Japanese are working themselves to death — literally
Suicide sparks workplace debate
Matsuri Takahashi was 24 years TOKYO old when she leaped to her death from her company dormitory on Christmas Day last year. Tokyo Labor Bureau investigators ruled her suicide karoshi — death by overwork.
The Labor Bureau announced Oct. 7 that Takahashi had been required to work 100 hours or more of overtime per month for months on end at the prominent Dentsu advertising agency. She often got as little as two hours of sleep a night, rarely had a day off and was ordered by supervisors to report fewer hours than she actually worked.
It’s an all too familiar story in Japan, where employees at nearly one in four companies are at risk of dying from working too many hours, according to a government report issued lastmonth.
Last Friday, Labor Ministry inspectors swooped down on Dentsu’s headquarters in Tokyo and other sites, searching for evidence of systemic overtime abuse or other labor violations.
“There is definitely going to be an impact from this case,” said Naohiro Yashiro, an economist and professor of global business at Showa Women’s University in Tokyo. “Dentsu is a very big company and if these practices can continue to happen there, it means that it’s necessary to put ( stronger) regulations in place.”
The Labor Ministry reported about 100 suicides per year due to karoshi — a number Yashiro said represents “just the tip of the iceberg.”
A Cabinet Office report issued last month found that employees at 23% of Japanese companies worked 80 hours or more of overtime per month last year. That’s the threshold at which the risk of death from physical or psychological causes is significant, according to the report.
Japan’s Labor Standards Law mandates a 40- hour workweek and a maximum of 15 hours of weekly overtime. But the law effectively allows unlimited overtime if there is a written agreement between a company and its labor union.
Attorneys for Takahashi’s parents said she worked as many as 130 hours of overtime in a single month.
“My daughter was telling her friends and colleagues she would get only 10 hours of sleep in a single week, and the only thing she felt was just a desire to sleep. … Why did she have to die?” Takashi’s mother said in a television interview.