Wouldn't want to be the engineer who fitted it, nor the chief who signed it off, nor the company who owns the business.

Japs don't take kindly to failure of any sort....

What a dreadful way to go.......RiP guys.

Japanese, Thomas.....Japanese......

Let's hope no-one takes the Happy Despatch. Sad enough already.

Or is it Nipponese?

Maintenance make errors, just like pilots, after all we're all human. Our operation had an aircraft assigned as the night standby every night for response to any emergency off shore. The aircraft was prepped so all a call out crew had to do was pull the bungs and go. Called out early one morning for a medevac off shore, fired up the night standby and got airborne. Bit of a vertical but completed the 45 minute flight and told maintenance it could do with some tracking upon return. A look found powder coating all four elastomerics at the blade grips. Had had a head build up installed minus all four spindle bearings. Surely the vertical would have been evident during the post install track, or was a track not done, or a test flight?

Reports coming through the main media today that the rotorhead was not new as had been announced but was in fact a used one with 845 hours on it that had been sent back to the US manufacturer in 2011 for refurbishment.
In Japanese, but English translations should be appearing very shortly.
Pic.
https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=2...-soci.view-000
Article.
https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=2...00075-mai-soci

A lot can happen in 6 or 7 years time ...

More detail in English here:
Used rotor head installed before GSDF copter crashed in Saga?The Asahi Shimbun

never takes these mass media seriously when it comes to very specific topics like for example this case, aircraft maintenance. What is new, what is old? A TSN 0 part is new, A TSO 0 part is new/old? A part that has no SLL overhaul with TSN 0 SLL component to form a TSO 0 assy is new or old?

Point taken, but sometimes any news is better than silence, so please do not shoot the messenger. Take everything with a pinch/grain of salt, I reckon!

Confirming that two of the blades left in flight as I suspected. What's interesting, is that 'still attached to part of the main rotor asm'. Will be interesting to find out what part of the main rotor asm was still attached to the blades.

According to this, the rotor head was refurbished(?) by Subaru, more than likely in Japan, and I doubt it went to Boeing for work or cert.

When a strap pack fails, it will allow the blade grip and all associated hardware to depart with the blade. That unbalance can result in the opposing blade failing as well. Strap packs should be a zero defect part. But many pilots are ok with broken straps. When i say broken straps I'm referring to the individual sheets of metal that make up a strap pack.

If you go to the very bottom of the pages there is a English button