Browsing by Subject "overwork"

Overwork has been a major part of Japanese work culture ever since the second world war. Currently the diminishing working population and growing economic pressure have led to a situation where workers are required to commit their days and lives to work for companies to bloom. If overwork is temporary and controlled, it may be justified. However, there are cases in Japan where excessive overwork has become a norm inside the company. This may cause not only serious health problems and reduced working capacity but even death. This master’s thesis examines how two cases of overwork suicides (karōjisatsu) were dealt in two Japanese newspapers, Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun. The newspaper articles were based on two court decisions in which employees of Dentsu Inc. (Dentsu) killed themselves due to over work. In 1991 Ichiro Oshima hanged himself at his home, and in 2015 Matsuri Takahashi killed herself by jumping out of dormitory window. There were several similarities between the cases: both employees were only 24-year-old and they had been working for Dentsu only for approximately a year. Both of them had worked hundreds of hours over time. In Oshima’s case, the Supreme Court of Japan found in 2000 that he had died due to mental problems which were caused by the excessive overwork. The court deemed Dentsu to be responsible for his death as the company knew about his situation but chose not to do anything about it. In Takahashi’s case the Summary Court of Tokyo found that her death was caused by unreasonable overwork and found that this was caused by Dentsu’s actions. This paper starts with an introduction to the phenomenon, terminology, and presents some features of Japanese work culture. The next section explains the methodology of the research, which is qualitative analysis of the documents with features from case study. This is followed by presenting the gathered materials. The materials consist of 16 Japanese articles which were published on the date or the following day of the court decisions. In the analysis the goal is to find out what themes the newspapers reported from the cases, were they critical towards it, and whether they had any original comments or arguments regarding how these kinds of incidents could be prevented. Interest is also in whether the values of Japanese citizens can be read from the articles. Based on the analysis of the articles there were not many suggestions regarding what kind of changes could be made to the existing situation. The articles were mainly descriptive although some of them did have critical aspects about society’s role in the issue. Asahi Shimbun had more empathy on the victim’s side while Yomiuri Shimbun was more neutral. The articles brought up some problematic themes such as that working time is not controlled by the management, but it is left to the employees themselves. There were also statements from the bereaved parents of the victims and also some comments from experts and other Dentsu’s employees. Overall, based on these articles it is not possible to draw a clear picture regarding how the ordinary citizens in Japan feel about this issue. There is a need for further research because karōjisatsu is a serious problem which needs to be solved. At the moment there is plenty of research from medical and psychological perspective but not much research from the sociological, cultural and legal perspective. Comparative study between different countries could be fruitful.