JSランゲージスクールブログ | Overworking in Japan
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Today, I would like to talk about something that is always on the news in Japan; overworking. Many Japanese people get the phrases “overworking” and “overtime” confused. Overtime is only 残業. Overworking is much more serious. Overworking is when you work too much, and your body becomes very tired. This can lead to serious illness, or even for some unlucky people, death.
In Japan, there is a kind of thinking that people who work a lot of overtime are successful. It is almost like a sense of pride for some people. They think that they are doing something very worthwhile, so some people even off-handedly brag about the amount of overtime they do. However, when people start to get sick or too stressed out because of overtime, that’s when it becomes overworking. Japan especially has a culture of overworking.
Most people I talk to in Japan get much less than the recommended eight hours of sleep each night. No one sees a problem with sleeping only 5 hours each night. This is very unhealthy for your body. Your body needs to recuperate every night, along with your brain. If you don’t give it time to do that, you can get very sick and many people who don’t sleep enough die earlier than their peers.
In Japan recently, there have been two cases of overwork in the media. One is the Dentsu case from a couple of years ago. One young woman was overworked so much, she decided it was better to commit suicide than to continue to work so much. She was very unhappy and one of the big reasons was probably the amount of work she was doing. The other case recently came out in the news and was from NHK. One woman in her early thirties died of congestive heart failure (which usually only affects the elderly) due to overworking and stress from work.
I think this is one of the big social issues in Japan recently and the glorification of overworking in this country needs to stop. We also have this culture on Wall Street in the U.S. I think that is also bad. What do you think? Is overworking a problem?
