His parents applied for compensation in July and asked the government to recognise his suicide as a case of ‘karoshi’
A 23-year-old construction worker on Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium killed himself due to overwork, his family’s lawyer said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of cases that have sparked alarm in the workaholic nation.
The employee, whose name has not been released, began working on the project in December and clocked around 200 hours of overtime in the month before his body was found in April.
The official labour bureau has now concluded he had become mentally ill “due to excessively long working hours at the Olympic Stadium”, lawyer Hiroshi Kawahito said in a statement.
His parents applied for compensation in July and asked the government to recognise his suicide as a case of “karoshi” or death from overwork.
Karoshi crisis: why are Japanese working themselves to death?
The construction worker went missing in March, leaving a note saying he had “reached the physical and mental limit”.
His parents thanked the labour office for the ruling but said they were “extremely heartbroken” they could not save his son.
