Compensation for Overwork Deaths (Karoshi) and Japan’s Changing Employment Culture

• In Event: 397 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Changing Employment Structures and the Impacts on Workers

Abstract

Japanese cultural tradition holds superiors responsible for the wellbeing of subordinates and the “right to benevolence” has been a prime consolation for social inferiors. Since the 1970s, citizens’ groups and labor lawyers have combined medicine and law with this cultural right to benevolence in lawsuits about overwork. This paper considers key cases of karoshi (death from overwork) and their effects on reform of standards for granting workers’ compensation payments. If work is recognized as cause of death, Japanese law provides state support for victims’ families, aiding them in suing employers for damages as well. Since the first cases of karoshi were “diagnosed,” Japanese courts, including the Supreme Court, have gradually recognized worker claims and expanded the conception of employer responsibility for worker health to include accumulated fatigue and mental health. In December 2013 a Basic Law for the Prevention of Karoshi began to make its way through the legislative process. However, at the same time, employment relationships have shifted from an authority-ranking style, in which the benevolence of superiors could be expected, to market pricing arrangements, in which benevolence cannot be presumed. The rise of karoshi and the medico-legal movement that uses litigation to secure compensation parallels the shift toward market-centered employment relationships. These two historical moments mark both declining traditional expectations of particularistic benevolence and rising hopes for employment relations based on universal legal care obligations. Against this hope, new forms of exploitation continue to appear.

Author

• Scott North, Osaka University