Karōjisatsu

The word karōjisatsu, written 過労自殺, combines karō (overwork) with jisatsu (suicide). It emerged in the late 1970s as Japanese physicians and labor advocates recognized that the phenomenon already named karōshi, death from overwork through heart attack or stroke, did not capture the full scope of what the workplace was doing to people. Some workers were dying not from cardiovascular collapse but from the psychological destruction that preceded it.

In 2015, Matsuri Takahashi, a twenty-four-year-old employee at Dentsu, Japan's largest advertising agency, died by suicide after logging more than one hundred hours of monthly overtime. The Tokyo Labor Bureau ruled her death a case of karōjisatsu, and Dentsu was fined. In 2013, Miwa Sado, a journalist at NHK, Japan's public broadcaster, died of heart failure after working one hundred and fifty-nine hours of overtime in a single month. Her death was ruled karōshi in 2017.

Japan's 2014 Act on Promotion of Preventive Measures against Karoshi addressed both karōshi and karōjisatsu, mandating awareness campaigns and counseling services. The legislation acknowledged what the language had already named, that the system was producing deaths in two distinct categories, and that both required the same word at their root, karō, excess labor.

A 2024 government white paper reported 883 cases of work-related mental health disorders, including 79 suicides or attempted suicides attributed to excessive job stress. The numbers represent only the cases that survived the compensation claims process, a procedure so demanding that many families never attempt it.