The country’s labor policies, and a tight job market, have some people cobbling together 70-hour work weeks out of multiple jobs.
On a sunny morning in June, a middle-aged lawyer named Yoshimasa Obayashi heard his telephone ring once, and nearly ring again, before he rushed to snatch the phone’s receiver from its cradle. It was an unexpected call, from an unknown caller, who confessed that he feared he was working himself to death. In Japan, this sentiment can be expressed using a single word: Karōshi, or “death from overwork,” refers to fatalities from heart attacks, suicides, and other health issues resulting from the stress and fatigue of long hours spent on the job.
In 1988, at the height of Japan’s economic “bubble years,” a group of doctors and labor lawyers launched Japan’s first telephone hotlines dedicated to curbing karōshi. They published their office telephone numbers in pamphlets, and later online, as a means of offering free consultations to at-risk workers, who typically called the volunteer doctors, and bereaved family members, who usually reached out to lawyers like Obayashi for help with compensation claims.