The most recent helping of far-reaching techno-disaster—the complete meltdown of nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant—can be credited to the Tokyo Electric Power Company, Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission, and its Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, according to an independent report released last week. While a massive earthquake and tsunami last March supplied the final ingredient, the report commission found the extent of the disaster to be “profoundly man-made.”

“The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties,” the report states. “They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents.”

While independent reports might be a dish best served cold, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission didn’t hesitate to turn up the heat, contradicting TEPCO claims that the reactor failure was caused by the tsunami (not the earthquake, for which the site should have been prepared), and that the one-time event couldn’t have been anticipated.

“It is impossible to limit the direct cause of the accident to the tsunami without substantive evidence,” the report states. “The Commission believes that this is an attempt to avoid responsibility by putting all the blame on the unexpected (the tsunami), as they wrote in their midterm report, and not on the more foreseeable earthquake.”

Lax regulation and failure to enforce existing rules also played a key role, the commission found.

“There were many opportunities for NISA, NSC and TEPCO to take measures that would have prevented the accident, but they did not do so,” the report states. “They either intentionally postponed putting safety measures in place, or made decisions based on their organization’s self interest—not in the interest of public safety.”

In the end, few escaped the commission's bite—including the Japanese themselves, whose qualities of “reflexive obedience” and “reluctance to question authority” created a disaster “made in Japan,” according to the report.

The first-of-its-kind commission—similar to congressionally mandated commissions in the United States—based its report on 900 hours of hearings and interviews with 1,167 people, according to the New York Times. TEPCO and NISA only grudgingly assisted in the investigation, forcing the commission to invoke their legislative mandate on several occasions, according to the Atlantic Wire.

While the commission and unflinching report might be unusual for the Japanese, the inclusion of cultural factors as contributors to culpability is perhaps more interesting. But is it a main ingredient in the disaster?

After all, a British company and U.S. regulatory agencies managed to cook up a remarkably similar situation in the Gulf of Mexico not long ago. Despite the decidedly different cultures, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill had many of the same hallmarks as Fukushima—an outsized corporation concerned with its bottom line, cozy relationships between regulators and operators, and enough hubris to shrug off enormous environmental risks.

From the first evasive communications about the status of the disaster to the scathing independent commission wrap-ups, the disasters played out pretty much the same way. And they continue on parallel paths—victims receive what corporations spin as largesse, but still struggle; criminal investigations may or may not find individuals at fault; governments and industry vow they’ll learn from the lessons of catastrophe.

Unfortunately, Japan seems to be far from cornering the market on cultural traits that lead to the sort of large-scale technological disasters we’ve seen in the past few years. But the Japanese may be unique in their self-awareness of society as the culprit.

“The consequences of negligence at Fukushima stand out as catastrophic, but the mindset that supported it can be found across Japan,” the report states. “In recognizing that fact, each of us should reflect on our responsibility as individuals in a democratic society.”