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..."He usually worked until the last train, but if he missed it he slept at his desk," she said. "In the worst case he had to work overnight through to 10pm the next evening, working 37 hours in total."
Two years later Naoya died at the age of 27 from an overdose of medication. His death was officially rule a case of "karoshi" - the Japanese term to describe death attributed to overwork.

Japan has a culture of long working hours and this is not a new phenomenon - it was first recorded in the 1960s - but recently high-profile cases have thrust karoshi back into the spotlight.

....

Makoto Iwahashi says that is not unusual, particularly for new starters in a company. He works for Posse, an organisation that runs a helpline for young workers, and says most of the calls are complaints about long working hours.
"It's sad because young workers think they don't have any other choice," he tells me. "If you don't quit you have to work 100 hours. If you quit you just can't live."
Mr Iwahashi says declining job security has made the situation worse.
"We had karoshi in the 1960s and 70s - the big difference is they had to work long hours but they were secured lifetime employment. That's not the case any more."


Official figures put cases of karoshi in the hundreds each year, counting heart attacks, strokes and suicides. But campaigners say the real figure is much higher.
Nearly a quarter of Japanese companies have employees working more than 80 hours overtime a month, often unpaid, a recent survey found. And 12% have employees breaking the 100 hours a month mark.
Those numbers are important; 80 hours overtime a month is regarded as the threshold above which you have an increased chance of dying.

...

Japan's government has been under increasing pressure to act, but the challenge has been to break a decades-old work culture where it's frowned upon to leave before your colleagues or boss.
Earlier this year the government introduced Premium Fridays, encouraging firms to let their employees out early, at 3pm, on the last Friday each month. They also want Japanese workers to take more holiday.
Workers are entitled to 20 days leave a year but currently about 35% don't take any of it.

In the local government offices in Toshima, a district of downtown Tokyo, they have resorted to turning the office lights off at 7pm in an effort to force people to go home.

Hitoshi Ueno says it's important for employees to develop their own interests outside of the office
"We wanted to do something visible," says manager Hitoshi Ueno.
"It's not just about cutting working hours. We want people to be more efficient and productive, so that everyone can protect and enjoy their spare time. We want to change the work environment in total."
In focusing on efficiency he may have a point. While the country may have some of the longest working hours it is the least productive of the G7 group of developed economies.
But campaigners say these measures are piecemeal and fail to address the core problem: that young workers are dying because they are working too hard and for too long.
The only solution they say is to put a legal limit on the overtime employees are permitted to work.

Critics say the government is prioritising business and economic interests at the expense of the welfare of workers.
"The Japanese people count on the government but they are being betrayed," says Koji Morioka, an academic who has studied the karoshi phenomenon for 30 years.
In the meantime, more young workers are dying and the support groups for bereaved families keep getting new members.
Michiyo Nishigaki, who lost her son Naoya, says the country is killing the very workers it should be cherishing.
"Companies just focus on short-term profits," she says. "My son and other young workers don't hate work. they are capable and they want to do well.
"Give them the opportunity to work without long hours or health problems and the country would be privileged to have them."

Quote (thesnipa @ Aug 19 2017 09:35am)

its not without precedent. truck drivers of course have limits on the amount that they can work. not only for the damage they can do to others but themselves. if you lick envelopes, w/e work 80 hrs a week. if you're working with machinery, no. however i feel the most prudent way for the best safety decisions to be made is to allow firms to set their own limits, they are the ones paying workmans comp and higher insurance premiums if accidents occur. I dont really see a govt organization having the ability to keep up with the variance among all professions very well.

Quote (Skinned @ Aug 19 2017 08:48am)

Probably. Some paternal laws are good. You can specialize it to higher risk professions, but after awhile you're just exploiting people with mood disorders lol. Our dynamic is that most states are at-will work states, means that people work at will of the employer and of the employee. Either party should revoke their will at any time, and employers should be encouraged to revoke their at will for workers determined to kill themselves for money.

And I only mean an extreme amount of hours. You can work 12+ hours a day many consecutive days and I wouldn't blink an eye. I would mean doing full 24 hour shifts without doing at least 36 or 48 hours off first. In the army the standard, in the field, during heavy operations, was 4 hours of shitty sleep in the woods a day. We would try to organize and work hard enough to get more (good incentive) and then there were days there we would work a couple consecutive days because we were out actually our jobs and you just can't take a nap when that is going on. On days like that you would eventually get into a delirium or almost walking sleep and things get kind of weird. I wouldn't want someone with a semi on the highway driving for 48 hours because it is an option.

But if you want to work 12 hours a day seven days a week and your employer is cool with it then go for it. But if you're doing this you are neglecting all other areas of your life and that has personal consequences. And you will burn out fast...I mean completely fall apart, even licking stamps or doing other route memory tasks. Someone probably shouldn't do 12 hours of therapy a day either, because by the end they will at best be cheating people of their services, at worse actually harming people. In construction? People get hurt too. In medicine and nursing? People die :(

Aren't a lot of these industries somewhat regulated? Even due to economic reasons the agency has more of a reason to hire two part time people than one full time person. Every single worker is expendable and disposable if they cease to be of use.