flickering pictures

Translated literally from Japanese, “karoshi” means “death from overwork,” and has ended the lives of thousands of Japanese employees over the decades. Since the term was coined 20 years ago, authorities have started to take notice, commissioning studies but seemingly doing little else to protect workers like Kenichi Uchino, who according to The Economist “died in 2002 at the age of 30. He collapsed at 4am at work, having put in more than 80 hours of overtime each month for six months before his death. ‘The moment when I am happiest is when I can sleep,’ Mr Uchino told his wife the week of his death. He left two children, aged one and three.”

From Wikipedia:

The first case of karoshi was reported in 1969 with the death from a stroke of a 29-year-old male worker in the shipping department of Japan’s largest newspaper company. It was not until the latter part of the 1980s, during the Bubble Economy, however, when several high-ranking business executives who were still in their prime years suddenly died without any previous sign of illness, that the media began picking up on what appeared to be a new phenomenon. This new phenomenon was quickly labeled karoshi and was immediately seen as a new and serious menace for people in the work force. In 1987, as public concern increased, the Japanese Ministry of Labour began to publish statistics on karoshi.

Japan’s rise from the devastation of World War II to economic prominence in the post-war decades has been regarded as the trigger for what has been called a new epidemic. It was recognized that employees cannot work for twelve or more hours a day, six or seven days a week, year after year, without suffering physically as well as mentally. A recent measurement found that a Japanese worker has approximately two hours overtime a day on average. In almost all cases, the overtime is unpaid.

According to one researcher’s estimate, one third of Japanese cerebrovascular and cardiovascular deaths (mainly heart attacks and strokes) among people aged 20 to 59 are caused by karoshi — that’s around 35,000 deaths per year. A much more conservative estimate, by Japan’s Institute of Economics, puts the figure at a still frightening 1,000 deaths, or 5 per cent. Neither of these numbers includes suicides, not to mention workers suffering form non-lethal physical or mental illness.

Regardless of whose numbers you believe, it seems safe to say that an awful lot of people are working themselves to death, and a telephone help line has sprung up in response. Staffed by doctors and lawyers and demanding “No More Karoshi,” the Karoshi Hotline provides advice and support for people who are overworked to the point of physical and mental breakdown, as well as those contemplating suicide. Between its creation in 1988 and last June, it responded to nearly 9,000 requests for help.

• plug this post
  
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati