Death by overwork on rise in Japan as young women now sharing in the salary man’s fate

TOKYO – Japan is witnessing a record quantity of compensation claims associated with death from overwork, or “karoshi,” a phenomenon previously linked to the long-suffering “salary man” that is increasingly afflicting young and feminine employees.

Labour demand, with 1.28 jobs per applicant, may be the highest since 1991, which should help Prime Minister Shinzo Abe draw more and more people into the workforce to counter the consequence of shrinking population, but lax enforcement of labour laws means some businesses are simply squeezing higher productivity of employees, sometimes with tragic consequences.

Claims for compensation for karoshi rose to some record a lot of 1,456 in the year to end-March 2015, based on labour ministry data, with cases concentrated in healthcare, social services, shipping and construction, all of which are facing chronic worker shortages.

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Hiroshi Kawahito, secretary general from the National Defense Counsel for Victims of karoshi, said the actual number was probably 10 times higher, as the government is reluctant to recognize such incidents.

“The government hosts lots of symposiums and makes posters about the problem, however this is propaganda,” he explained.

“The actual problem is reducing working hours, and also the government isn’t doing enough.”

The labour ministry did not react to requests for comment.

Kawahito, an attorney who has been dealing with karoshi since the 1980s, said 95 per cent of his cases used to be middle-aged men in white-collar jobs, but now about 20 percent are women.

Japan has no legal limits on working hours, however the labor ministry recognizes two kinds of karoshi: death from cardiovascular illness linked to overwork, and suicide following work-related mental stress.

A cardiovascular death is likely to be considered karoshi if an employee worked 100 hours of overtime in the month beforehand, or 80 hours of overtime in two or more consecutive months in the last six.

A suicide could qualify if it follows an individual’s working 160 hours or even more of overtime in a single month or more than 100 hours of overtime for three consecutive months.



Work-related suicides are up 45 percent in the past 4 years the type of 29 and younger, and up 39 percent among women, labor ministry data show.

The problem is becoming more acute as Japan’s workforce has divided into two distinct categories – regular employees, and those on temporary or non-standard contracts, frequently ladies and younger people.

In 2015 non-regular employees composed 38 percent from the workforce, up from 20 percent in 1990, and 68 percent of these were women.

Lawyers and academic say unscrupulous employers operate a “bait-and-switch” policy, advertising a full-time position with reasonable working hours, but later offering the successful applicant a non-regular contract with more and more, sometimes overnight or weekends, with no overtime pay.

Refusing overtime pay and break time are illegal, and the applicant could refuse the task, but activists say companies tell them they will be given regular contracts after six months approximately.

They say young applicants often accept due to lack of skill, while women attempting to re-enter the workforce after childbirth often feel it would be difficult to get a foothold elsewhere.

Emiko Teranishi, head of the Families Coping with Karoshi support group, said she hears plenty of complaints about hiring tactics, with some companies telling new hires their salary includes 80 hours of overtime, plus they must reimburse the organization if they work less.

“Many people don’t even make minimum wage under this technique,” said Teranishi, whose own husband committed suicide after working extended hours.

Such abuses have grown to be so common in the past Ten years that such companies happen to be dubbed “black” companies in the media.

Hirokazu Ouchi, a professor at Chukyo University, wrote a magazine last year about such companies when he realized his students appeared to be treated illegally at their part-time jobs.

Ouchi said their hiring practices typically consume a similar pattern.

Companies will hire someone for two to three years, but they have no intention of investing time or even the money to nurture that employee

“Companies will bring in help for two to three years, but they don’t have any aim of investing time or the money to nurture that employee,” said Ouchi.

He added that the labour ministry lacked the manpower to follow along with on complaints.

A ministry official working in corporate surveillance acknowledged that his department was somewhat short-staffed but the government was making plans to recruit more each year. He declined to provide his name because he isn’t authorized to speak with the media.

Japan’s working-age population continues to be falling because the mid-1990s, which would normally lead companies to enhance working conditions to attract workers, but Ouchi said hello was not happening simply because they could possibly get away with bending the rules.

“This is a way for companies to help keep labour costs down, but it’s additionally a path that leads to death by overwork,” he said.

Thomson Reuters