¹ Antoni Slodkowski, “Abe's ‘drill bit’ hits resistance on Japan labor reform,” Reuters, June 23, 2014.

² Slodkowski, “Abe's 'drill bit,” 2014.

³ Jake Adelstein, “What You Need to Know About Japan's Controversial Proposed Labor Reform Laws,” Forbes, March 1, 2018.

⁴ The law also exempts several industries hit hardest by labor shortages. For example, doctors, construction workers, as well as taxi and truck drivers are to be exempted for another five years. Small and mid-sized companies will be affected by the law starting from April 2020. “Japan introduces legal cap on long work hours under labor reform law,” Mainichi Shimbun, Apr. 1, 2019 (Accessed May 14, 2019); Hirofumi Okunuki, “Abe's work-style reforms give Japan's employers the green light to demand unpaid and unsafe overtime,” Japan Times, September 23, 2018, (Accessed May 14, 2019); The law is a mixed bag for wages as well. While the law may raise the incomes of non-regular workers, it will likely lower those of permanent ones. The former outcome is unclear because the law leaves wiggle room to define “equal work.” The law will also probably lower the incomes of those who are going to be shifted into an exempted category because they will no longer be earning extra hourly pay for overtime. Those employees may have to negotiate for wage increases as a result. Akane Okutsu and Eri Sugiura, “Five Things to Know about Japan's Work Reform Law,” Nikkei Asian Review, June 29, 2018, (Accessed April 2, 2019).

⁵ I will make use of the term “work-life balance” frequently in this essay. However, I am using this term to encapsulate the overall sentiments and questions at play in the debates which I unpack below. That is, one should read it as my analytic term rather than one that I have extracted directly from my source material. The Japanese authors I reference below spoke often of the need for employees to work and to rest. They, however, did not use a term equivalent to “work-life balance” in English.

⁶ Okutsu and Sugiura, “Five Things to Know about Japan's Work Reform Law.”

⁷ “Labor reform bill's ‘professional system’ criticized for promoting death by overwork,” Mainichi Shimbun, May 22, 2018, (Accessed April 2, 2019).

⁸ See for example, Ming-Chang Tsai, Michio Nitta, Sang-Wook Kim, and Weidong Wang, “Working Overtime in East Asia: Convergence or Divergence?,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 46, No. 4 (2016), 700 – 722; Annette Bernhardt, Ruth Milkman, Nik Theodore et al., “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in American Cities,” UCLA: IRLE Reports (2009); Jochelle Mendonca “Infosys faces lawsuit in US for ‘not paying overtime’,” The Economic Times, Sept. 10, 2018, (Accessed April 2, 2019); Donna Ferguson, “‘I will never return to teach in England’: the UK teachers finding refuge abroad,” The Guardian, Oct. 2, 2018,(Accessed April 2, 2019); Dhara Ranasinghe, “Culture of Long work hours entrenched in Asia banks: report,” CBNC, Aug. 27, 2013, (Accessed April 2, 2019).

⁹ 40 hours per week isn't necessarily the most efficient or desirable either. Some have argued that a four day or roughly 30-hour workweek is ideal. See for example, Charlotte Graham-McLay, “A 4-day Workweek? A Test Run Shows a Surprising Result,” The New York Times, July 19, 2018, (Accessed May 14, 2019).

¹⁰ See for example, Makoto Kumazawa, Portraits of the Japanese Workplace: Labor Movements, Workers, and Managers (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996); Yoichi Shimada, “Working Hour Schemes for White-Collar Employees in Japan,” Japan Labor Review, Vol. 1, (2004), 48; Naoki Kondo and Juhwan Oh, “Suicide and Karoshi (death from overwork) during the recent economic crisis in Japan: the impacts, mechanisms and political responses,” Japan Epidemiol Community Health, Vol. 64; No. 8 (Aug. 2010), 649. Uptin Saiidi, “Japan has some of the longest working hours in the world. It's trying to change,” CNBC, Feb. 19, 2019, (Accessed April 2, 2019).

¹¹ My argument is in line with earlier scholarship on this subject. See for instance, Tetsuro Kato, “The Political Economy of Japanese ”Karoshi“ (Death from Overwork),” Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (December 1994), 41-54.

¹² Jeffrey W. Alexander, “Japan's hiropon panic: Resident non-Japanese and the 1950s meth crisis,” International Journal of Drug Policy, Vol. 24 (2013), 239; See also P.B. High, The Imperial Japanese Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years War, 1931 – 1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003).

¹³ “Over 80% of Japan's transportation firms violated overtime, other labor rules last year: labor ministry,” The Japan Times, Aug. 6, 2018, (Accessed May 14, 2019); Kyodo News, “Taxi Drivers Rally in Tokyo over working conditions,” Japan Transportation Scan, March, 4, 2004.

¹⁴ Takuya Izawa, “63 public teachers died from over work over ten years; experts call figure ‘tip of iceberg’,” Mainichi Shimbun, April 21, 2018, (Accessed May 14, 2019).

¹⁵ Jeffrey W. Alexander, “Medicating the salaryman lifestyle: fear-based marketing of liver stimulant drugs in postwar Japan,” Japan Forum, Vol. 27, No. 2 (2015), 134 – 135.

¹⁶ Alexander, “Medicating the salaryman lifestyle,” 134.

¹⁷ Karoshi refers to death induced by excessive stress, poor hygiene or nutrition, or other mental or physical strains related to work.

¹⁸ “Shūkyūhutsukasei no jittai,” Yomiuri Shimbun, January 7, 1973, 4.

¹⁹ The MITI survey covered variety of industries including but not limited to petroleum products, trading companies, paper producers, and automotive companies. “Shūkyūhutsukasei no jittai,” Yomiuri Shimbun, January 7, 1973, 4.

²⁰ “Shūkyūhutsukasei kangaeru,” Yomiuri Shimbun, May 30, 1973, 28.

²¹ By golden eggs, he meant rare and precious finds. “Enma-sama Akubi: Yabuhairi, Shūkyūhutsuka no Gojisei deshite…,” Asahi Shimbun, January 17, 1973, 17.

²² “Shitetsu Asu Ryūichi Suto,” Yomiuri Shimbun, November 29, 1973, 2; “Sentei Suto Shuushuu,” Yomiuri Shimbun, December 12, 1973, 1.

²³ Haruo Shimada, “The Japanese Labor Market After the Oil Crisis: A Factual Report (I),” Keio Economic Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1977), 51.

²⁴ “Shitetsu Asu Ryūichi Suto,” Yomiuri Shimbun, November 29, 1973, 2.

²⁵ Shimada, “The Japanese Labor Market After the Oil Crisis,” 51. The annual unemployment rate continued to rise over the next decade. It peaked around 2.8 percent in 1987 before any substantial decline. Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (SBMIAC), “Unemployed Persons and Unemployment Rate by Age Group and Sex (1968 – 2010)”.

²⁶ Shimada, “The Japanese Labor Market After the Oil Crisis,” 51 – 54.

²⁷ “Shūkyūhutsukasei Shigeki,” Asahi Shimbun, January 6, 1973, 11.

²⁸ “Mitsubishi, izubemo jisshi he: Toyota, Nissan Raigestsu ni ketsuron,” Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 31, 1973, 8.

²⁹ Asahi Shimbun, February 27, 1973, 3; “Shūkyūhutsukasei kangaeru,” Yomiuri Shimbun, May 30, 1973, 28.

³⁰ SBMIAC, “Monthly Hours Worked of Regular Employees by Industry”, (Accessed Feb. 19, 2019).

³¹ Service or mandatory overtime is unpaid extracurricular work. Louise Do Rosario, “Dropping in Harness,” Far East Asian Review, Apr. 25, 1991, 31; By the early 1990s, a typical Japanese worker was putting in around 350 hours of service overtime. Kumazawa, Portraits of the Japanese Workplace, 251.

³² SBMIAC, “Monthly Hours Worked of Regular Employees by Industry,” (Accessed Feb. 19, 2019).

³³ According to official statistics on companies with 30 workers or more from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, workers in the mining industry worked an average of 192 hours per month (48 hours per week) in 1973, 184.7 hours per month (46.175 hours per week) in 1975, and 187.8 hours per month (47.95 hours per week) in 1978. Auto workers put in 188.2 hours per month (47.05 hours per week) in 1973, 169.2 hours per month (42.3 hours per week) in 1975, 177.1 hours per month (44.28 hours per week) in 1978. While activists and scholars have called the veracity of reported working hours in to question for various industries, they have singled out financial service companies and banks as particularly egregious offenders. According to the same survey, the average worker at a financial services companies put in 158.4 hours per month (39.6 hours per week) in 1973, 157.1 hours per month (39.275 hours per week) in 1975, and 159.8 hours per month (39.95 hours per week) in 1978. SBMIAC, “Monthly Hours Worked of Regular Employees by Industry,” (Accessed Feb. 19, 2019). However, individual accounts directly contradict this information. For example, at Fuji bank, according to Makoto Kumazawa's research, there was substantial pressure not to report overtime in the 1970s. Kumazawa, Portrait of a Japanese Workplace, 220.

³⁴ Norman Pearlstine, “Japan's Spring Labor Clash is Spawning Huge Pay Boosts Likely to Fuel Inflation,” The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 12, 1974, 12.

³⁵ See for instance, “Shūkyūhutsukasei, ‘ashbumi’ tsuduku,” Asahi Shimbun, April 10, 1978, 3.

³⁶ “Sansei ha 64%: koumuin no Shūkyūhutsuka seiron chousa matomaru,” Asahi Shimbun, January 16, 1977,

³⁷ “Shūkyūhutsuka ashibumi tsuduku: Hukyou Kidukau keieisha” Asahi Shimbun, April 10, 1978, 3; “Shūkyūhutsuka 2 wari, 3 wari ga nikkyuu sei,” Yomiuri Shimbun, July 23, 1978, 3. In the Yomiuri piece the author only specified the number of workers (Roudousha) that smaller firms had. They did not clarify whether the weekend would apply to all employees, only salarymen, etc. In the Asahi piece the author claimed that the survey they were referencing gathered the opinions from regular employees (Jyouyou Roudousha) or those who were working for a company for more than a month. Generally, articles referred to those companies with ten to twenty-nine employees as small, a few hundred or even as high as 999 employees as medium and those with more than a thousand as being large. See also, “Chūshoukigyou no ‘hatarakigai’ wo ataeru taisaku,” Yomiuri Shimbun, August 4, 1973, 8.

³⁸ “Shūkyūhutsuka ashibumi tsuduku: Hukyou Kidukau keieisha”; “Shūkyūhutsuka 2 wari, 3 wari ga nikkyuu sei,” 3.

³⁹ Union leaders frequently claimed that large wage increases were necessary to keep up with inflation. Likewise, government and business leaders pushed back against these demands claiming that increasing wages too much might spark more inflation. Pearlstine, “Japan's Spring Labor Clash,” 12; Richard Holloran, “Pay Accord Ends Japan Rail Strike,” The New York Times, May 11, 1975, 9.

⁴⁰ By the end of the decade, some sectors like shipbuilding saw large scale layoffs. “Japan's Labor Pacts to Seek Job Security Over Wage Increases,” The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 1979, 12.

⁴¹ This article did not clarify how many employees qualified a company as large or medium. “Shūkyūhutsuka, 2 wari, 3 wari ga nikkyūsei,” Yomiuri Shimbun, July 23, 1978, 3.

⁴² “Eameru: Shūkyūhutsuka de Kinyou saboribyou,” Asahi Shimbun, November 20, 1978, 15.

⁴³ “‘Shūkyūhutsukasei’ Atamauchi,” Yomiuri Shimbun, April 10, 1978, 3.

⁴⁴ By 1985, white-collar employees working at a firm with over one thousand employees did not receive pay for roughly thirty hours of overtime per month, whereas individuals at companies with one hundred to 999 workers were denied 25 hours of compensation. The same went for those at smaller forms with 100 workers or less who were unpaid for 24 hours of overtime on average. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, “Labour Force Survey and Survey on Wage Structure,” as cited in Yoko Takahashi, “Unpaid Overtime for White-Collar Workers,” Vol. 3, No. 3, Japan Labor Review (Summer 2006), 45. The author does not agree with the overall conclusions of the Takahashi piece and is only citing the statistical data on this page. Takahashi argued that workers are functionally being paid for the hours which are commonly referred to as unpaid or service overtime. The author contends that even considering the calculus in Takahashi's piece, the majority of workers are still underpaid and are forced to put in far too many hours overall.

⁴⁵ “Koumuin no Shūkyūhutsukasei: Shinchouron ga zokushutsu,” Asahi Shimbun, February 10, 1978, 3. The volume that civil servants were working is not clear. Many government surveys are usually not distributed to government workers. At times, they are explicitly excluded. Rieko Nagamachi and Kazufumi Yugami, “The Consistency of Japan's Statistics on Working Hours, and an Analysis of Household Working Hours,” Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance, Public Policy Review, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Sept. 2015), 627.

⁴⁶ “Gensokuron ha Sansei: Jisshi ha Shinchou ni,” Asahi Shimbun, April 27, 1979, 3.

⁴⁷ “Shasetsu: ‘Shūkyūhutsukasei’ to Natsuyasumi no Teichaku he,” Asahi Shimbun, June 2, 1979, 5.

⁴⁸ This death was reported by Hosokawa Migiwa who would later be a major activist on the Karoshi issue. Koji Morioka, “Work till you Drop,” New Labor Forum, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), 81.

⁴⁹ Katsuo Nishiyama and Jeffrey Johnson, “Karoshi—Death from Overwork: Occupational Health Consequences of Japanese Production Management,” International Journal of Health Services, Vol. 27, No. 4 (1997), 627.

⁵⁰ Nishiyama and Johnson, “Karoshi—death from overwork, 628, 631; In 1981, organizations that spearhead the anti-karoshi movement formed, for example the Osaka Karoshi Problem Network. This organization consisted of lawyers, labor activists, families of karoshi victims and others. Morioka, ”Work till you Drop,“ 83.

⁵¹ Nishiyama and Johnson, “Karoshi—death from overwork, 627.

⁵² See for example, “Karoshi wo kangaeru,” Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 9, 1988, 15; Do Rasosio, “Dropping the Harness,” 30-31; Kato, “The Political Economy of Japanese Karoshi,” 44-45.

⁵³ Masahiro Okudaira, “Karoshi (Death From Overwork) from a Medical Point of View,” Japan Medical Association Journal, Vol. 47, No. 5 (May, 2004), 206.

⁵⁴ Do Rasosio, “Dropping the Harness,” 31.

⁵⁵ “Mother of Dentsu ‘karoshi’ victim feels betrayed by Abe's labor bills, Asahi Shimbun”, June 23, 2018, (Accessed Mar 1, 2019); Tomoko Otake, “Families of ‘karoshi’ victims lambaste overtime cap recommendations as legalizing unhealthy working hours,” The Japan Times, March 29, 2017, (Accessed March 1, 2019).

⁵⁶ Sachiko Kuroda, “Do Japanese Work Shorter Hours than Before? Measuring trends in market work and leisure using 1976-2006 Japanese time-use survey,” Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 24 (2010), 482. Implementation of a 5-day work week policy had some impact on officially reported average working hours for the period before the economic crash in 1992. For example, the average hours for all manufacturing sector companies with 30 or more employees dropped from 181.1 hours per month (roughly 45.28 hours per week) in 1988 to 173.2 hours per month (roughly 43.25 hours per week) in 1991 and finance and insurance companies of the same size reported an average of 173 hours per month (roughly 43 hours per week) in 1988 and 164.4 hours per month (roughly 41.1 hours per week) in 1991. SBMIAC, “Monthly Hours Worked of Regular Employees by Industry.” These improvements are contested. Kato, “The Political Economy of Karoshi.”

⁵⁷ Sean Fleming, “This is how companies in Japan are fighting the country's sleeplessness epidemic,” World Economic Forum, Jan. 11, 2019; Although a few companies have independently taken on limited reform. There is hardly a large-scale movement in this direction.

⁵⁸ C.H. Kwan, “Revitalizing the Japanese Economy,” The Brookings Institution, June 1, 2000; James McBride and Beina Xu, “Abenomics and the Japanese Economy,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 23, 2018, (Accessed May 14, 2019).

⁵⁹ “The Challenges of Japan's Demography,” The Economist, Nov. 26, 2018, (Accessed May 14, 2019); Keiichi Kamei, “Worker shortage in Japan to hit 6.4m by 2030, survey finds,” Nikkei Asia Review, Oct. 25, 2018. (Accessed May 14, 2019).

⁶⁰ The Abe administration has made some progress on this front but probably not enough to resolve the problem. Densie Couture, “Facing Critical Labor Shortages, Japan Opens Door Wider to Foreign Workers,” NPR, Dec. 7, 2018, (Accessed May 14, 2019); Nyshka Chandran, “Japan opens the door to more foreigners. That may not solve its labor woes,” CNBC, Dec. 12 2018, (Accessed May 14, 2019).

⁶¹ “Japan's cash-rich firms buying back shares, but tight on wages,” The Japan Times, Mar. 10, 2016, (Accessed May 14, 2019); Tetsushi Kajimoto and Izumi Nakagawa, “Japanese firms offer smaller pay raises as economy wobbles,” Reuters, March 12, 2019, (Accessed May 14, 2019).

⁶² Nishiyama and Johnson, “Karoshi—death from overwork, 628.

⁶³ “Advertising Giant Dentsu Answers to Overwork Suicide, Promises Reform,” NHK, Sept. 26, 2017, (Accessed Apr. 26, 2019)

⁶⁴ Daisuke Kikuchi, “At trial, Dentsu chief admits ad giant guilty of ignoring illegal levels of overtime,” The Japan Times, Sept. 22, 2017, (Accessed April 26, 2019)

⁶⁵ NHK, “Advertising Giant Dentsu Answers to Overwork Suicide.”

⁶⁶ NHK, “Advertising Giant Dentsu Answers to Overwork Suicide.”

⁶⁷ Kikuchi, “At trail, Dentsu chief admits ad giant guilty of ignoring illegal levels of overtime.”; Taiga Uranaka, “Japan's Dentsu gets only small fine for overtime breaches despite outcry,” Reuters, Oct 5, 2017, (Accessed April 26, 2019)

⁶⁸ “Dentsu to pay employees ¥2.4 billion for overtime work after conviction for labor violations,” The Japan Times, (Accessed April 2, 2019); “Dentsu to pay 2.4 billion yen to employees for overtime work,” Kyodo News, Nov. 28, 2017, (Accessed April 26, 2019); Michelle Toh, “A Japanese company is coughing up $21 million in unpaid overtime,” Nov. 29, 2017, (Accessed April 26, 2019).

⁶⁹ Josie Cox, “Japan names and shames companies putting employees at risk of death by overwork,” The Independent, May 12, 2017, (Accessed April 27, 2019).