How Japan is healing from its overwork crisis through innovation

In 1969, a 29-year-old man died of a stroke while working in the delivery department of Japan’s largest newspaper. As the tragic details of his death emerged, it became clear that gruelling work conditions had played a deadly role.

Logging dozens of hours of overtime each week, the man had become physically ill from overwork. But instead of reducing his workload, he was forced to work even longer and more demanding hours, eventually resulting in his death.

It became the first documented case of “karoshi” – a Japanese word meaning “death by overwork.” Tragically, it was far from being the last.

Over half a century later, the culture of extreme overwork still lingers in Japan. A recent government survey found that around one in 10 Japanese workers put in more than 80 hours of overtime per month, with one in five at risk of karoshi – whether through stroke, heart attack or stress-induced suicide.

Consequently, the country is now taking critical steps to change this culture. Innovations in technology are offering new ways to heal from the scars of karoshi, but the path to this point has been long and arduous.

Following World War II, Japan’s economy was in turmoil. To rebuild, a work-first culture took root, glorifying the idea of sacrificing personal life in service of the country’s recovery.

This relentless work ethic saw Japan rise to the second global economic superpower after the US by the 1980s, in what became known as the “economic miracle.” However, it also set the stage for a tragic national health crisis that has persisted for decades.

By the 1980s, as more cases of karoshi were documented, Japanese authorities established karoshi hotlines to support affected workers.

Over the following decades, some of Japan’s largest corporations started to launch policies aimed at improving work-life balance. Toyota, for example, limited annual overtime to 360 hours and started issuing reminders to employees to leave the office by 7 pm.

Hitachi has installed an attendance management system to track hours worked and implements action plans to reduce hours for employees who show patterns of overwork. Other companies implemented “no overtime days,” theoretically requiring employees to leave by 5:30 pm.

However, these initiatives were only partially successful due to Japan’s deeply ingrained cultural pressure to overwork. It wasn’t until 2015, when the suicide of 24-year-old Matsuri Takahashi sparked nationwide outrage, that significant legislative action began to take shape.

Takahashi had been working dozens of hours of overtime each week. Just before her death, she had tweeted: “I’m at work 20 hours a day or so, and I no longer know what I’m living for, and it makes me laugh.”

It became clear that a proactive, data-driven approach was necessary to protect workers’ physical and mental health.

In 2015, Japan introduced the Stress Check Program, mandating all companies with over 50 employees to conduct annual surveys assessing individual mental health. Based on the results, employers were required to offer support services.

The program marked a critical shift in increasing awareness around mental health in Japan and encouraged companies to adjust working conditions to better support their employees.

However, self-reported surveys have inherent limitations. Social stigma and a cultural reluctance to appear vulnerable mean many employees underreport their stress, leading to a higher rate of false negative results. This is where technology is now stepping in to fill the gaps, offering more objective, non-invasive ways to monitor mental health.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are creating new opportunities to track and manage mental health in ways that were previously impossible. These tools can help enforce caps on overtime and even detect when workers are concealing their true hours – either voluntarily or under pressure from employers.

Forward-thinking Japanese companies are beginning to collaborate with AI providers to address the issue of underreporting true stress levels. For instance, my company, Kintsugi, recently partnered with NTT Advanced Technology (NTT-AT), a division of the telecommunications giant NTT, to objectively identify signs of extreme stress by analyzing an individual’s voice patterns.

In our collaboration with NTT, employees were invited to participate in monthly mental health screenings using our AI model. Employees received individual results privately, while NTT was provided with anonymized, aggregated reports to monitor trends across departments.

The results were promising: 78% of participants agreed with their Kintsugi mental wellness score. Armed with this objective data, NTT was able to offer targeted support programs to each employee, such as sleep therapy programs or access to mental health professionals.

The word “kintsugi” refers to the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, making it more beautiful for having been broken. In many ways, the work Kintsugi and other companies are doing to address mental health and overwork in Japan is a modern form of kintsugi – helping individuals repair their relationships with work and rebuild their lives with greater awareness, care and balance.

As the world increasingly acknowledges the health risks of overwork – burnout is now officially recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) – Japan’s technology-driven response to karoshi may serve as a blueprint for creating healthier workplaces globally.

Japan’s journey to healing from this crisis is far from over. But with the help of new technologies and a growing awareness of the importance of mental health, there is hope that the country can reclaim its work culture in a way that nurtures its workers, rather than grind them down.