Pushed to their limits, thousands of Japanese are literally working themselves to death each year, a scourge the Asian power has started to address but which could get worse in the global economic crisis.
Employees in Japan work like crazy , their atmosphere is hectic, others say they suffers from stress night and day, particularly in peak periods when everybody works late into the night.
The Japanese call the problem "karoshi," or death by overwork. And with the global downturn sapping demand for Japanese exports and leading companies to slash jobs, the stress on workers is becoming even more severe. Even they go out with their colleagues at night to relax to dwell the bad things during the days with their bosses, still no room to breathe.
While for some the overwork is simply annoying, for others it causes everything from poor blood circulation to arteriosclerosis to strokes. According to the survey by the Japan's main labour union federation Rengo that 53 percent of workers have been suffering more stress.
It was estimated that more than 2,200 Japanese committed suicide due to work conditions in 2007. But Hiroshi Kawahito a lawyer who represents relatives of karoshi victim said that figure represent only a fraction of the problem. He estimated some 10,000 workers in the same year suffered heart attacks or strokes, which were sometimes fatal, due to stress.
He said that fewer than 10 percent of the incidents were reported to authorities or companies because of the long time it takes to certify cases and the fair chance the effort will be in vain.
In 2007, 58 percent of people who sought compensation for a loved one's karoshi had their application refused. However, this was still a big improvement on 20 years ago when 95 percent of cases were rejected.
The public pressure for this scourge to be better recognised according to Kawahito.
In May 2007, the head of a construction site in the Tochigi region north of Tokyo committed suicide after putting in 65 to 70 hours every week for six months, plunging him into ill physical health and depression.
Even if the government is addressing the problem, the families of karoshi victims dare to go to former employers. The labour ministry certify the suicide as a work accidents and offer his widow $32,000 (3 million yen) a year compensation.
Nearly half of all businesses have no measures at all in place to prevent workplace stress, according to an investigation by the union, in Japan, businesses thinking that their employees' mental state is their private problem, pointing on working conditions at Rengo, the union federation.
Even though the law sets a 40-hour working week, one-quarter of Japanese workers toil for more than 50 hours a week and 10 percent put in more than 60 hours.
The vast majority of overworked employees are men, many in their 30s who are working their way up the corporate ladder.
Stress has long been a problem in Japan. Not even the imperial family is immune, with three members, including Emperor Akihito, all diagnosed in recent years with health problems tied to stress.
But karoshi has become a much more serious problem since the early 1990s when the collapse of the country's post-World War II economic miracle destroyed workers' promise of stable jobs for life.
Companies now routinely hire temporary workers, allowing bosses to lay them off when times get tough and putting more pressure on workers who remain on full-time contracts.
The long hours work is not the problem here, but the abusive bosses, power tripping, tension with co-workers, and a sense of professional defeat amongst workers.
The Japanese people worked very hard but they also dreamed of a better life.
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