Working to Die

Matsuri Takahashi was a young lady working for a major advertising agency, Dentsu, at the end of last year. She worked very hard and her overtime work recorded 105 hours in a month between last October and November. She was so exhausted that she got mentally sick. What she has chosen was death. A labor standard inspection office recognized her suicide as worker’s accident to be compensated.

Graduated University of Tokyo, the highest elite school in Japan, Takahashi entered Dentsu last April. While she worked in Division of Digital Account, which dealt with internet advertisement, her work suddenly got increased last October. Leaving messages of indicating her wish to death to her close friends through social networking service, Takahashi killed herself in her room of dormitory of the company on Christmas day.

Takahashi was in charge of internet advertisement of car insurance companies, collecting and analyzing ad data of clients. After finishing intern period in last September, her work drastically increased. The member of her section was reduced from 14 to 6, making her job heavier than before. Not only working on office jobs, a freshwoman had to coordinate internal party for drinking. After the party is over, she had to participate in a review meeting late at night. One of her bosses accused of her immature job skill, saying that their company was paying for her overtime work in vain.

Mita Labor Standard Inspection Office in Tokyo realized that her death was caused by mental difficulty from psychological burden of increased overtime works. Although Dentsu was suffering from its unjust business on internet advertisement at the time, requiring the clients excessive amount of the fee, the company did not appropriately distribute man power to each section.

That was not only the case. A young man in his second year in Dentsu killed himself with frustration on his hard work in 1991. Supreme Court decided that Dentsu was responsible for his death in the trial raised by his family. Nevertheless, Dentsu could not avoid another victim of its crazy culture for working. It has been indicated that Dentsu is not serious about the job environment of its employees.

Potential victims are still working for Dentsu, now. Most workers are able to manage their hard job and eventually get the monsters to coerce their experience to the subordinates. Although Shinzo Abe administration focuses on easing burden on the workers in Japan, victims of hard work, or karoushi, will not be reduced as long as that culture is not changed.