Japan has some of the longest working hours in the world, and some young Japanese are literally working themselves to death. Today in this society there are calls for the authorities to solve this problem.
Michio Nishigaki was proud when her only son, Naoya, got a job at a major Japanese television company straight out of college. He loved computers and this seemed like a great opportunity for a Japanese graduate.
But just two years later, everything went wrong.
“He told me he was very busy, but everything was fine,” Nishigaki tells me. “But then he came home for his father’s funeral and couldn’t get out of bed. He said, “Let me sleep for a while, I can’t get up. Sorry, mom, but I need to sleep."
Japan has some of the longest working hours in the developed world
She later learned from colleagues that he works around the clock.
“He usually worked until the last train, but if he didn’t catch it, he slept at his desk,” she said. “In the worst case scenario, he had to work all night until 10pm the next day, spending 37 hours at work.”
Two years later, Naoya died at the age of 27 from a drug overdose. His death was officially reported as karoshi, a Japanese term for death caused by overwork.
Japan's culture of long working hours is not a new phenomenon—it was first documented in the 1960s—but recently, high-profile examples are putting karoshi back in the spotlight.
Overtime
On Christmas Day 2015, 24-year-old Matsuri Takahashi, an employee of the Japanese advertising agency Dentsu, jumped to her death from a height. It turned out that she had barely slept, having worked more than 100 hours of overtime per month in the period leading up to her death.
Dentsu President Tadashi Ishii (center) resigned a year after Ms. Takahashi's death
Makoto Iwahashi says this is not uncommon, especially for newcomers to the company. He works for Posse, an organization that runs a helpline for young workers, and says most calls are complaints about long working hours.
“It’s sad because younger workers feel like they have no other choice,” he tells me. “If you don’t quit, you have to work 100 hours like that. If you quit, you simply won’t be able to live.”
Mr. Iwahashi says the failure to prevent the work has made the situation worse.
“Karoshi was common here in the 1960s and 70s - the big difference was that people had to work long hours but were given a job for life. Today this is no longer the case."
Karōshi
Sado, a political reporter, covered the Tokyo government and national parliament elections in the months before her death in 2013. She died three days after the elections to Japan's upper house.
The investigation found that the young journalist's grueling work schedule - including one month with 159 hours of overtime and only two days off - triggered the heart failure that killed her at 31. Authorities officially attributed Miwa Sado's death to "karoshi," the Japanese word for death due to overwork.
“She found herself in circumstances where she was unable to secure sufficient time off due to responsibilities that required her to stay up very late,” labor regulators said. “We can conclude that she was in a state of accumulated fatigue and chronic lack of sleep.”
The determination that Sado's death was caused by overwork has brought renewed attention to the work culture in Japan, where hundreds, if not thousands, of people are believed to work themselves to death.
Japan's work culture, characterized by long hours and after-work social events, goes back decades:
It began in the 1970s when wages were relatively low and employees wanted to maximize their earnings. This continued through the boom years of the 1980s, when Japan became the world's second largest economy. And it intensified after the bubble burst in the late 1990s, when companies began restructuring and employees stayed on to work overtime to avoid being laid off. This led to the concept of “overtime means free in Japanese.”
Temporary workers were brought in and worked without benefits or job security, making the work of regular workers even more difficult. Now no one bats an eyelid at a 12 hour work day . In any workplace in Japan, overtime is always present. It's almost as if it were part of regular working hours, said Koji Morioka, a professor emeritus at Kansai University who is on a committee of experts advising the government on how to combat karoshi. “This is not imposed by anyone, but the workers consider it obligatory.”
It is impossible to get rid of karoshi alone,” he said. “We need to change the culture of working long hours and create time for family and hobbies. Long working hours are the root of all evil in Japan. People are so busy that they don't even have time to complain.
Overtime culture
Officials say there are hundreds of cases of karoshi every year, including heart attacks, strokes and suicides. But Posse experts believe the real figure is much higher.
Nearly a quarter of Japanese companies have employees who work more than 80 hours of overtime per month, often unpaid, according to a recently published study. And 12% have employees who work more than 100 hours a month.
These numbers are very important: 80 hours of overtime per month is considered the threshold above which you become more likely to die.
Nearly a quarter of Japanese companies have employees who work more than 80 hours of overtime per month.
The Japanese government is increasingly under pressure to act, but the challenge is to break a long-standing work culture in which it is inconvenient to leave work before colleagues or the boss.
Earlier this year the government introduced so-called Bonus Fridays, encouraging firms to let their staff go early at 3pm on the last Friday of each month. Officials also want Japanese workers to get more rest.
Workers are entitled to 20 days of annual leave, but currently around 35% do not take it.
Thousands are dying from karoshi: Japan has been hit by a nightmare worse than Covid
Japanese scientists are sounding the alarm: more and more people in the country are becoming victims of karoshi. No, this is not another virus or the name of a Japanese anime: this is the name for death from overexertion at work. Experts are already talking about thousands of deaths.
The hard work of the Japanese is known throughout the world. It is this quality that has repeatedly allowed them to raise their country from ruins - it is worth recalling at least the relatively recent disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant or the nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But recently, this same quality is literally driving the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun to their graves: in Japan, death from work is now officially recognized.
Scientists even gave this phenomenon – death from overexertion at the workplace – a special name: “karoshi”. As a rule, a person simply dies of a heart attack, unable to withstand the load, but more and more often people simply take their own lives. Moral stress actually breaks a person’s psyche – this is confirmed by doctors.
Worked 90 hours and committed suicide
Officially, 189 Japanese people died from karoshi in 2021. However, some experts argue that in fact there are many more of them - hundreds and even thousands.
The publication RusBase told the shocking story of a Japanese resident named Kiyotaku Serizawa - he worked in a building maintenance service. The man was only 34 years old when, having finished another 90-hour work week, he committed suicide.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has proposed sending overly hardworking Japanese people on vacation. Photo: Yoshio Tsunoda/Globallookpress
The authors of the material explained: the culture of hard work has always been characteristic of the Japanese, but in the 1970s it began to take on absurd forms. At that time, the standard of living in the country was low, and in order to provide for their families, the Japanese were forced to work very hard. Since then, it has become a tradition, and recycling is an integral part of the life of every Japanese: it is simply not perceived as something abnormal.
On the contrary, it is considered abnormal to leave work on time. Officially, of course, all employees have normal working hours, but if you - oh no! – if you decide to turn off the computer at exactly 18:00 and slam the door, you... of course, will not be fired (although this is not accurate). But you will probably become an object of universal condemnation, a kind of outcast in the team. You may not dream of career growth or a salary increase at all, especially if such egregious cases of leaving work on time begin to recur.
The Japanese can be compared to machines in terms of efficiency, says the famous TV presenter, chief physician of the City Clinical Hospital No. 71 in Moscow, Alexander Myasnikov . He told Tsargrad that he worked with Japanese doctors and could not help but admire their desire to do everything perfectly: “If he makes a mistake, he will definitely commit hara-kiri.”
They are just like robots, and they need to do everything with an A plus, otherwise it’s a loss of face. And it has long been known, for many years, that the first people who die from heart attacks are those with a sense of responsibility, those who have a conflict with time, and those who constantly lack it.
This fact, according to Myasnikov, was proven by medicine forty years ago.
Leaving work on time and being sick is simply indecent
On average, the Japanese work at least 12 hours a day, although no one pays them overtime. It is believed that you are doing this voluntarily. This is such a vicious circle.
The worst thing is that young people, sometimes under 25 years of age, are increasingly dying from karoshi. True, the state guarantees compensation to the families of those who “burned out at work,” but in reality only about a third of applications for payments are approved. It is very difficult to prove that a person died from overexertion. In the case of the unfortunate Kiotaku, this was successful: the lawyer was able to obtain a monetary payment to his relatives.
By the way, a year before his death, Kiyotaku tried to quit. It turns out that even with this there may be problems: the boss refused to sign his statement, and the man’s conscience and responsibility for his subordinates did not allow him to simply spit and leave. His mother remembers how on rare weekends he came to visit her:
Sometimes he would lie on the sofa and sleep so soundly that I would have to check if he was breathing.
Rare weekends are not a figure of speech. Often the Japanese work on their legal days off, but not in order to get extra money, but just... it’s customary. This is fine. “I can’t let you down. I can’t let the team down,” the bus driver thinks, and goes to work for the third shift in a row instead of a sick colleague.
By the way, about diseases. In Japan, you can't go to work unless you're dead. Well, or almost. If you can walk—even if you have a high fever, a broken arm, or a swollen ear—you go. Taking sick leave is not prohibited by law, but it is considered almost indecent: after all, while you are sick, others are forced to do your work, and they have a lot of work to do.
Those who are too hardworking are punished...by being sent on vacation
But maybe the Japanese are waiting for a vacation and then replenish their strength? No matter how it is: every resident of the country is entitled to only 20 days of paid leave per year, but most of the workers take only half. These days are usually spent solving some personal problems or visiting relatives. Going to the paradise islands for three or four weeks is an unaffordable luxury for a Japanese.
The only thing the Japanese can afford is to go to the onsen thermal springs for a day. Photo: Moritz Wolf/Globallookpres
It got to the point that the Prime Minister of the country, Shinzo Abe, during his tenure in office, became concerned with the problem of citizens exhausted at work. The official proposed... forcing workaholics to go on vacation. Can you imagine what it would be like in Russia: your boss comes up to you and says: “Petrov, you haven’t been on vacation for a long time. Starting tomorrow I forbid you to come to work - go to Crimea, rest for a couple of weeks. And here’s your vacation pay.”
It sounds funny and absurd, but the Japanese are not in the mood for jokes: the problem of burnout at work cannot be solved. Meanwhile, thanks to the high average life expectancy, the country's population is rapidly aging, and the proportion of working-age citizens is getting smaller every year.
In 30 years, sociologists predict, the number of labor forces in the country will decrease by a quarter. Therefore, most are forced to continue working at least 60 hours a week.
According to lawyers, the problem is that the country’s authorities do not punish companies in which processing is thriving. In addition, the Japanese, by their mentality, are not inclined to change jobs often: having received a position, they hold on to it with all their might, and therefore constantly try to prove their loyalty to the company. In Japan, it is customary to consider work as your second - and sometimes first - family, and no one sees anything wrong with this.
Harakiri culture
It is worth noting that workaholism and burnout at work are not only a problem for the Japanese. Candidate of Medical Sciences, psychiatrist Irina Airiyants recalled in a conversation with Tsargrad that such an attitude towards work is typical, for example, of Germans, as well as residents of Northern European countries:
They are workaholics and super responsible people. For them, order and correct behavior in society are very important. Unlike, say, those who live in our country.
An overly responsible attitude to work, according to the psychiatrist, can deplete the nervous system, provoke depressive disorders, and, consequently, suicidal behavior. In addition, the Japanese, she added, simply often have no other values and guidelines other than work:
A huge number of lonely people. Lack of social environment, lack of friendship, lack of romance. They are hyper-responsible. Everything is geared towards getting an education and getting a good job. And for correct behavior, socially approved behavior.
As for the increase in the number of suicides, the Japanese have a completely different attitude towards suicide than other peoples, Airiyants recalled. If for Europeans suicide is some kind of extreme solution, a solution to a problem, then the Japanese commit suicide because they cannot bear the shame:
This is a hara-kiri culture: they cannot live with a feeling of guilt and shame. They need to finish this. Leaving life beautifully is suicide.
Death by one's own sword was considered the best ending to life among the samurai. Photo: Rosseforp/Globallookpress
Evgeny Fomin also agrees with Irina Airiyants . In a conversation with Tsargrad, he explained that in the 1970s the Japanese really made a powerful leap forward, made a technological breakthrough, but this breakthrough cost them a lot.
Fomin also believes that the cult of hara-kiri plays a significant role in the high mortality rate from “karoshi”:
It was also their culture that was so superimposed that they used to die for the sake of their shogun or in case of loss.
The value of a Japanese life became less than the interests of the corporation, which, the psychiatrist explained, in some ways became an analogue of the imperial service.
“But this alarm is now number one all over the world, not only in Japan,” the expert continued.
Because the rhythm of life is increasing, the amount of information that a person must digest in order to stay in trend, to be a professional, the number of hours he spends, the intensity of the load in terms of even logistics movements, how much people now spend on the road, on traffic, on traffic jams and other tasks.
Therefore, the human psyche, which a hundred years ago was designed for some simple tasks, simply cannot cope, the psychiatrist added.
Experts believe that to radically change the situation with karoshi, the Japanese need to change almost their entire work culture. But by and large, the Japanese don’t have time to even think about it: after all, they have to work.
Why blondes can't work in Japan
Well, for “dessert” – a few more amazing facts about what it’s like to work in Japan. Our former compatriot named Marina told the publication “Zavtra” about them.
- Almost every company has a dress code. It's almost always a black suit. It should be worn in any weather - both hot and cold. Your discomfort is only your problem.
- Minimum makeup. At work you need to work, not attract men.
- Jewelry is prohibited. Only wedding rings can be worn to the office. Reason – see point 2.
- Fitted suits are also taboo: the jacket should only be straight. The skirt cannot be higher than the knees. Reason – see points 2 and 3.
- Blondes are not welcome in the office. If you want to work there, you will have to paint yourself black. The reason - well, you already understand.
The Japanese love blondes - but they don't hire them. Photo: Andrey Arkusha/Globallookpress
In short, for all the attractiveness of Japan, its high standard of living, technological achievements and good salaries, this country has many problems. Therefore, when you receive an offer to work in a Japanese company, you should think ten times: are you ready to die at work - not figuratively, but in the most literal sense.
“What about them?”
In just a couple of decades, we have been taught not to adopt the best experience of countries in the world, but to live with an eye on others. But if you take a closer look, is everything so good where we are not? Let's understand the subject matter. Every Monday Constantinople talks about world experience in one or another area of life. We are not saying that theirs is bad, but Russia’s is good. We are simply presenting the facts.
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Turning off the lights
The local government in Toshima, a district of Tokyo, decided to turn off office lights to force people to go home.
Hitoshi Ueno says it's important for employees to develop their own interests outside the office
“We wanted to do something noticeable,” says manager Hitoshi Ueno.
“It's not just about reducing working hours, we want people to be more efficient and productive so everyone can enjoy their free time. We want to completely change the work environment."
Focusing on efficiency can be the right decision. Although the country has some of the longest working hours, it is the least productive of the G7 group of developed countries.
But campaigners for shorter working hours say the measures only address part of the problem and fail to address the core problem: young workers dying because they work too much for too long.
The only solution, they say, is to set a legal limit on the number of overtime employees are allowed to work that way.
Although Japan has some of the longest working hours, it is the least productive of the G7 group of developed countries.
Earlier this year the government proposed capping average overtime hours at 60 hours a month, although firms were allowed to increase the figure to 100 hours during "busy periods" - a figure that falls within the karoshi red zone.
Social context of karoshi
To understand the social context of karoshi, the following three factors must be considered.
Firstly, after the Meiji restoration (1868), in order not to become dependent on Western countries, under the slogans of creating a rich country and a strong army, increasing production and developing industry, the Japanese worked long hours and carried out the industrial revolution. After World War II, recovering from the shock of defeat, they sought to economically catch up and surpass Western countries, built long working hours into the management system and achieved economic growth. Thus, long working hours became common in the 150 years following the Meiji Restoration. Therefore, changing this Japanese long-hour system will be a reform that will go down in history and will require a lot of courage and determination from both managers and politicians.
Secondly, in Japan, even under the new post-war Constitution, the concept of human rights was unable to gain a foothold in production. There is a popular phrase: “The Constitution goes no further than the company gates.” The ideas of the Constitution have not penetrated into these specifically Japanese communities, such as companies here, where the profit of the company is most important, and the rights of the individual are not used to being respected. The influence of trade unions, both quantitatively and qualitatively, is incapable of achieving improvement in working conditions.
Thirdly, Japan is a very “convenient” country on a global scale, providing consumers and partners with extensive services, but this is achieved through long working hours of service workers. For example, there are many food service and retail businesses that operate 24 hours a day and require hard work from workers even late into the night to keep them running. Courier mail delivers items from morning to late evening, but to do this, drivers must work overtime. In fact, many workers in these restaurants, stores and postal companies die from overwork. The time has come to take care not so much of your “convenience” as of the life and health of your workers.
Productivity doesn't matter much
As Mary Galloran writes, the Japanese actually don't have much work to do - but knowing how much time they have to spend in the office, employees stretch it out as much as possible. “Here they can spend a couple of hours sending one email or a week creating a simple PowerPoint presentation,” says the girl.
In addition, she notes, the Japanese are rewarded not for how they work, but for how long they work - that is, in order to get a promotion, you need to work in the company for a certain period of time. The quality of work does not play a decisive role. This is why, the girl believes, the Japanese so rarely change jobs.
Deadly Obsession
Since her husband's death, Park Hyun-suk meets with a dozen other people every month in a small space next to Seoul's largest fish market. The meeting participants don't have much in common - except that they have all lost a family member - usually a father or husband - due to overwork.
Kang Min Jung founded this group after her uncle, who raised her since childhood, died at work.
“When he died, I wondered why? Why did he have to work so hard? I decided to study the trend of overtime deaths in Japan,” she says.
Japan has been researching this phenomenon since the 1980s in an attempt to combat its own fatal culture of workaholism, and today is the only country where the government is legally required to study and try to solve the problem.
In South Korea, office employees are accustomed to working overtime (pictured is the country's capital, Seoul) / Photo EPA
After returning to Korea, Kang Min Jung began organizing meetings for those whose families had lost loved ones due to over-intensive work. It was not easy: only three people came to the first meeting. Many are simply unaware of this phenomenon or that they can expect compensation under the country's existing labor laws.
The blindness of ignorance about the dangers of overtime extends to those most at risk of dying from work, like Chae Soo Hong.
He is from the baby boomer generation, which is accustomed to working hard and fulfilling its duty as “the man of the family.”
“He must have thought it was normal to work like that. He is from the baby boomer generation, which is accustomed to working hard and fulfilling its duty as “the man of the family.” He didn't complain or take breaks,” says wife Chae Soo-heon. — Korea is a society that expects you to work overtime. You are required to work late into the night. They believe that working long hours means working well and productively.”
Of the 36 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), South Koreans work on average more hours per week than any other country except Mexico and Costa Rica, whose applications for membership in the group are currently being reviewed.
Long hours are literally killing employees, although there is no evidence that they translate into tangible benefits [for the Korean economy]. The data shows that South Korea ranks among the bottom three OECD countries for labor productivity.
Get out of the office
In recent years, the Japanese government has been fighting karoshi. True, in very unique ways - for example, after 19.00 the buildings are simply cut off so that no one can stay in the office.
Although it is clear that the problems, as usual, are in our heads. And the Japanese example is very instructive for workaholics in other countries. After all, in Russia it is also customary to “work until you sweat.”
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State innovations
Kim Woo Tak, a labor lawyer who attends Kang Min Jung's meetings and helps families apply to COMWEL, says the culture of workaholism is a relic of the Korean War era. Formally still ongoing, this conflict has affected many aspects of life in South Korean society.
“Because (South) Korea had to quickly get back on its feet after the Korean War, a system was created that forced every worker to contribute as much as possible,” says Kim Woo Tak. “This system has become a culture, a custom.”
President Moon Jae-in came to power last year, promising to limit working hours and improve working conditions. The 52-hour workweek rule came into force on July 1 this year, but its full application will start only in January 2021 and will initially be limited to companies with more than 300 employees.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in initiated a reduction in the working week at the state level / Photo EPA
One of the first corporations to comply with the law was KT - formerly Korea Telecom. Its employees can now see a timer on their monitors marking the time they leave work, and managers encourage them to go home rather than work overtime.
Kim Chang-yong, who works in the company's public relations department, says that his boss rings a special bell every evening and loudly announces: “Time to go home, finish your work.”
In the three months since the law took effect, Kim Jang-yong says he now sleeps more and spends more time with family and friends.
The law also brought broader benefits to society: The Labor Department announced in August that the changes had created about 43,000 jobs as corporations were forced to hire more workers rather than forcing existing employees to work overtime.
