Death by Overwork.

Corporate Pressure on Employees Takes a Fatal Toll in Japan

TOKYO -- Inside a hospital room that Toshiko Kanaya now calls home, dried roses hang on the walls along with pictures of her once healthy family. Holding back tears, she stands over her still husband, positioning him upward

In 1991, during an ordinary day of work, Kazumi Kanaya suddenly fell ill and was rushed to the hospital. A victim of overwork, he is now in a coma and lies helplessly in a hospital bed in a small town north of Tokyo.

This is the underside of life at Toyota Motors, the Japanese corporation glamorized throughout the world for efficient production techniques. As a sales manager for Tokyo Toyota Motors, Kanaya worked up to 7 days a week for 12 hours a day or more. The continual stress he suffered on the job, his wife says, contributed to gout which led to meningitis. For years, he suffered from painful attacks. Mrs. Kanaya pleaded with her husband to go to the hospital for a checkup, but since his work schedule was so busy, he could not find the time to go. Toward the end, she says, the pain was so extreme that he had to use a cane to walk.

In a country where driving workers to extremes is deeply ingrained in corporate culture, Kanaya's case is not unique. Government sources and worker advocates report thousands of workers who are killed by overwork, commit suicide due to work-related stress, or suffer mental breakdowns due to work-related demands.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF OVERWORK

Mr. Kanaya managed an entire office at Toyota. Top Mlevel management demands required him to stay at the office around the clock. "The branch of his office was new and the managers wanted to be on the top of the sales charts, so everyone was worked very hard," says Mrs. Kanaya. "He worked particularly late at the beginning and end of the month, when he had to stay at work at least until past 10 p.m. to complete the sales."

Toyota Motors did not allow its employees to take the weekends off, says Mrs. Kanaya. "It was typical for the company to force him to work 35 days without even one day of rest to spend time with his family," Mrs. Kanaya recalls. "The only time he had more than one day off from work was when the company was closed during the national holidays."

"The leading cause of death by overwork is service overtime," says Chikanabu Okamura, a Tokyo lawyer specializing in death by overwork. "The company forces workers to work overtime without pay." Service overtime violates Japanese labor laws but, according to Okamura, "it is very difficult to prove it in court because there are no records."