Japanese people work long hours


Japanese sleeping


Yes Japanese people work loooong hours. As you can see from the image on the left, this is a very common scenery on the Japanese train. Are these people that tired that they sleep on the train? Yes they are very tired. We are talking about 12 hours on average among people who work for Japanese corporations. My dad used to leave home by 7:30am and then if he could return to home by 7:30pm, it was early for him. Most of the days, he wouldn’t come home until 8:30am and 9am or even later and if he comes back early at around 5:30pm, we all knew that he was going to go drinking with his clients and colleagues. (it’s called settai) Fortunately my father apparently loves this function because he gets to drink for free. lol but I wouldn’t have made it under such rigorous system. But my dad isn’t a rare case. Probably typical middle aged men who work for corporations in Japan are like my father. They are dedicated and work long hours to show their company their loyalty. I think it is kind of dumb but it does make sense.

It is so sad but the Japanese word “karoushi” is recognized by foreigners because of the high prevalence of death due to overwork among Japanese corporation employees. Definitely it is true that Japanese people’s attitude toward work is the opposite of one from Americans. Japanese lives to work. Work become their identity and their life. American people work to live. I am sure that this is a stereotype and it also depends on the type of job the person holds. I work with many scientists in America but they work crazy long hours…but anyways, generally American work to live so they can use the money to travel, have fun, buy gifts..and maybe saving. My dad used to go to work over the weekend and I think he still does even though he is semi-retired. Not all Japanese employees would do this especially after the government is enforcing more laws on labors because “Karoushi” became an huge issue over 10 years ago.

Then why do Japanese people work long hours? Well, first of all, it is the culture. Culturally loyalty and hard work are highly valued and it will benefit the employee. And it’s because if you boss is working until late, it is hard to clock out just because it’s five. And the questions is..do American people not work hard? Yes they do work hard. It is a misconception that American don’t work because they do. I’ve seen my engineer friends working on the project over the weekend and it was very intensive. But in America, working long hours isn’t valued as highly as Japanese society does. It can even be seen as a sign of incompetence. It’s taking too long because the employee is incompetent and just can’t handle the job. So you have to be very careful. 🙂

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