Every year hundreds, maybe thousands, of Japanese literally work themselves to death. This month, a government report found that the Japanese are literally dying from overwork by putting in more than 60 hours a week. At almost a quarter of companies surveyed, employees put in over 80 hours. At 12 percent of those firms the figure rose to 100 hours. Little wonder that 93 people committed or attempted to commit suicide in the year to the end of March 2015 because of overwork. Other workers perish from heart attacks or strokes due to long hours. In Japan, this slow death at the desk is called karoshi and the government has only now officially recognized that families are owed compensation, an inevitable result of Japan's notoriously grueling work culture. Japan has a working culture where spending long hours at and after work is the norm. It began in the 1970s, when wages were relatively low and employees wanted to maximize their earnings. It continued through the boom years of the 1980s, when Japan became the world's second largest economy and everyone was working. And it remained after the bubble burst in the late 1990s, when companies began restructuring and employees stayed at work to try to ensure they weren't laid off. Still, irregular workers – who worked without benefits or job security – were brought in, making the regular workers work even harder. Japan's population is aging rapidly, with the workforce expected to shrink by at least a quarter by 2050. That means even fewer people are available to work, increasing the workloads of those who remain. So, in Japan, 12-hour-plus days are the norm. However, on the other side of the world, there is the opposite problem; people are not working enough, especially Arabs. In a Gallup study conducted in 2013 but which could undoubtedly still be viable today, 56 percent of Arabs do not work - much of them by choice - the highest rate of any region in the world. Much of the non-workforce is made up of women and young people who choose not to work, according to Gallup. This excludes non-Arab expatriates. Obviously, we are looking at two different planets. In a business culture, when employees are at work, they do not do anything other than work. Facebook, Twitter, private emails, office gossip with co-workers, smartphone swiping, asking what tonight's plan is, and faking work when the boss walks by are unacceptable behavior frowned upon by management. There is zero tolerance among peers for such frivolous activities. It's not all work in these beehive offices; those who work hard, play hard. Since the working day is focused on delivering efficient productivity, off hours are truly off hours. Separating work from play can help lead to a more balanced life. Japan has no legal limits on working hours. Labor unions have been primarily concerned with raising wages rather than shortening working hours. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says that changing the working style in Japan is one of the main aims of labor reforms that he plans to introduce next year. The new governor of Tokyo wants to improve the city's work-life balance and has banned workers in her office from staying past 8 pm. Some Japanese companies are allowing employees to come in earlier and leave earlier. So instead of working from nine to nine, they're now working from seven to seven. But it remains hard to overhaul business practices when the culture values dedication to the job, even when the consequences are often fatal.
