In Japan, it’s overwork; here we die trying to work
J apanese advertising agency Dentsu has been fined a meagre 500,000 yen (£3,385) for forcing staff to work illegally long overtime after a worker, Matsuri Takahashi, 24, was driven to despair by her relentless work schedule, taking her own life on Christmas Day, 2015. In Japan, this is known as karoshi (“death by overwork”). In another karoshi case, from 2013, a 31-year-old woman, Miwa Sado, died of heart failure, after being overworked at a public broadcaster.
The deaths of Takahashi and Sado triggered international debate, yet, here in the UK, is karoshi really such an outlandish concept? The cliched image of overwork could be a high-achiever who doesn’t know when to stop. However, what about the other (low- paid, insecure) end of the scale – what one might term zero-hours karoshi?
Or benefits karoshi, considering that claimants are routinely harassed and even disabled people are intimidated out of the welfare system?
Already, there have been reports that disabled people have taken their own lives, or felt close to suicide, because they’ve been judged fit to work when they’re evidently not.
