Japan's 'Premium Friday' Attempts to Stop Death by Overwork (HBO) 

"It is actually the system of Japan that is at fault for not properly accrediting doctors' work." WATCH NEXT on JAPAN here: bit.ly/2hQhL3X

So disappointing that the Premium Friday idea started as just a way to have workers spend more money, and not because of the inhumane work circumstances and lifestyle.

In America if you hear go home early you don't clap because you already left.

Even if they get few hours off friday, they'll do the same hours extra on monday. It's a culture thing which is not easily changed by regulations.

The reporter dude's barber got some mad skills

I remember hearing news about that young woman. it was reported that Matsuri Takashi was also verbally abused by her supervisor after asking for time off. I still question why they made the CEO of Dentsu step down but no actions were taken against the management that work closest with her. I would be willing to beat that they had more to do with her death than the CEO. The whole "I was just following orders" claim is a excuse for robots, not humans.

You can tell from the man that worked overnight, working a lot (quantity, not necessarily quality) is a duty, something they feel proud of. I work at a Japanese Bank and I've heard many times the Japanese saying so proudly that they've worked till late and that they're not physically feeling well, that some other Japanese guy had to rush into the hospital because his left side felt numb. All so proudly. They're almost like samurais, serving their lords, just to find themselves miserables once the company is done with them, kicking them out when they are no longer valuable. One senior guy even killed himself once he learned he wouldn't get executive position after serving for 40 years. Now, I understand the sense of responsibility, but Japanese corporations, the country has to act, not just put some legislations. Or, just assume that that's their life mission, like real soldiers.

It's cultural. You couldn't make French people work for more than 40 hrs a week.

Barber: "What do you want?" Reporter: "Do you know Polnareff from JoJo?" Barber: "Say no more, fam"

Wow reporter speaks great Japanese

Productivity and economic growth is pointless if everybody is unhappy. This Premium Friday thing does seem like a step in the right direction though.

Well, let's hope more people realize that dead men can't enjoy money.

“Is it our duty to sacrifice the people for economic growth?” Incredibly relevant right now.

"I think premium Friday is a good system" "Did you get to quit early?" "I worked until 6am the next day" Damn

*One of my students in Japan was forced to live in his office for a year to work 24/7. His boss put a bed in the office*

Damn Japan really needs to stop overworking their people

0:47 I really was not ready for this

Hey awesome haircut! Just never sit in front of me at the movie theater.

40 hrs a week is the boiling point and they work twice that every week. WTF 😱😱😱

Not surprising at all. I lived in Japan and witnessed how much my Japanese friends worked. Most don't get paid for overtime. Also, aside from work, it's expected that employees must do activities together after work, like visiting bars as a group. So its typical to get home after 11pm. I had a job opportunity to work at a large company, but I was concerned about the hours. I told my Japanese friend and he laughed at me because he thought 70hrs + a week was nothing. It's great to work hard, but it should not be to the detriment of your health. Stress is a killer. Also, shout out to the reporter. I wish my Japanese is as good as his.

I bet the Japanese people are like, who the hell is this crazy guy with the weird haircut

i feel like the way society as a whole values people's productivity and efficiency over their humanity is disgusting.

Getting out of work a few hours early for one day a month doesn't mean crap if the society still makes people overwork for the rest of the month. They should just make a law to cap work hour limit for everyone. That way, maybe more young Japanese people would be eager to work full-time jobs, instead of just becoming freeters/part-timers forever in fear of having to live a stressful lifestyle.

When workers literally work to death. And capitalists say " only reason they didn't get rich is because they didn't work hard enough." Such irony

This is a major problem in Asian countries that I experienced as soon as I moved here. Many westerners idolize these cultures but don’t realize no country is perfect. I became very depressed from the corruption, excessive hours, an unpaid overtime. So glad I have a wonderful job now that allows me to work half the hours.

One man has only a certain amount of energy and creativity to go in a week. If you work 50 to 60 hours, each hours has actually a very low work quality to it. In North of Europe, people work much less, around 35 hours per week. But in each of these hours, they are doing so much more work because it's focused.

Just my 2 cents as a person that lives and works in Tokyo Japan; Since premium Friday started - approximinately 1% of Tokyo companies actually have adopted the system. Usually, government workers/civil servants are the first to receive government initiatives which slowly get passed down to private companies to follow suit, however out of the around 20-30 government workers that i know, none of them have premium Friday. Some companies have a day where overtime is banned - which has its pros, however from what i have learnt/been told, many people have to come in early the day after, or stay back the next day anyway, to make up for not having enough time to complete their tasks. A small handful of people i've met have also been admitted into hospital due to overwork. So - from my perspective, Premium Friday is a joke, and seems to have been swept under the rug and no longer cared about.

the interviewers hair within the context of japan is particularly hilarious

A hundred hours of overtime per month ?! I'm getting mad with my 40 hours per week. With all upcoming automation we should make all fulltime work part time :P

I worked for a manufacturing company here in NY, and we worked 4-day work weeks, 10 hour days mon-thurs. We got off every fri, sat, and sun, and I miss that job every day. The ability to do all your errands on friday, when the mall/grocery store/shops are not saturated with people like they are on the weekends, was the best feeling in the world. You went back to work the following monday, with an actual sense of "holy crap, I feel like I haven't been here in forever" EVERY, monday. The company heavily followed the Toyota production line process, and we saw a shorter work week as a benefit. Why not bang out 40 hours in 4 days, as opposed to 5?

Also what is the point of making money, if you spend it all working endlessly to make money to go work and make money to go to work and make money to work and make money to go to work and make money and then jump of the building when you realize your whole life has been a lie.

2:28 oh my god its Gerald from Hey Arnold!

DENTSU's CEO "stepped down" at 64, the legal age for retirement in Japan.

Damn I shed some tears. I hope the work situation has gotten better in Japan since the filming of this video... It's too sad...

Good to see Gerald from Hey Arnold going places. But seriously, I hope Japan makes some positive changes.

This is a cultural problem, not a legal one, they should raise awareness and pressure companies, not pass more unnecessary and ineffective laws.

3pm is early? wtf?

I've heard about karoshi, and I'm happy that they're doing something about it with premium Fridays. I think it's best to give people more free time. I actually had a class that went over a study that showed how too much work can dangerously affect mental health.

japan "we heard abt overwork, so go home 'early' at 3pm" america "that's a normal friday" japan "but if we dont stay and do the work without pay, it wont get done" america "THEY'RE NOT PAYING YOU OVERTIME EITHER!??"

I work in the USA for a Japanese manufacturing company. The first few years we had a production number that was eight hours long. Then they increased to number to a ten hours day. So when we can’t meet that number that day we have to work on the weekend. So we now average 10 hours a week which every so often becomes 20. It is rough sometimes as you have few hours to spend with your family and yard chores.

"If I quit, there will be more burden on others." And committing suicide isn't worse????

wait? the so called "premium Friday" is not a no-work day its leaving work early?!!! LoooL I love the Japanese but DAMN! they really need to chill and relax.

0:47 Hair be looking like Adult Gon, ha.

A lot of these examples involve suicide from overwork, but I feel that I should (as a resident in Tokyo) point out that this isn't always the case; there have been instances where karoshi has been the direct cause of death. In one instance a man was found slumped up against a vending machine in the office break room and he was dead. He'd died from a heart attack brought on by stress and overwork.

Japanese are very devoted people. But it seems their dedication turn into tragedy. Hardwork is great but still it isn't worth the death.

40 hour work week, 20 hours overtime? Sounds like the usual for refrigeration mechanics here in Canada.

less work. more happy. more sex. birth rate in japan should rise again.

Study hard to get into high school. Study hard get into college. Work hard to get a job interview. Work hard to impress your boss. You work to live, not live a work. It's a sad life😔😵 and it still hasn't changed a bit even with the premium Friday it's the same.

It's shocking to hear that Premium Friday was initially introduced to work similarly to Black Friday, so that instead of providing a few hours off early out of compassion and to encourage focusing on self-care, they could spend their few hours off shopping and consuming to increase the national economy. I'm glad that got sidetracked, it would've been a travesty.

Japan needs better unions. Companies making fun friday events and handing out random bonuses does not help the problem on a larger scale or over longer time. Unions is not only how you demand worker rights such as healthcare and avoid forced overtime, it is also how you can communicate with your fellow workers, creating an enviroment to talk and share your experiences. This would help in Japan because if you are in a group *with* your coworkers to create a better working atmosphere, there's less guilt and pressure, which is what drives death by overworking

I think Premium Friday is like a Business strategy to all companies that sell goods and if the workers go out early they can spend a lot of money and not just the seller would be affected by it but also the company where the workers work, they too will also get the benefit of the other company by having the other companies workers buy items from them. (THIS IS WHAT ALL I CAN SEE)

It sounds like a good idea on the surface and begins to address many of Japan's problems. More free time = more time to spend money. More time to spend with family. More time to have more children. More time to just relax overall. However, like they guy at the end said, if companies don't even recognize or allow their workers this time then it is pointless. Also another main problem is wages are not increasing....which sort of cancels out much of the free time for spending part.

The Japanese need to work smarter, not longer. But it's a top-down system where the lower level employees are trying to show their superiors how dedicated they are. That said, Premium Friday is a step in the right direction...

It's so weird that even I grow up seeing weird stuff my country produces, I still find them weird up until now.

Two things I hate about Japan 1. Over working 2. Small living space

The dude going the interviews has cool hair. I love it.

Death by overwork is a good thing workers should realize their expendable and act accordingly.

Damn this is no joke. You are expected to work overtime without pay most of the time. Japans society has this idea of doing their part so no one else has extra burden.

In fact social life in Japan is so poor that people prefer to stay a few hours at work

Too much of everything is bad in the long run.

This phenomena has 3 main causes: 1. Greed, shareholders want always an increasing profit year after year. 2. Compound interest rate, CIR is an exponential function which leads our debt based monetary system to collapse from time to time, however till than the wheel is turning faster and faster. 3. Growth rate of capital > growth rate of labor (Jones/Solow Model).

If this is normal work in japan then I wonder what the video game industry is like there.

So on a premium Friday, you work 8 hours, instead of 12? :)))

The guy at the end was probably fired...

You know it's a vice video, when the comments section is allways about muslims or black people (in this case the black reporter with funny hair), no matter what topic the video is about...

That guy died from overworking himself while working at a paediatrics hospital? He literally gave his life away to some children. What a hero.

Do japanese companies really get something out of the workers who do overtime? Looks like it's just a waste of money for the low quality of work

I worked for a Japanese company in London UK. There was an identical culture to the country.

It should be every Friday not just one Friday a month

They're all walking like robots to work hahaha 😁

A corporate solution to a corporate problem.. I can't imagine it will do much of anything

1/4 work an extra 20 hours on top of a 40 hour week. That is literally the low end average of a normal work week for most the people I know in LA. Many work longer hours as 60 hours a week will cover just basic rent on a small apartment and utilities.

This is starting to become a problem in America. Hours are climbing and benefits are disappearing because our wages aren't keeping pace.

Friendly advice, put some date information on your videos, "the campaign started last week" - when is this last week?

She going to see La La Land ? SMH. They should've made her stay for the rest of the day.

The lack of rest can kill you.

Oh my God. The interviewers hair is epic!

Why would a pediatrics department in a hospital have sales targets?

In America this would be called "Friday 2.0" or "Friday +"

I have worked 60 hours a week for almost 20 years. it's not that unique. everybody in my department and now I think about everybody I know works 55-60 hour weeks. I cannot think of one person I know personally who only works 40 hours.

My coworkers physically come to the work site 40 hours a week, but actually put in about 20 hours of work a week.

The last guy says they've to make money at the end... but most of those long working hours generally go without overtime pay...is that really worth it?

This is not even a thing. It was introduced on the news as something special, but the government didn't foresee reality. Just asking for less hours at a specific time doesn't mean the work is going to magically disappear.

Try working in the UK is pretty shitty here as well no one in my office ever left at 5pm as it was frowned upon that’s why we all love working from home

and my nine hours shift with 1 hour and 30 mins break seems forever

Everyone in the comments section calls out Japan's 'overwork' culture without realising its the same system that is implemented in all their countries "Give all your energy to your bosses so that they may make more money than you"

Working hours in America is no picnic either

this sounds amateur compared to the companies in hong kong. a bus driver who worked consecutive days for 13 or more hours has slammed several pedestrians and killed 3, and the bus company is shameless enough to say it's perfectly legal because it really is. the legal hours is no more than 13 so they pushed it to the limit and had the drivers signed the agreement. there should really be an episode about labor issue in hong kong. www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/2113049/explain-are-hong-kong-bus-drivers-dangerously

0:10 Look at their clothes. All in navy blue. That's why I was thrilled to have found a navy blue single breasted coat from a flea-market, that imported their second hand clothes from Japan. Price for the coat was $2 in really good condition. ♥️♥️♥️

Japan's success is built on people literally working themselves to death. "Death by overwork" isn't a thing in any other decent country.

4:29 Weird hearing someone say Mitsubishi correctly.

i wonder if these people were on antidepressants?? cuz alot of those can actually have suicidal tendencies

My co-workers over there used to stay in the office just because they didn't want to be the first to leave. Many practically lived in the office. It's definitely a deep cultural problem.

yay they got an interviewer that speak the language

When I was in Japan, my host father worker 10 hours a day and 6/7 days a week. Felt bad for him.

Did you know Japanese people made emojis 😁😁

The reporters' Japanese was on point yaaas

I work 12 hours a day on a heavy Blue collar job. But I also had to work in front of a computer for 8 hours sometimes 10 and let me tell you mental exhaustion is far more fucked up than physical soreness. Yeah your muscle hurt but at the end of the day your body is tired but not stressed out. while on a office job depending on what you do daily, you can get anxiety just by thinking you have to go back to that hell cubicle the next day.

That entry was so cool

I didn't know this about Japan.