JapanNewbie

Overwork – karoushi

Posted on 11. Jun, 2008 @ 1:59 pm by harvey in Media, Society, Working

I rarely post news articles, but the text for the photo in a recent IHT article entitled, “Japanese salarymen fight back” is just too intense.

And I quote.

Hiroko Uchino in her home in Aichi, Japan, with a photo of her husband, Kenichi, who died of overwork at the age of 30.

That is just too sad. As you may have heard, there is a word (phrase really) for “death by overwork” in Japanese, it’s KAROUSHI 過労死. Individually the Kanji mean, “over/exceed/excessive”, “work”, “death”.

This article is a good read if you’re interested in this concept. It hits all the highlights. Terms like “service overtime” サービス残業 are explained, and it explains the background of the working situation in Japan well.

You can read the article, so I won’t throw endless quotes at you, but I do have one personal story that relates to this.

Back when I was working corporate in Osaka (I make it sound like it was so long ago, just 3 years back really), one of my co-workers told me that he planned to quit the next month. This person had worked for the company for a few years loyally. I told him good luck at his next position, and that I would see him around.

A few weeks into the next month, I noticed he was still around. He told me that his manager had told him that he couldn’t quit.

You can expect my confused reaction. If my manager told me that I couldn’t quit, I would just laugh. He then explained that his boss said that he couldn’t quit, not for at least another year.

With my American perspective I immediately asked him about his contract, and no, there wasn’t anything in there that said that he couldn’t quit until his boss said it was alright. There were no stipulations on the length of employment required either.

I told him that there was no way the company could force him to work another year before quitting. He said it’s true, but his boss (whom he didn’t like, which is one of the reasons why he was quitting) wanted him to stay, so it was his duty to stick it out for another year.

Isn’t that incredible? I could imagine staying on an extra 3 weeks, maybe 6 to help a company out before I quit… But an entire year? I don’t think so.

Of course, as the article mentions, I have seen countless cases of employees regularly working overtime without pay. It’s not right. It’s not even healthy. It’s about time for some type of a workers revolution in Japan. Something must be done!

I think the last quote in the article sums it up nicely.

“I want Japan to become a society where employees can sue their own company,” Takano said. “That’s why I’m doing this.”

Tags: working