Confucius in the cockpit

Murray Sayle

Even in these dark days le tout Tokyo has other things to talk about besides Poland, unemployment and the trade gap. At the moment, Japanese are more con- cerned with two tragic accidents, a hotel fire and a plane crash, which took all too many lives in Tokyo last month in cir- cumstances still coming scrap by scrap to public knowledge. For the light they throw on certain problems of the much-praised Japanese system of man-management, these conversations are well worth us long- nosed foreigners eavesdropping in on. First the fire. At 3.39 a.m. on 8 February the Tokyo fire brigade was summoned to a roaring blaze already burning briskly on the top two floors of the Hotel New Japan in Akasaka, a posh entertainment district close to the Japanese parliament. A number of MPs, indeed, had their offices in the modernistic ferroconcrete building. In freezing weather guests stumbled through Smoke-filled corridors, or signalled, often in vain, from flaming balconies. When the firemen finally got the blaze under control 32 were dead and 28 seriously hurt Tokyo's worst hotel fire since the war.

It began, it seems, in a room occupied by a Young salesman from Manchester (who died in the fire), the cause most likely a dropped cigarette 'or some other minute source of heat' as an official report puts it. Why did the flames spread so fast, and kill so many more? The immediate circum- stances contradicted everything we have ever heard about Japanese efficiency — no sPrinklers on the top floors, the automatic fire doors failed to close, no alarm was given, no attempt made to marshal the guests, nearly a fatal hour went by before the brigade was called. Why, why, and why?

We are now learning a lot about the hotel. Neither an expense-account palace nor an economical 'business hotel', the New Japan had been losing heavily for Years. While not exactly running an hotel borgne or, in plainer English, a knocking shop, the hard-pressed management had been reduced to accepting such raffish trade as wife-swapping parties (one attended by Gay Talese, the New York-based explorer of the mating customs of our species). Nevertheless, losses were staggering, and Mounting, when a high-powered business tYcoon, Hideki Yokoi, acquired the hotel by takeover two years ago.

Yokoi-san forthwith instituted stern cost control. No sprinklers were installed on the top two floors of the hotel, a recent addi- tion. When an inspection revealed that the automatic fire doors needed new springs, at £50 each, he said the old ones would have to

do until business improved. The air-con- ditioning system was modified so that air in the hotel, instead of being drawn in from outside, was simply recirculated through the building, with a handsome saving on heating bills. However, this reduced humidity in the hotel to near 20 per cent (Japanese regulations declare a fire risk emergency at 30 per cent). A humidifier was installed to prevent the hotel's doors and furniture being dried into firewood, but on Yokoi-san's orders this was only turned on when fire inspectors were due: WE MUST SAVE 30 PER CENT MORE', said signs posted in the hotel's boiler-room, and to this end heating was turned on and off on alternate hours, apparently unnoticed by the wife- swappers. So as not to disturb them no fire kills or alarm tests were carried out. These are all, of course, plain violations of Japanese fire regulations.

Under the new regime the Hotel New Japan was steadily being turned into a four- star fire trap, and some small fires did apparently break out, dowsed by the staff and never reported. Not liking the look of things, more than 100 of them resigned, accepting their redundancy money in pro- missory notes because the till was empty, and leaving only a tiny skeleton staff on du- ty at nights.

Clearly, Yokoi-san began his economy drive with the orthodox Murdochian motive of saving a threatened company by cutting'unnecessary overheads and, in the Japanese manner, became obsessed with his aim, even to the exclusion of caution and commonsense. A kind of kamikaze hotelier, in fact, but why did his remaining staff go along with his plan? Why did some emp- loyee fail, in the public-spirited British manner, to shop him to the law?

Two reasons are being advanced, prob- ably of equal weight. Just about every com- pany in Japan is now running an economy drive, not perhaps as spectacular as Yokoi's but using much the same kind of language. February was officially 'fuel saving month': scrimping and saving goes very much with the Japanese grain, and so does respect for constituted authority, both tracing back at least to the introduction of the ideas of the Chinese sage Confucius more than 1,000 years ago. If Yokoi-san gave the order, it was not for the bellboys and chambermaids to reason why.

Even more to the point, it is unthinkable, under Japan's brand of Confucian ethics, to rat on the boss. The chauffeur of former prime minister Kakuei Tanaka, a suspect in the long-running Lockheed scandal, killed himself rather than tell the Tokyo police where he had driven his employer on certain dates. Personal loyalty to the boss is a supreme Japanese imperative, above even loyalty to the company, certainly above loyalty to an abstract set of regulations or principles. It goes, naturally, with con- fidence that the boss knows what he is do- ing, and is acting unselfishly in the best interests of everybody, like a true Confu- cian. It is also, one might add, rather nice if you happen to be the boss yourself. In the Hotel New Japan case an arrest is expected and an interesting, if sad, trial should follow.

Vrom the seedy to the substantial. The day after the hotel fire, 9 February, an early morning Japan Air Lines business- man's flight originating in southern Japan crashed into Tokyo bay two hundred yards short of runway C at Haneda airport. The aircraft, a Douglas DC8, had 174 aboard, all Japanese, of whom 24 were kill- ed outright and 77 seriously injured, in- cluding the pilot, Seiji Katagiri, aged 35. The day was clear, cold and cloudless, perfect flying weather. Within minutes a self-styled aviation expert named Sekiguchi was on Japanese television explaining that pilot error could be ruled out, 'as all JAL pilots are experienced, highly trained fliers'.

Indeed, the Japanese national flag-carrier is a formidably efficient airline, the third or fourth biggest in the world, depending on how you measure. It even managed to turn a small profit last year, one of the bumpiest the airline business has known. JAL is famous for punctuality and the exquisite politeness of its flying staff, and non- Japanese pilots who have flown JAL report that its aircraft are probably the best main- tained in the world. It also boasts the highest seat density of any international airline, although no plans have been reported to introduce the famous 'pushers- in' employed by the equally efficient Japanese National Railways.

JAL's safety record compares well with those of its three big competitors, Pan Am, BA and Air France. I have, I might men- tion, often flown JAL myself and will con- tinue to do so. However, as readers of the excellent if somewhat jazzily titled Destina- tion Disaster by Bruce Page, Elaine Potter and Paul Eddy will know, there is a small group of airlines, not quite as big or bureadcratised as the 'big four', whose safety records are markedly better again. To avoid invidious comparisons 1 will men- tion only that one has (and sips) its home port in the Iberian peninsula, while another, in appropriate conditions, is said to fly upside-down and take off as fast as a kangaroo. As we shall see, the smaller size

of these exemplary airlines may well be significant.

Within minutes of the JAL crash the sur- viving passengers and crew were efficiently taken off, the stewardesses preserving admirable presence of mind. The Tokyo metropolitan police, whose magnifying glasses are trained on practically everything that moves in the Japanese capital, took the investigation in hand, and soon an extraor- dinary story began to emerge in a cascade of leaks from police headquarters.

To begin with, the wreckage half-sunk in the bay was not, repeat not, lined up with the runway, but skewed off to the right. The remains of the two engines from the right-hand side were found in the reverse- thrust position, a suicidal manoeuvre if done deliberately within a few hundred yards of touchdown. Then, rapid calcula- tions showed that even if power on all four engines was for some reason cut at that point, the aircraft could have easily glided in to safety. Nothing could be found wrong with the control surfaces, so the conclusion seemed inescapable: the plane had been deliberately dived into the bay. If true, this could only be the work of a lunatic. The recovered flight recorder showed that all was mechanically normal, but there had been a violent altercation, or even a fight, in the cockpit before the tape was stopped by the impact.

It took the Tokyo police several hours to find the pilot, Captain Katagiri. At first it was reported that he was missing, presumed drowned, as there was no sign of him in the flooded cockpit. Then (Japanese minds moving, in such cases, rapidly to the ques- tion of how much compensation the airline would pay, if held responsible), a rumour swept Tokyo that JAL officials had spirited the flight crew off to an hotel to coach them on their stories. This turned out to be quite untrue.

At length, it was discovered from news photographs that Katagiri, dressed not in his braided and bewinged uniform jacket, but a nondescript cardigan, had left the wreck on the first rescue boat. Another photograph shows him in a bus being driven off to hospital, where he was assum- ed to be a passenger, gazing all the while into space with a dreamy, vacant expres- sion. Questioned by the police, he at first said that he had 'blacked out' and remembered nothing of the accident.

Next day JAL released the young cap- tain's medical record. Katagiri was pro- moted captain in December 1979 with, at that time, 5,000 hours or almost ten years experience as a co-pilot. In August 1980 (unknown to JAL) he told his local police station, in the smart suburb of Hayama, that his home had been bugged by myster- ious enemies. The police investigated and found nothing. In November 1980 he com- plained of nausea and stomach cramps which were diagnosed as of psychological origin. Grounded for a month and advised to seek psychiatric help, Katagiri was pass- ed fit to fly again as a co-pilot by JAL's doctors in June 1981, and in November last year was reinstated as captain, 'on medical probation'. He was, in fact, due to fly with a company check-pilot aboard on the very afternoon of the crash. In the meantime, again unknown to JAL, his wife had left him and his local police station, observing strange behaviour, had reported him as a possible drug addict.

Your first name doesn't have to be Sig- mund to make (with hindsight) a work- ing diagnosis here. Katagiri, who passed all his examinations brilliantly, was, it is now clear, unfitted for the psychological stress of command. There is, indeed, a paradox inherent in his profession. As the romantic leather-helmets-and-chocks-away days of aviation recede into history, the job of an airline pilot is increasingly one of fly- ing by a complex book, usually in condi- tions of plushy, excruciating boredom. But there is always the chance of something go- ing wrong, when the airborne intellectual must instantly be all instinct, initiative and quick reflexes. Few men (or women) excel at both, and airlines must, of necessity, look for the best compromise they can get.

Lacking the appropriate temperament for command and, of course, knowing it, Katagiri nevertheless clearly enjoyed the prestige and pay of a captain's rank. In- deed, colleagues later reported him patron- ising and arrogant about his professional standing. The unfortunate captain was sinking into stress-induced paranoia, very likely with a schizophrenic complication. The airline was on the point of grounding him again, this time for good, but Katagiri seems to have beaten them to it.

But what about the other two people in the cockpit, the flight engineer and the co- pilot? as we now learn, Katagiri flew the same aircraft with the same crew down from Tokyo the night before. Shortly after take-off the aircraft went into a sharp turn and a steep dive to the right. Katagiri had apparently engaged reverse thrust on the right-hand engines at 4,500 feet. Only a quick reaction by the first officer, Yoshifumi lshikawa, aged 33 and with 456 hours flying time, saved the plane from fall- ing into a fatal spin. He got the aircraft back on course but neither reported the in- cident nor asked the captain what he thought he was doing. 'You did okay', said Katagiri, elliptically, after touchdown.

Japanese are accustomed from childhood both to concealing their feelings and to avoid prying into other people's. In JAL's case the problem of a captain who behaves oddly, difficult everywhere, is complicated by the fact that their command pilots of- ficially belong to the airline's management, while the first officers are simply employees and belong to a difficult union (both unions are JAL only).

The ideal here is partly to discourage the crew from flying the plane by consensus, in the normal Japanese fashion, in circum- stances where clearly someone has to be in charge. An equally important reason, which the company does not conceal, is to provide a body of pilots to keep at least

some planes flying if the company union goes on strike. Giving people titles and management perks to break up rank-and- file solidarity is very common in Japanese companies, and even Japanese school teachers have other teachers appointed as foremen over them, a system bitterly resisted by the teacher's union.

Captain Katagiri's colleagues on the flight deck knew nothing of his medical history. However, his conduct was so bizarre that the co-pilot and flight engineer decided to watch him closely and, if he repeated the manoeuvre or anything like it, overpower him and physically remove him from the left-hand seat. It now seems clear that this is exactly what happened. As Flight 350 was in the final approach, less. than 150 feet above Tokyo Bay, Katagiri either put the right-hand throttles into reverse thrust, or pushed forward on the control column, possibly both. Either way the aircraft went into a steep dive. 'Cap- tain, what are you doing?', the co-pilot can be heard shouting on the flight record. The flight engineer was out of his seat, trying to restrain him, while the first officer pulled back with all his strength on the control column. He got the nose up, thus pancak- ing the aircraft on to the water instead of going in nose-first, which would probably have killed all aboard, but the aircraft had already stalled and a crash was inevitable.

`Well, I've done it', said Katagiri, as the cockpit flooded, and burst into tears. With a madman's cunning he had waited until the last few seconds of his last flight to per- form a classical psychotic abreaction, and bring about the event he most dreaded — and, but for the first officer's alertness, would have killed himself in the process.

The discovery that JAL has allowed a pilot with psychosis to command one of its regular flights has, naturally, rocked the Japanese public, to put it mildly. But the problem clearly extends to the airline in- dustry world-wide, particularly among the biggies. As aircraft become mechanically more and more reliable, the human factor looms ever larger. JAL has more than 2,000 pilots and, like the other big airlines, keeps their medical and flight records in a com- puter, which only knows what somebody feeds into it. Psychological problems are protean, intermittent, and almost impossi- ble to distinguish in a quick examination from ordinary depression, hangovers, or the bad days we all have.

Increasingly, pilots fly with colleagues they don't know from Adam, as happened on Flight 350, where the first officer and flight engineer were strangers to the captain and of course guessed nothing about his domestic troubles or imaginary enemies. And, before we start blacking any kettles, brother and sister pots, we might recall a recent report that a much-loved British airline has a dozen pilots strongly suspected of alcoholism, and at least one taking psychotherapy for fear of heights — thus, by the laws of probability, inflexible as the Samurai code, one flight in every 800 has two booze-artists up front. However, we can hope, with some confidence, that if both turned up sloshed for work, some kind soul would grass on them. Pilots, in short, are human like us.

Is there a specifically Japanese aspect to this accident? Clear-thinking Spectator readers will, of course, reject the crude view that an airline is simply the national per- sonality with wings on, even if the airlines themselves advance this theory in their advertising, particularly as it pertains to the charm and accessibility of their hostesses. (But an ill-judged Lufthansa campaign bas- ed on the supposed Teutonic reputation for ruthless efficiency — 'Ye haf vays of mak- ing Your destination on time' — was drop- ped after a storm of pro-German protest.)

Nevertheless, Japanese folk-habits of respect for authority and loyalty to the boss are real enough, and in many circumstances they are admirable qualities. But they can, in extraordinary cases, also create unique problems, and this seems to be clear to, among others, the JAL president, Yasumoto Takagi. In an interval in the very Japanese rite of making personal calls on the bereaved families to express sympathy, he told the national parliament last week that his company was looking into, among other things, the question of 'harmony in the cockpit'.

No industrial country's historical herit- age is a perfect match for the needs of the modern world, and in many ways — mak- ing cars, for instance, or running railways — Japanese neo-Confucianism has proved a better fit than most. This may possibly be related to the fact that only one man drives a train, and has no decisions to make about height or direction.

Confucius has by and large advised Japan well, but in some directions his doc- trines could probably stand modernising. The sage, after all, never held a pilot's licence.