If I get the spelling right it is more a testament to the spell-check included in Firefox than any personal virtue. I'm not sure if it was a complaint, assertion, or handy excuse when one of our founding fathers said 'only a fool can spell a word but one way'. If you like highly variable spelling try reading some Chaucer in the original form. If memory serves there is one section where the same word is spelled three ways. I did it years ago and once you get a roll going it is pretty fun.

I'm far from perfect ie: "fast but you[r] post won't scan" but the ability to scan a text quickly is pretty high on my list of what I'm shooting for. I also value clarity and an artful turn of phrase but I'm never quite sure how and when that happens.

More on-topic, the Japanese grow up having a strong sense of public duty drummed into them. To fail to help someone in need is something of a crime against society, and such crimes trigger a strong sense of shame. Some other sites claimed that the manager of the nuclear plant cried because he lied. More likely he cried because he was simply ashamed that things went wrong. As manager he feels a public duty to anticipate problems and prevent them. Any failure to do this, even unreasonable expectations that he save his forty year old plants through a tidal wave, are taken as a personal failure.

If you want to understand this it might help to look at firefighting in Japan in the late 30s. Firefighters at that time had a sense of dignity and honor. They also fought fire not just with equipment and water, but with resolute will and determination. Every station had a banner that symbolized the heroic history and honor of the company. Each company also had a designated banner holder. This was often the handsomest man and both the banner and his uniform were usually elaborate versions of the standard uniform.

This is somewhat like the regimental colors at the height of the British empire. A regiment would follow their colors and great efforts, many a heroic action, was centered on saving the regimental colors. Having your colors captured was an insult to the regiment and all who served in it. Some regiments had hundreds of years of history.

Japanese fire company colors in the 30s worked like this; at a large fire the banner and holder would be sent to stand in front of the fire. There, striking his most heroic pose, the banner man would symbolically make a stand. His roll was symbolic. In effect daring the fire to advance and inspiring his compatriots to fight harder. The guy holding the banner was never supposed to do anything but stand heroically and should encouragement.

It kind of worked in the 30s. With lightly build single-story houses the fuel burns out fast and if you can knock down and wet the area ahead of a fire the fire may not last long enough to dry the wet fuel or catch. Still ... it was not uncommon for guys holding banners to get burned, and it wasn't unknown for them to die. Worth noting that those who were immolated and remained resolute to the end got special honors. A special shrine commemorated in your honor, regular ceremonies, and having children sing songs about your deeds were all thought fitting if you demonstrated resolute determination.

By the early 40s most fire companies had eliminated the banner holder. This was a response to the western way of doing things but also a practical response to taller, more heavily constructed, and often industrial, buildings where the fire did not spread in a way that a small number of men might set a line as easily as setting a banner and defend it. Modern firefighting is more about defending only what can, or can be made, readily defensible, and giving ground when the fire is too strong. But even into WW2 there were still recorded cases of firemen with gloriously brocaded uniform and banner standing in front of an advancing fire.

The Japanese have never entirely given up on the idea that through sheer force of will and determination you can accomplish anything. That if things go wrong it is, at least in part, a failure of effort, will and determination. That any such failure is shameful and a black mark on the individual, their family, their district, the nation, and the Japanese people. Yakuza are said to lose a finger for failure. In earlier times you might be expected to commit suicide.

You can't associate failure the way the Japanese conceptualize it with western concepts of fault and culpability. A westerner would shrug, tell people that he didn't design it, and walk away. A Japanese manager is expected to accept blame.

Japan is in many ways still a honor/shame controlled culture. They have westernized since I was there. This isn't always a good thing. A honor/shame culture has both strengths and weaknesses. On on hand you have oddities like grown men dresses dressed in finery and holding banners hoping to help stop a natural force like fire through sheer force of will. On the other you have a society where dignity, order, and the public good are held high and strongly maintained.