Well - it's not Accident Analysis as my comments were not directed toward the incident in the Philippines but simply about Japanese diving in general. It was also not Racial Profiling as it has nothing to do with people being any particular nationality but to do with a cultural attitude that does not fly very well with the self-reliance necessary for scuba diving.
The Japanese have an expression:
"Deru kui wa utareru". It means roughly: "The post that sticks up will get hammered down".
This is a foundation of Japanese culture and behavior within society. Individualism is frowned upon - something that foreigners living here often have a big problem with. You simply don't question or argue with the system, or you can expect to be put in your place very quickly - and often harshly. The teacher - or sensei - leads, and you follow. This is simply how it is here and I don't think that anyone Japanese or who has lived here for any length of time would disagree with me. (My wife certainly doesn't
)
When this is applied to scuba diving you get divers who don't even know what tables are and do no dive planning themselves, have their gear setup by the DM, have their entire dive monitored by the DM for their depth/air supply/dive time, do safety stops on a line that the DM has shot, and often hold the DMs/Instructors hand throughout the dive. Around Fukuoka and in Okinawa this is what I have seen for almost 100% of the dives done. When I ask questions such as planned depth for a site etc, and then get out my tables to run the numbers, I generally get asked what I'm doing by curious people.
Of course I have seen some Japanese who are perfectly competent divers as well. All of these divers except one I have seen outside of Japan. They mostly have had training abroad or at the very least have done enough dives abroad to learn how others do it and have learned themselves. A lady who I sometimes dive with in Japan has more than 80 dives in Palau, Fiji, and Thailand - she is a perfectly competent diver who I will buddy with anytime.
I am not 'profiling' anyone. I am commenting on what I have actually seen in Japan - and offering a potential reason why that is. It is also an interesting fact that JULIA - the Japanese diving agency - doesn't seem to have equivalency with the other world-wide agencies as far as I can tell. A large part of Japanese diving exists in a world of it's own.
