●Message from the Director-General

Beyond the phrase ” Not-assumable”
NISHIKAWA Kazuhiro
Director-General, National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management(Keywords) Great East Japan Earthquake, unprecedented, unimaginable, imaginative power, inability to think

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake of March
11 last year, the phrase “not assumable” hasbeen constantly in my mind. It seems to beeasily used as an excuse to avoid theresponsibility concerning the disaster, and I
cannot bear this kind of attitude. On thisoccasion, from my long experience as a
researcher in making and revising technicalstandards for road bridges, I would like to makesome comments on this issue.
Since the disaster, I have tried to persuade mycolleagues in the Institute who are involved inrevising technical standards for public
infrastructure, not to use casually the phrase. It isbecause I have an intention of making themencouraged to overcome the situation of using
the phrase of “Not assumable “in their researchworks.
Of course, I am aware that this is not easy.
But in this message, I am trying to write down
what I have considered to avoid the phrase andwhat should be taken as an actual responsibility. I
sincerely hope this message will be served as a
useful reference to readers of the NILIM AnnualReport.
Unprecedented and Not -assumable
Hatamura Yotaro, Professor Emeritus of theUniversity of Tokyo and famous as the founderof the “Study of Failure”, has written a book,“Unprecedented” and “ Not assumable”1), which I
think many of you may have read. I would like toquote extensively from this work.
“The word ‘Unprecedented’ does not mean
‘Not personally experienced’, but ‘Never before
in history’.”
This is natural because the Japanese word for“Unprecedented” which is pronounced “Mizou”,
is derived from a phrase in classical Chinese
which means, ‘Never before existed’”. Later, itcame to be used as “Never experienced”.
Anyway, he says “When a person plans
something or decides to make a plan, the person
first decides the range they will consider. In thiscontext, ‘Assuming’ means “Defining theboundary of your scope and deciding on theframework of your consideration.”
I was impressed with this simple explanation,
which I think is the key to overcoming the phraseof “Not assumable” being easily used as a kind ofavoidance.
In scientific research, even when solving
engineering problems, you must kick it off withdeciding to select which of the relevant factors to
be considered as its influential, which will be OK
to ignore because of their impact being minor,
and in addition, you must think about how will be
the range of the considered factors. It is clear thatwithout appropriate predeterminations above, theoutcome of research activities will result inineffectiveness.
This kind of settings at the beginning of theactivities means “Framework” or “Assuming” as
named by Professor Hatamura. Therefore in theresearch activities, when the settings causes
unexpected consequence, the “Framework” or the“Assuming” itself should be recognized as afailure, not excused as being “Not assumable”. Itshould not leave alone as an affair of others,
which was assumed for sure by you.
Assuming influential factors is an advanced
decision
I will again quote Professor Hatamura.
“ You can understand ‘Assuming influential
factors’ as the word being used at the stage of‘Setting subjects’. And ‘Considering within theassumed factors” can be translated to theexpression of ‘The frame reached to theconclusion of the subject’. Of course the former
is much more difficult.”
Ms.Katsuma Kazuyo, a popular management
analyst wrote in her recent book “Trap of Earnest
attempt on the existing frame”2) that McKinsey,
the American management consulting firm she
used to work for, can charge high fees because it
devotes great efforts to discuss completely to set
up the customer’s subjects clear as what kind ofmatters they are .
For example, these stories, just as in researchwork, support the saying that if you can identify
the problem, you are halfway to solving it.

●Message from the Director-General
Therefore, we must recognize the importance ofsetting up subjects, in other words, “Assumingfactors with their considering frame”, instead oftreating it lightly.
Classifying the Not-assumable
As described above, it has become clear“Assuming” is done by you. .
Then, why do you assume something when
you try to find solutions? How is your mind
moving in such case?
In this regard, I would like to find an answer towhy so often the phrase “Not assumable” is used
as an excuse. This thought, being super original
in my approach, but hopefully some hints will begiven us to overcome the trap of using thephrase .
[1] “Not assumable” which means “Could not beimagined”
People often say, “I‘ve never imagined it wouldhappen.” Using “Not assumable” in this context,
it is to be a lack of imaginative power.
Even when you are senior, many of you areusually not concerned with things out of yourspecialty. This is because of you having self-constraints on your mind, so you do not respondto what you are seeing and what you hearing, incase you have no interests in them. Also, what
you call bureaucratic compartmentalization ortrapped in a narrow specialization are similar
phenomena.
To improve imagination power, you have toconsciously expand your recognition frame
which restricts your dairy life. Predicting how
disasters will be like is, I think, a same process ofimproving this ability, and needless to say, thenecessity of constant seeking to increase theaccuracy, in spite of no perfection in its efforts.
[2] “Not assumable” which means “Stoppedthinking “Actually, there are many cases you hear”Suchcases were thought as no needs to be considered
because of no comments in national standards
and related manuals.” This is a kind of “Stoppedthinking”. Professor Hatamura also warns, “In
this case of “Not assumable”, it means you
cannot do the job without manuals, and once you
got the manual, you abandon your own thinking.”
I think that not only those who are in charge ofdrafting manuals, but also technology experts
should continuously ask the question tothemselves, “How do I judge and respond to suchcase as is in the situation of no manuals. In otherwords, how do you take actions in ‘Not
assumable’ situations?” An engineer who will not
be responsible for such behavior may be valued
as a cost.
[3] “Not assumable” which means “ Given up”
Other case of using “Not assumable” is happened
when you think there is no way to respond, or no
possibility of getting budgets, you sometimes
give up to proceed, which can be a pattern of“Not assumable.”
I would like to pick up an example for bridge
managements; In case of external force increased
while using conventional design methods, thegoal of calculation may be that the dimensions is
to become preposterous or the cost is to beunbearable, and the both approaches will beunfeasible. In this case, I will recommend
resetting the subject as to the bridge management
in order to change your mind more flexibly.
Lately, you know the term “preventing disasters”
has often been replaced with “mitigatingdisasters”, which is itself a sort of resetting thesubject.
In the field of road bridge managements, as isalready practiced when a new major damage dueto earthquake disaster has occurred, a new
strategy of how to mitigate the damage has been
proposed under resetting of the subject; Toensure toughness (ductility) to prevent collapse if
bridge piers cannot withstand earthquake forces,
or at least to prevent bridge collapse and savehuman lives (bridge fall prevention device), andif possible, to limit the consequence of damaged
members and to speed up restoration, or to permit
only emergency vehicles to cross the bridge, andso on.
[4] “Not assumable” which means “was missedin the assuming “The final category will be belong to thepsychological term of “Normalization bias”. This
term refers to a tendency for people to believethat although they know something will occur,
they do not think it will harm them. Now that thedevastating
disasterhas
beenneither
unprecedented nor unexperienced, administrative
managers are not permitted to express in thisstory.
Major disasters are rare, but this closely
resembles the advance of deterioration ofinfrastructure which occurs slowly over time. In
either case, there is a strong temptation to●Message from the Director-Generaloverlook it and postpone countermeasures. To
overcome this, individual efforts plus initiatives
at the organization or system level are required.
Conclusion
Concerning the four categories, the indispensable
key words are imaginative power (category1), I
think, and another is how to think continuously(category2). It seems that, people performing
their works for a long time, just like Sun Wu
Kong with a band framed around his head, theylose their ability to expand the boundaries
enclosing their thinking. In the case of Wu Kong,
the Buddha attached the band to admonish himfor his conceit, but the band of each of us
wearing seems to put on by ourselves or ourorganization (members of our industry), so as tostop thinking and becoming free from theresponsibility. How about occasionally daring to
remove the headband (boundaries) to climb upona cloud and fly in the broad sky of imagination?
This will expand your field of vision to stimulate
the thought processes.
I will conclude with a warning by Professor
Hatamura, who was not the Buddha:“‘Not-assumable’ events have not occurred. It
was that you had not been thinking anythingabout them.”
References
1) Y. Hatamura: Mizou to Soteigai (Unprecedented andNot-assumable), Kodansha Gendai Shinsho, July 2011.
2) K. Katsuma: Majime no wana (Trap of Earnest attempton the existing frame), Kobunsha Shinsho, October 2011