 From New America and Slate, I'm Bridget Schulte, and this is Better Life Lab. During the first two seasons of our show, we've looked at a lot of issues affecting people in the American workplace. But if there's any country in the world that can rival the USA and the overwork Olympics, it's Japan. For decades, Japanese business was defined by the image of the salaryman, someone who worked all hours, rarely saw his family, and never left the office before the boss. That work-tell-you-drop ethos in Japan became an integral part of Japanese work life. And in the 1960s, there was a doctor who even began describing people who actually worked to the point of death. He called it Karoshi, literally, death from overwork. So today in Japan, the cultural pressures that gave rise to Karoshi remain, even as the realities of the Japanese workplace and workforce have changed significantly. Some Japanese workers are starting to try to push back against the Karoshi culture, and that's what we're going to be talking about today. That's a scene I recorded a few months ago when I was in Japan reporting about overwork and the overwork culture. As a reporter, I have to admit this was one of the more polite labor protests I've ever witnessed. People were bowing and very respectfully handing out flyers. But the grievances are very real, and in the land of Karoshi, the stakes are high. And it seems to me that the struggles of Japanese workers have a lot to say to those who labor in other overwork cultures, like the United States. To help us gain some insight, I wanted to talk to Hiroshi Ono. Hi Bridget, how are you? Hi, Hiroshi. Yeah, I'm great. Thank you so much for joining us. So, Hiroshi is a professor at Hitotsubashi University Business School in Tokyo. He studies the long work hours culture in Japan, what causes it, and why it's so difficult to change. I met Hiroshi when I was in Japan and read some of his work, which was, I said to him, both fascinating and sobering. I think one of the things that always shocked me is I always used to think that you had to work long hours to be really productive. And yet it's like the inverse is true, and that you've, I've seen international comparisons where the longer the hours are, actually the lower the productivity in Japan and South Korea have among the lowest productivity rates of all advanced economies. So people are working really long hours and they're not getting that productivity outcome. So what's going on? Why are people working so much? Well, people say, like, if you're not producing enough, then you're just simply not trying hard enough. So if you try harder, you can achieve results, right? So that kind of mentality still kind of pushes you. It's almost like a little bit of a ritualistic practice. You know, sometimes you have this in athletics, right? That's practice and hard work, but there are limits to what you can do. Right, because actually all the research shows that if you're going to really perform at an elite level as an athlete, you need rest and recovery, that that's actually an integral part of high performance. So Hurochi, can you talk a little bit about how Japanese culture has traditionally viewed the role of workers? So there is still a culture of long-term commitment, sometimes you call it lifetime employment, so that workers sometimes we make the analogy to marriage that when you get employed in a Japanese company, you have this bond and a mutual understanding that the company will take care of you and you will be very loyal. So if loyalty is so valued and employment is almost seen as like this family relationship, it must be a pretty big deal to get workers out to then protest against their own company. It is a big deal and from what I heard from that clip, the employees, the workers reached their breaking point. So Hurochi, I'd like us to listen together to a story of a former spa worker and I met her at this labor protest when I was in Japan. You know, and you might think of a spa as an easygoing carefree work environment. You know, in Japan has some really big spa chains, but the workload there I came to find can be really overwhelming. My name is Miki Tanaka and I'm here because I'm one of the members from the labor union and I used to work in the spa massage, the spa company. I worked there for two years and I had to work like almost 12 hours a day of overwork with no lunch breaks. We barely got to go to a toilet. So when you said that you worked 12 hour days, how much time did you get paid for? The company's rule broke. They say the overtime pay is approximately for like 54 hours, but we work for more than that when we calculate it. We're working for almost like 80 hours. So what time would you start working and when would you usually finish? We used to start working from 10 in the morning, but reach the salon around 9.30, 9.45, start the work at 10, finish the work with the clients at 9. Then we do after work meeting and clean the salon. So that would be like 9.30, 9.40, then we leave to work around 10. So you're working about a 12 hour day. When we first joined the company, yes, almost for six to seven months. But we did have some supervisors who let us practice within the working hour so we could have our own time, like a good work-life balance, but that was very rare. So you were just protesting in front of the company just now and you went in, one of the managers came out as a result of the protest and invited you in. What did they say? What did you talk about? He reported about everything that happened today. He did listen to what kind of work-life work environment that we had. So he said he was going to inform to the CEO of our company and get an explanation letter from the company soon. So that's a good progress for us. It's going to say how confident do you feel that things will change? I've actually taken this case to the court now, so I think I'm 54 now. So that was Mickey Tanaka. So Hiroshi, Mickey's story is not that unusual. You know, there was a government survey a couple of years ago that found about a quarter of the companies they surveyed required workers to work 80 hours or more of overtime, required it. So what do you think the chances are of Mickey and other workers like her seeing some kind of change? You know, is it 50-50 or is she being optimistic? I think that the, I think she has a pretty good chance. Lately, the ministry has been really cracking down on labor abuses and so I believe that sanctions have become much more harsh and she would have a reasonable shot. And do you think that will lead to larger change in Japan? Well, we are starting to see more cases of those abuses appearing in newspapers and I think that is a big change. This was kind of rather taken for granted in the 70s and 80s, but lately people are starting to speak out. So that before you were saying in the 80s this is something that people wouldn't even notice that was just sort of what was expected and now young people that sounds in particular are starting to say we don't want to live this way anymore. So next, Hiroshi, one of those young people who doesn't want to live that way anymore, I met him in Japan. His name is Makoto Iwahashi and he's still a student, but he volunteers for a labor organization that's focusing on the problems of overwork and trying to organize workers. It's called Pase and a lot of the people that I met who are just really fired up about trying to make these changes are young workers. We have a worker hotline that people can call and we receive about 5,000 calls and emails in one year, mainly during the 20s and 30s. We frequently get cases where they're working 80 to 100 hours of overtime in one month. Young people are working in daycares, beauty salons, working for black companies, which is a Japanese term which hire a bunch of newly graduate college students and they kind of dispose of these people after making them work 100 hours of overtime. Most of them get depressed and quit in one or two years. And we have a case of Karoshi, a 51 year old man passed away after continuously working 80 to 100 hours of overtime for 10, 15 years. So the case that you're working on now, you talked about he's kind of a middle-aged man who worked long, long hours of overtime and then died. That's sort of the traditional view of dying at your desk and sort of being this devoted worker. But it sounds like you're getting a lot of workers who don't necessarily fit that traditional model of somebody who works themselves to death. It used to be in the 70s and 80s, all Karoshi incidents, they involved middle-aged workers in their 40s and 50s passing away from heart strokes. But nowadays there was one incident of Karoshi where a 26 year old woman, she was working 141 hours of overtime and she got depressed and she committed suicide. This sounds astounding. You know, we know in the West, we know that Japan works really long hours, but what's going on? You know, some of the companies will say, well, people chose to work these long hours, so if they died or committed suicide, it's their own fault. Is this all personal choice or is there something bigger going on? The labor market has changed. Nowadays, college graduates, I think 40% of them, I cannot find permanent jobs. Of course you have a choice. You have a choice of either working as a temporary worker, earning about $10 an hour, or you have a choice of finding a permanent work which is going to demand 80 to 100 hours of overtime. And I mean, if you want to get married or if you want to have kids, I mean $10 an hour, it's impossible. And most of the permanent workers are actually treated by companies as disposable temporary workers that they're only going to be there because they're going to get tired and depressed. Man, so I guess I'm just, I'm wondering it's, you know, again, when you look at productivity, the Japanese economy is not very productive and yet you've got all of these people basically working to the point where the fertility rate has fallen. What is all this work for if it's really not getting the economy where it needs to go? Actually, I mean, young people don't even have time to think about what the Japanese economy is going to do or the bigger picture. I mean, they're just too occupied thinking about their life, how to make a living. You know, these young people, we just want to work for 40 hours and we're not demanding a huge salary. We just want a decent life. That's, I mean, that's all we hope for. So Hiroshi, you know, Makoto mentioned the rise of these so-called black companies. That's a little bit more. It sounds like the part of the business strategy is to take advantage of this social contract, this marriage that you mentioned between Japanese workers and organizations. Yes, so the black companies, every year the Ministry of Labor publishes the list of black companies and if you go through that list you'll realize that you don't recognize most of these companies and the reason is they're typically smaller companies that are actually like suppliers to the larger companies. So the larger companies themselves are actually not on that list. And so you have a hierarchy of levels of corporations. If you're low on the hierarchy then you can be taken advantage of. Yes, I mean, I would not say that the U.S. and Japan are perfect parallels but the United States also had a social contract in the 70s and 80s. Lawyers like Guy BM and GE certainly had a social contract. That kind of been wrote in the 1980s with the corporate merger of booms and the rise of corporate finance. In Japan it's not that extreme but we do see that the companies are honoring lifetime employment less. I mean, lifetime employment still exists but the chances of getting those kinds of jobs have deteriorated. So as Makoto was saying in the interview companies are hiring more non-standard workers and their situation is very, very unstable. That certainly adds to the anxiety and anxiety. So I'm curious, you said that you you've lived in the United States lived and worked and studied in the United States and Japan and also Sweden. I'm wondering what that experience was like in Sweden and what are work hours like in Sweden? It's bizarre but, you know, so I went to college in Japan I worked in Japan and then I did my graduate study in the United States and then I moved my first job was a postdoc position in Sweden and so when I got to Sweden really what kind of how long did you work? Well, I was working like an American so the Swedes they seriously wanted me to take vacations and they thought I was working too hard and they did not appreciate that I was working too hard. So the way they think about working leisure is that they value their leisure time extremely. So in the summertime they take at least a one month in the summertime because I can't go to the library I can't get paid. All the restaurants around the university closed down so I can't get lunch. It's quite a scene but the way they think about leisure it is a very strong sense of entitlement that they have. This is a right and no one can take that away from me so I'm going to take my one month vacation go to my summer home and hang out in the archipelago and what do I need to do to sustain this lifestyle. They work just enough to sustain the standard living that they desire. The Japanese unfortunately think the other way. David is going to ask you what kind of entitlement to leisure is there in Japan? Absolutely none. There is still this mentality that leisure is not valued that work comes first so I admit that the mentality but people in their 50s and 60s definitely grew up with this mentality. Hard work pays off leisure is bad and work comes first. And yet you've actually now got the government tracking statistics because so many people have this philosophy that they don't have a right to leisure and that work comes first to the point of coming even before your own health, and say they would not understand why the government needs to step in to tell the workers to work less like chill out. But in Japan there's no limit. There really is no limit and that's why the government right now there's a work reform that's been introduced by the Japanese government and they're very serious about tackling work issues in Japan. One of them is reducing work hours and work life balance. The other one is increasing diversity participation of women and foreign workers and the other one is equal work equal pay for non-standard workers. So these are all the things that we've been talking about today are all related and they're very high priority agenda by the Japanese government. But you had mentioned that when you were in Sweden they viewed you as a workaholic and I actually met someone when I was in Tokyo who describes herself as a recovering workaholic. As a younger tech worker she was completely driven and work obsessed just like you said maybe you could have called her a salary woman and the people around her did worry about her and they worried that she was at risk for Karoshi and she did ultimately hit a wall but she survived and then she did something from seven o'clock in the morning to midnight and after that I would go out drinking almost every day and on weekends I worked too. I would sleep on average three to four hours a day and then of course with this schedule I couldn't do anything else but work. And one morning out of the blue all of a sudden I could not get myself out of bed for an hour. I was barely making it to the bathroom and after that for about a month I was in a state of depression. Personally I have never had a suicidal thought but my doctor is concerned about my state of mind and he often tells me you need to survive you need to stay alive. You know you said that you started workaholic synonymous in Japan and here is a country that works some of the longest hours of any country in the world and you have only one or two people coming to the meetings. Can you talk a little bit about why you started workaholic synonymous here and what you're hoping to change? Japanese people are aware that they're overworked or overworking but more than that there's actually a pressure to work hard and they feel like I felt they feel like there's no allies to help with the work and so people are left alone in a dangerous work environment and so that's why I felt that we need to create psychological safety so that people can work in a safe environment. If you go to a workaholic synonymous homepage there is a literature called people like us who are workaholics we can create adrenaline by bench working and it's as effective as narcotics sometimes and we can stay high performance constantly. Man just from the adrenaline rush. So what are your days like now? A long time ago before I actually burned out I was actually suffering more I was having a harder time because I couldn't act and this is something I like to do but now I don't work like I used to I can spend some time practicing for my play and acting and I try to go home at 5.30 and I try not to work long hours and overtime and so I can stay a lot healthier at the company I work for now there are non-Japanese workers and Japanese workers who are working long hours working long hours doesn't necessarily guarantee high productivity and with this company I put in shorter hours but I have extremely high productivity and so I get evaluated very highly this is something that you can see clearly when you have psychological safety you can produce a lot so your productivity gets higher. That's Yuki who is an anonymous in Tokyo after she wound up in the hospital and almost died herself from overwork so Hiroshi we talked a little bit about long work hours but Yuki makes a pretty compelling case the business case for saner work hours you'll actually be more productive but how does that fly in today's Japanese work culture I mean the easy fix is to stop paying overtime there are still companies where workers can make a fortune just for staying at work where younger workers resist becoming managers because once become a manager they stop paying overtime pay and they actually make less money and what Yuki is describing is also I think something that's becoming more common in some Japanese companies where it's not how much time you spend at the job but the results so the rewarding system I think is a rather easy fix I think the more difficult problem is the things that are rather hard to see and this is a rather embarrassing part of the Japanese division of labor is that typically it's the males are devoted to market work and the females are devoted to household work that's the traditional gender of labor so when you ask men suppose they're finished with their work at five o'clock they can go home at six so a lot of men actually admit that they can't go home that early I could not figure out why and it's because they say I have no place at home my wife doesn't expect me home that early because she's been expecting me home nine o'clock every night if I come home at six o'clock it's rather awkward creates more work for her why would that create more work for her because she has to take care of him does she have to wait on him or something that is the assumption that she's going home you know kind of thinking about Japanese culture the long work hours and this work devotion and the feeling that you're not entitled to leisure time one of the things that I'm wondering is you know Japan when you think about its history it's had some of the most amazing transformations in such a short period of time you think of the Meiji Restoration when it went from a feudal country to a modern nation or even after the Second World War when the country was decimated and how quickly it became this economic powerhouse and so I guess what I'm wondering is this a transformation that Japan could also undertake that it could become more like Sweden do you think that that's ever a possibility or what would it take for Japan to be more like Sweden well honestly I don't think Japan would ever become like Sweden the way the country shapes itself is an outcome of historical trajectories and I don't think it would ever get there but in terms of providing social welfare Japan is trying to become more like Sweden so I guess what it comes to the long work hours culture do you have hope do you think things will change in Japan I have hope because there's a huge differences across different generations the younger people are more focused on themselves less on the company they want their own leisure they want their own private time they don't understand the older people and why they're so gun-ho about working and I think that the work style reform this time around is very serious I mean they're going to be sanctioned they'll also be rewards we talk about black companies but they also reward good companies for example work life balance smart work or telework we're trying to create model companies to be more productive and happy what do you hope for your own children what do you hope for your kids I'm a very fortunate person because I'm a professor and professors have autonomy and control and autonomy and control is a big source of happiness at work the problem is that most people don't have that at work sure people in the United States they work just as long hours as Japan but the difference to me is that a lot of people in Japan are doing it involuntarily they control over their work so I'm hoping for my kids' generation that they'll be able to have a job where they do the kind of things that they want whenever and wherever they like you want them to have leisure time absolutely maybe not as much as Swedes not the entire month of July off I think by Japanese and American standards I don't consider myself a workaholic but Swedes try to force me to take medication and I was fine for the first week but after the second week I started getting stressed out because I was being unproductive so I don't know what do you think Brigitte maybe you need leisure reeducation maybe we all do in the United States in Japan well Hiroshi thank you so much for talking with me today it's been a pleasure thank you Hiroshi Ono he's a professor of management he heard from Miki Tanaka a former spa worker fighting to end unpaid overtime work and Makoto Iwahashi a student journalist and labor organizer and from the actual founder of the workaholic synonymous chapter in Tokyo who asked me to refer to her simply as Yuki thanks for joining me for our podcast about the art and science of living a full and healthy life Better Life Lab is produced by New America in partnership with Slate our project is a collaboration with ideas 42 supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation review us on Apple Podcasts if you like the show tell your friends in Japan and Sweden too with this episode on Karoshi we're wrapping up our second season of Better Life Lab on Slate while we're planning for our next season we'd love for you to browse our back catalog for episodes you might have missed maybe this season's Beyond Inbox Zero with Amy Westervelt and Merlin Mann or last season's Why You're Addicted to Being Busy so many of you have right now rotting fruits and vegetables in your refrigerator almost everybody admits that they have it I just took mine out to the compost this morning there you go and it's a sad funeral right you take all this stuff that you paid lots of money on and you had good plans for and then all of a sudden you check on them and it's too late and the reason of course is that it's a bad design where do we put the fruits and vegetables in a low drawer that is opaque so I think that what we need to do is to design better environments it's true for the kitchen but it's also true for the work environment we make decisions as a function of the environment that we're in David Shulman is producer of Better Life Lab Haley Swinson provides research assistance for more resources on working healthier go to newamerica.org click the link for Better Life Lab from New America's Better Life Lab I'm Bridget Chilte