Headline News

Many Americans grew up on the folk wisdom, “Hard work never killed anybody.”

Apparently, at least in Japan, that is not true.

The story below is about a man who is it agreed died of overwork, putting in 114 overtime hours per month—-equal to an additional 2.85 weeks per month, if you assume a 40-hour work week as Americans officially have.

Washington Post

“Death from too much work is so commonplace in Japan that there is a word for it — karoshi.

“There is a national karoshi hotline, a karoshi self-help book and a law that funnels money to the widow and children of a salaryman (it’s almost always a man) who works himself into an early karoshi for the good of his company.

A local Japanese government agency ruled June 30 for the widow and children of a 45-year-old Toyota chief engineer who died in 2006.

While organizing the worldwide manufacture of a hybrid version of the Camry sedan, the man had worked nights and weekends and often traveled abroad — putting in up to 114 hours of overtime a month — in the six months before he died in his bed of heart failure.”

Source: Washington Post, July 13, 2008