The ‘Passenger Injury’ delay notice appearing on trains in Tokyo, Nagoya, or Kyoto is a terrible part of everyday life in Japan.
Loosely translated from the phrase, jinshin jiko, it doesn’t refer to a bruise or a scrape, but—more often than not—the unfortunate reality that someone has chosen to end their life on the train tracks.
On especially bad days, one could expect to see the sign as many as four to six times as they embark on their daily commute to work. The occurrence is so common that for many, the shock of suicide by train has been reduced to a minor inconvenience for their workday.
It’s no secret that Japan has a real problem with suicide. The issue, while still grim, has gotten relatively better over the past few years, as the overall number of suicides dropped to its second-lowest number of just over 20,000 in 2024.
However, new legislation proposed by Prime Minister Takaichi may very well drive those numbers back up.
Prime Minister Takaichi, known for her strong work ethic and notorious 3am work meetings, has been a strong advocate for ending Japan’s new strict regulations and federally mandated cap on allowable overtime hours for Japanese employees. With her famous words, ‘Work, work, work!’, Takaichi stood in front of applauding supporters and ministers alike when she announced her plans to relax Japan’s laws to allow Japanese workers to work up to 100 overtime hours a month.
‘Prime Minister Takaichi argues that raising the current cap of 45 overtime hours per month to 100 will help Japanese companies become more competitive’
Facing economic stagnation and a shrinking GDP, Prime Minister Takaichi argues that raising the current cap of 45 overtime hours per month to 100 will help Japanese companies become more competitive and boost the economy.
However, that current cap was put in place due to the massive amounts of karoshi (overwork deaths) and karojisatsu (work-induced suicide) that were plaguing Japan. Otherwise healthy, young Japanese adolescents and adults were dropping dead in droves at their office jobs, with overwork being their official cause of death.
Before changes in legislation in 2019, it wasn’t uncommon for Japanese companies to require their employees to work 100 or more overtime hours each month, often unpaid.
Was the unpaid overtime illegal? Sort of, but it was the cultural norm. Even with the new regulations in place, Japan faced a sharp increase in karoshi deaths in 2024, with an estimated 1,304 people dying due to stress, strokes, heart attacks, and mental disorders directly linked to overwork.
Beyond the deaths and suicides, overwork is the source, not the answer to Japan’s problems. Japan currently suffers from a serious economic and demographic crisis as its workforce continues to shrink, and its youth largely refuse to get married and have children.
And why should they? From direct experience doing contract work for Japanese companies, it is clear that there is a sincere bias against any employees who are either married or have children. Japanese corporations want employees who are willing and able to dedicate all of their time to the company. Family life is a burden and obstacle to upward economic mobility, so many young Japanese men are choosing to never marry in order to be able to achieve greater positions and titles at the companies they work for.
‘Japan currently suffers from a serious economic and demographic crisis’
Things are even worse for Japanese women. While it is illegal on the books, workers who become pregnant, or even just get married in some circumstances, are culturally expected to quit their jobs to become housewives and mothers. In some instances, Japanese companies have gone so far as to try to control when their employees have children.
By creating a schedule for their married female employees, several Japanese companies have set internal regulations to dictate to women when it’s their ‘turn’ to have children.
The work culture, treatment of women, and demands by Japanese firms have completely obliterated the Japanese work-life balance, resulting in a large number of deaths and suicides, as well as an extreme decline in the birth rate. Japan, a country with a population of over 125 million people, only had 686,061 babies born last year in 2024. That means 18 years from now, there will only be a maximum of 686,061 Japanese students entering college.
Another effect of this declining birth rate is the destruction of work-life balance; Japan has been forced to turn to record highs of massive amounts of immigration to fill the gaps in its labour shortages—a policy that is widely unpopular in Japan.
‘Instead of increasing the cap on overtime hours…now is the time to make the long-term investment in changing Japan’s work culture’
Working more won’t save Japan; it will destroy it. Japan will not be able to solve any of its problems by working harder. Instead of increasing the cap on overtime hours to try to obtain a short-term gain, now is the time to make the long-term investment in changing Japan’s work culture entirely and restore the work-life balance of the Japanese people.
This policy will not fix Japan’s economic crisis overnight, but if the right steps are taken now, giving the Japanese people the break from their jobs they deserve can help make Japan great again once and for all.
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