For many around the world, getting the chance to live and work in Japan is a dream. Spending your daily life in cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya, or any other major Japanese city is an adventure. Full of history, pop culture, and the promise of exploration as you stumble across ancient temples and shrines hidden in the most unlikely places, life in Japan for many outsiders seems glamorous.
But beneath that glamor lies a stark reality that poses a serious risk to Japan and its people. Nowhere is this reality more prevalent than standing in the crammed Tokyo subway, squished between colleagues in an overcrowded car as I make my way to my morning meetings. It’s there, while joking about how many more people can fit where, too often you feel the train come to a stop as you see a notice coming on the screens in front of you, reading ‘Passenger Injury’.
Too many times to count, whenever I am in Tokyo for work, I am forced to see that sign, and every time I grimace. Because that sign doesn’t mean someone has had a simple accident, it means that someone has decided to end their lives by throwing themselves on the train tracks, and it’s a daily occurrence.
The ‘Passenger Injury’ or jinshin jiko sign is so common that it is largely ignored by most on their morning commutes. What would be a major source of shock elsewhere has become routine in Japan. The announcement of what ultimately is a human being’s untimely demise has been reduced to a calm announcement explaining a minor delay in our morning commute.
This subtle normalization reveals a truth. Japan’s workplace excellence isn’t free. The same institutional disciplines that have led to Japan’s past success place an immense burden on those who sustain it. And that burden is beginning to spark debate.
‘The same institutional disciplines that have led to Japan’s past success place an immense burden on those who sustain it’
Japan’s problem with suicide isn’t a secret, but just how prevalent the problem is often underestimated. In 2024 alone, it is estimated that over 20,000 people across the country decided to end their lives, many on the tracks (and that is actually lower than normal). The main reason for these suicides is largely attributed to stress and depression caused by overwork.
The Japanese are well known for being among the hardest-working people on Earth. Having worked construction to help pay for college, I was amazed when I first lived in Japan in 2016 and saw that after a large sinkhole opened in Fukuoka, destroying a major intersection and opening a hole in the Earth nearly 50 ft deep and 98 ft long, to find that the intersection had been completely repaired within 2 days and traffic had resumed as normal only a week later.
Having worked on job sites in America, such a feat seems unthinkable. In my experience, it sometimes takes an entire week to tile a single floor, let alone complete a major construction job. It’s this sort of outcome that many in the West wish to replicate. With news stations in Europe and the United States plagued by stories of setbacks and delays in our public works projects, seeing countries like Japan tackle these problems in a matter of days seems to put us to shame.
While there is much to admire about this work ethic, it has its limits. The same system that enables repairing a major city intersection in two days also comes with a cost, and it’s one that unfortunately pushes too many past their breaking point. For foreign observers, it’s important to point out that this incredible efficiency and the suicide pandemic aren’t contradictory in nature. They are the results of the same institutional logic.
The current work ethos in Japan can be traced back to the end of WWII. Emerging from both the necessity of rebuilding after the war and traditional Confucian concepts such as hierarchy and harmony, modern Japanese institutions evolved to promote, above all else, discipline and social cohesion.
It is this strong societal interdependence and emphasis on the needs of the many over the few that allowed Japan to achieve its postwar economic boom and to become one of the largest economic powerhouses and innovators on Earth. It’s here, amidst this economic boom, that we see the emergence of shūshin koyō, or the policy of lifetime employment, becoming commonplace.
In this period, institutional norms transformed cultural values into tangible economic benefits. As Japanese corporations began incentivizing workers’ loyalty to the group and the company above all else, employees and employers naturally emphasized hard work and increased group performance, even at the expense of individual self-interest. And it worked extremely well and is probably one of the reasons Japan has been able to successfully rebuild itself. But—what about now that Japan has been rebuilt?
Now, what once enabled Japan’s rise to prominence is beginning to exact a cost. The institutional norms and policies responsible for Japan’s rise in the 20th century are intrinsically linked to the problems it faces in the 21st. While addressing pressing problems such as the Fukuoka sinkhole extremely well, institutional norms of expected and mandatory overtime, not leaving until the boss does, coming in at least an hour early before work officially starts, and so on, are beginning to cause serious problems.
‘What once enabled Japan’s rise to prominence is beginning to exact a cost’
It’s not just suicide. Otherwise healthy adults in Japan are dropping dead in alarming numbers at desk jobs that neither put them in harm’s way nor demand physical strenuous labor. In 2024 alone, there were an estimated 1,304 karoshi, or overwork-induced deaths. These deaths were linked to work-related stress, which resulted in strokes, heart attacks, and even severe mental disorders.
Beyond the problems of these deaths, overwork is directly linked to the demographic and economic crisis Japan faces today. Japan’s economy is shrinking as workers leave the workforce to retire or care for their aging parents, and there aren’t nearly enough new workers entering the labor force.
As loyalty to the employer above all else has become a norm in Japan, things like marriage and having children have begun to be seen as time wasted that could have been used to benefit the company. In extreme cases, we have seen Japanese corporations schedule when employees can get married or become pregnant.
Seeing families and children as a burden rather than an asset, institutional policies that once helped Japan climb the economic ladder have now resulted in a shrinking workforce and an all-time low birthrate of only 686,061 last year. Unfortunately, institutions are beginning to disincentivize the very thing that would help Japan’s economy thrive in the long run.
The shrinking population and labor force gaps have led the Japanese economy to contract by as much as 2.3 per cent in Q3 of 2025 alone. To address this problem, Japanese lawmakers have decided to pursue a two-pronged strategy to reverse Japan’s economic decline. First, to increase the number of foreign workers in the country to a historic high of 3.8 million and counting, and second, to encourage Japanese workers to work harder by lifting the cap on overtime hours allowed to work per month from 45 to 100.
While it’s logical to assume hard work solves problems, in Japan, working hard isn’t the answer. Today’s problems are unique, and the current system is struggling to adapt, but not for lack of trying. What used to work extremely well in previous generations no longer works, and it’s taking institutions time to catch up. It’s a problem we share globally. The ongoing debate over whether the government should raise the overtime cap illustrates how hard it is for institutions to go against conventional wisdom and adjust without affecting productivity.
‘While it’s logical to assume hard work solves problems, in Japan, working hard isn’t the answer’
It’s right to admire the places where a system works, but it’s important to recognize the tradeoffs. And if you live in that system, its important to recognize when its time for reform. To face the problems of the 21st century, institutions need to adapt—not change completely.
Japan doesn’t need to abandon the discipline that helped build it. However, it can’t assume that a system that arose for postwar survival can properly work for a post-industrial society. Japan’s work culture produces incredible, high-quality work and competence. However, as times change and the strenuous demands that enable that kind of competence begin to take their toll, Japanese workers and the economy overall begin to suffer the consequences.
If reform comes, it won’t be about Japan working less. It will be whether excellence is worth the current cost.
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