Matsuri Takahashi's overwork related suicide www.japantimes.co.jp
banzaitokyo
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8 years, 6 months ago
The story of 24 year old Matsuri Takahashi's suicide that happened on December 25 last year was brought back in the media by the official recognition as being work related.
There aren't many articles in English that discuss her story so I wouldn't know about her if it was not for my wife. Work related suicides still happen a lot in Japan and the advertising industry has the image of being one of the most stressful to work in so this accident might have gone unnoticed. What brings attention to this one is that this girl was young and obviously intelligent (Tokyo University grad) and she had a Twitter account that is still available which made it quite obvious that her (over)work hours were impossible and if she were in less stressful conditions she might have lived to have a full productive and meaningful life. But because she wasn't a superhuman she couldn't cope with the enormous stress that was put on her shoulders.
To me it is difficult to imagine what may make you stay in such a job and work yourself into a situation when a suicide becomes an option...
There are basically too many job openings in Tokyo for a graduate like her; this is mostly due to lack of awareness and also the culture of sticking to one company for life. In Japanese companies, it is common for workers to stay around until the boss leaves. Big companies are bringing in compliance rules to change this, but both the workers and bosses are slow to change. If workers show that they know about labour laws and are assertive enough, they can escape being overworked. But they do run the risk of bonus cuts. In places where I worked, I used to educate younger workers and fresh grads so that they don't get too stressed.
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