Tuesday, June 28, 2011

NISA Removes Hidehiko Nishiyama from His Spokesman Job

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has removed Hidehiko Nishiyama from his position as the spokesman for the agency on June 29 and sent him packing back to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), because his love affair with a young woman (almost his daughter's age) has become a distraction, hindering the proper function of the agency. The woman also works at METI.

At the press conference on June 23, Nishiyama, 54-year-old career elite bureaucrat (Tokyo University Law School - Harvard Law School) married with 2 adult children (the daughter works for TEPCO, I don't know about the son), expressed regret that his private life was revealed in a major weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, but denied that he would resign his post as the NISA's spokesman.

He has been the familiar face of the Fukushima I Nuke Plant Accident, ever since he became the third NISA spokesman on March 13. The first spokesman was quickly removed from the job after he said during the March 12 press conference that the fuel inside the Reactor 1 was probably melted. The second spokesman was also quickly removed when he said on the March 13 morning press conference, "I don't want to do this but I was told to do it so here I am."

Well, Nishiyama is gone now. His successor is Yoshinori Moriyama.

Ah, the end of an era.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Japanese men have honour and to lie against nation comes to be difficult at the end.
Love story is an elegant exit somehow.

Anonymous said...

In this case Japanese man has no honour and is a bit of a pervert. But, I get what you are saying. He could have found a better exit, though, that didn't shame his wife and children.

Ian Goddard said...

This report seems to give exact amounts of plutonium discharged from Fukushima

http://ex-skf-jp.blogspot.com/2011/06/blog-post_27.html

but the google translation sucks. It seems to have the same format as this blog, but by another person. Wish we could be a good English translation on that data.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

@ian goddard, haha that's me. I write both blogs. I'll try to post that here, too.

Anonymous said...

Oh how nerdishly clean cut Nishiyama looks. The neat, almost helmet-like hair with not one strand out of place. The thick glasses. The mild mannerism. Yet beneath the facade lies a rotten core of pathological lying and arrogance. To hell with that.

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