Journalist Miwa Sado was killed, at the age of 31, by “karoshi” — the Japanese word for death due to overwork.
A young journalist’s grueling work schedule — including a single month with 159 hours of overtime and just two days off — triggered the heart failure that killed her at age 31, Japanese labor regulators ruled.
Authorities officially attributed Miwa Sado’s death to “karoshi” — the Japanese word for a death due to overwork — according to information released this week by NHK, the public broadcaster that employed her.
Sado, a political reporter, had been covering elections for Tokyo’s government and the national parliament in the months leading up to her death in 2013. She died three days after the elections for Japan’s upper house.
NHK had not released information that regulators had compiled about the death until this week.
The determination that Sado’s death was caused by overworking has brought renewed scrutiny to the working culture in Japan, where hundreds, if not thousands of people are believed to work themselves to death every year.
One official with the public broadcaster told reporters that her death was indicative of “problem for our organization as a whole, including the labor system and how elections are covered.”
Japan’s working culture, where long hours and after-work social engagements are typical, dates back decades, as The Post’s Anna Fifield has reported:
The country classified 189 deaths from overwork in 2015 — 93 suicides and 96 from heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses related to overwork — though experts believe the actual number may be much higher.
In addition to long hours, vacation days routinely go unused: On average, employees used less than half of their leave time in 2015 — about nine days a year, according to the Guardian .
A study of 10,000 companies in Japan released last year found that more than one-fifth exceeded an 80-hour per month overtime threshold. More than one in five Japanese workers work 49 hours or more each week, compared to 16.4 percent in the United States, 12.
