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Two who are trying to make safety second nature; Risk management in Japan.

Article Excerpt
OSAKA, Japan-From the top-floor restaurant at the towering Matsushita headquarters, Chikara Okamoto watched through a wall of windows as a commercial airliner swooped by, eerily close, throwing a long shadow over the densely packed neighborhoods of Osaka as it headed for the airport at the city's edge.

``You see what I mean?'' Mr. Okamoto asked, recalling a conversation about how the jetliners are frequent reminders of the terror that had struck New York just six months before. Then he pointed to an adjacent tower, also with a restaurant at the top, and said, ``Osaka has its twin towers, too.''

Mr. Okamoto was doing what risk management professionals do, assessing risk, almost reflexively. In a country where interest in the concept is growing, Mr. Okamoto and others are among those who are making risk management second nature, aggressively pursuing safety and loss control.

While Mr. Okamoto's responsibility is to make sure Osaka-based Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.'s overseas employees of its Panasonic operations are safe, his counterpart with Central Japan Railway Co. 300 miles up the track in Tokyo is making sure the Shinkansen, or bullet train, maintains its...

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