were found hanged near one of the chicken farms run by the company, the police said.

Asada Nosan has been under heavy fire recently for delaying reporting to authorities large-scale deaths of chickens at its farm in the western prefecture of Kyoto, where an outbreak of bird flu was later confirmed.

The company failed to notify authorities even after more than 1,000 chickens had died daily and also kept shipping live birds and eggs, a move that has been blamed for spreading the virus to a nearby farm, although no links have been confirmed.

About 67,000 birds died from the highly contagious disease at the Kyoto farm, where health officials found the virulent H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.

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http://biz.yahoo.com/rm/040307/birdflu_japan_suicide_1.html

[htuttle]

1. American CEOs could learn a thing or two from Japanese CEOs

At least insofar as the manner in which they accept responsibility when they fuck up...

[Enraged_Ape]

4. Absolutely

You'd think with all of Ken Lay's experience with autoerotic asphyxiation, it would be nothing for him to go that one little extra step to salvage the family honor. But alas, coward that he is, 'tis not to be...

[sendero]

12. That's exactly what I was thinking...

....if this happened to an American (an executive made an unethical decision that went awry), he'd:

1) Unload his stock before the public found out

2) Hire a lawyer

3) Hire a PR firm to spin the whole thing

Lie, lie, deny, deny, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence.

It's a lot easier for me to respect the Japanese.

[PartyPooper]

2. The Japanese are honourable people.

May these folks rest in eternal peace.

O8)

[Stuckinthebush]

7. It sounds like the easy way out to me...

Sorry, but suicide is not honorable.

[54anickel]

8. Cultural differences. It is considered honorable in other cultures. n/t

[Stuckinthebush]

9. Understood...

but I still say it is the easy way out. When you're dead, you don't have to face the music. The culture may call it honorable, but logically one has to view it from the outside and call it anything but.

[molok555]

11. What's the ultimate punishment

a society can hand out? Capital. To the Japanese, suicide is more honourable because the person has now taken ultimate responsibility for their actions. It's also a clean break: no lingering, no dragging things out for the family of the victims, or the family of the perpertrator. To the Japanese, anything other than suicide is a cop out-it's denying your OWN personal responsibility. Even for simple things like being late for work, they are flabbergasted by the Western attitude: we explain why we were late, we give reasons, and when we have to, excuses. In Japan, you just say, "I'm sorry. I have no excuse" and await your punishment. In their culture, NOT killing yourself is the easy way out. Why? Because you're getting others to take care of your responsibilities.

[patricia92243]

3. Wonder if he was suicided?

[renegade000]

5. wow...well it would have been another thing entirely

if they had committed seppuku

[schultzee]

6. These people have a social conscience, I wish the pigs here were

that moral.

[nodehopper]

10. speaking from an anthropological perspective

It's not individual morality, it's cultural pressure/compulsion. The whole cultural climate may on the whole seem more "moral" but actions such as this man's are more about conformity and his own honor in that context than about guilt/morality like it would be here, in a different cultural context where there is a different discourse of ethics in business.