Top 5 Worst Companies in Japan to Work For 

I'm surprised Dentsu wasn't mentioned as the worst of the worst. Things described here are not just those companies, but a pretry common thing in a lot of Japanese companies. Because it's not just these companies being bad themselves but its the general issues in the society like vertical hierarchy, extreme bushido loyalty, feel of guilt, gaslighting, mindless following of rules that define any logic and just because it's rules, etc - all that becomes the perfect breeding ground. "ijime" (bullying) is one of the pillars of this society, starting from school and continuing into workplace. You're expected to treat Kohai like slaves when you become the Senpai yourself. Most Japanese never went abroad or experienced working in a different environment, so most don't even realize that something is wrong with their current workplace. This is normal and common knowledge to everyone, unless a foreigner joins the company and points something out. And even then, the foreigner won't be heard, will simply be seen as some crazy guy and will be ignored, like those crazy guys in the streets yelling about incoming apocalypse. Btw, you forgot to mention the みなし残業 (Minashi Zangyo, or Expected Overtime) system. You basically get paid extra 20-30k yen each month regardless if you work overtime or not and are expected to stay overtime on your manager's whim. Most companies have it fixed at 20-40 hours which is written in the job listings when you job hunt. Meaning you are expected to work that amount of hours before you even start getting paid extra for overtime. So if the company has Minashi Zangyo 40 hours you start getting paid after your 41th hour of overtime you did this month. What my genius previous company did is they simply said starting next week we are also working on Saturdays too. Since it was still within those 40 hours of Minashi Zangyo we didn't get paid any extra for Saturdays, because it was already expected from us. It went from "9am-6pm FIVE work days a week" to "9am-6pm SIX work days a week" with a snap of a finger, just like that. For the same monthly salary. The 36協定 (Article 36 Agreement) of 2019 finally forces companies into reducing the overtime hours and forcing workers to take at least 5 days of paid leave every year (nobody ever takes any at all unless they are forced to, or they actually need a day off to go to the ward office, bank, post office, etc, because they all close early), otherwise the companies will be fined by the Labor Standards Inspection Office. But that's the only reason - because they are scared of being fined and because it's the new rule which must be followed. They could care less about their workers suffering health issues from doing overwork. In Japan, if you get sick it's considered to be a weakness and to be only your responsibility, even if it was caused by the workplace stress. Hence why there's no such thing as a "sick leave". Usually every worker has to punch the time card when they start working, when they leave, when they have overtime hours, etc, in a unnecessarily overcomplicated software that looks like it was written in the 90s. But what I've seen some people, especially those in Sales, do is they clock out and then still keep being present at work. The facade of being a busy worker and buttering up to your boss by staying is that much more important in the Japanese society than any actual law. Leave on time and your coworkers and your boss will start to hate you. They may not show it hiding by the polite tatemae mask but expect passive aggressive treatment here and there. They can't easily fire you if your a 正社員 (seishain, regular employee) but they will try to create an environment to make you quit, or simply transfer you across the country, regardless if you have a family you'll be separated from or not. This is too common in jp companies. In some cases they can force you into 休職 (temporary suspension) and reduce your salary down to 60%, or no salary at all, to make you quit on your own. Lots of people are afraid to lose the current "stability" and look for a new job, because you'll have to start your career again from zero basically. Down to being a low class Kohai again and have to grind your buttering up to the new boss again. Job hopping is still very frowned upon and only couple years at a company will look extremely bad on your resume. The salaries are low across the board. Even in IT if you're in the 一般 (general) worker category and not in the management position your salary can be pretty much close to a regular English teacher salary, or even lower. And good luck trying to climb to a higher position when there's so little room for career growth. All your hard work won't be noticed simply because nepotism and because Tanaka licked the boss's bottom cleaner. "Horenso" (report, contact, consult) is business rule/culture of any Japanese workplace and it's elevated almost to a religious status. Everything is built upon reporting on what's going on at the moment. The results of a task aren't that important, but reporting about its ongoing process is VERY important. The boss never checks any tasks they give - you yourself are expected to report about your ongoing task several times a day. On any little change that happens about something. But this isn't just about reporting tasks. If you're in IT and they use work chats like Slack you will be secretly assigned a person to constantly monitor your every move who will keep snitching everything you do to the higher manager in real time. There will be secret meetings held behind your back about what you do. (This behavior is actually pretty common in daily life, when some obaachan calls police on you for "acting suspicious" of just sitting on a bench in the local park). You won't even know about it unless a month or two later you'll receive a letter about "results" of a held meeting regarding your actions. Even if you think it's a perfect workplace, you're happy, everyone is so friendly, you're acing your job, and have no idea you did something wrong. (real example - I opened an official cloud course while looking up stuff which was made like an interactive web page with different animations, and I was snitched on for "playing games at work". The sheer appearance of not being busy at a jp workplace is a big no no. You must always simulate being busy even if you have nothing to do and have to move the mouse and click the screen randomly). As a result. You will be made to write 顛末書 (detailed written report) on what problem you've caused, that you reflected upon yourself, and what will you do in the future to avoid causing any more problems. This will happen every single time they think you did something that they decided to be inappropriate - your colleagues will keep snitching on your right as they're smiling in your face. Even if things aren't stated or defined anywhere in the company rules. If you refuse to write 顛末書 it can be escalated to a termination. Things can go from 0 to 100 in a single day in a jp company. Any non-comformity is heavily hammered down. Any objections/arguments are viewed as excuses. You have no word and must obey. If you're into masochism and like it miserable then the JP workplace is for you.

Honorable mentions: Bigmotor, for doing all sorts of scummy things to get customers to buy repairs and insurance for cars Japan Beverage - forcing employees to pass a quiz to earn time off and regularly forcing up to 100+ hours of overtime Nijisanji - LOL

As someone who lived in Japan, and worked in bad places, I'll add to the list: Food Factories in general.

Working for Japanese companies is the pits. As an American who worked for Toyota, I’d have to say it was shockingly absurd in illegal labor practices, bullying, nepotism, racism, sexism, etc. Don’t do it.

These companies have the most complaints, not the worst environments. And it's easy to tell: people can't complain when they're dead or over abused. In this top 5 there's none of the main "death by overwork" rankers, like the senior healthcare companies.

Im japanese. JR is a good company for work actually. Insurance, hotel, news paper, sales agency sectors are terrible.

This is a significant part of a large picture as to why there’s a declining birth rate in Japan. Overworked and yet still underpaid leads to less time and money for people to even consider starting a family. Japanese people aren’t loners by choice, the work culture made them that way.

Recently dated a Japanese lady from Japan and its exactly as you say. Mandatory OT, going on vacational leave period isnt really much of a vacation, the company will antagonize you if you dont bring something back for going on leave, NO TYPE OF FLEXIBILITY, mandatory fun when they just want to go home, sloppy schedules etc

A friend of mine was an upper engineer in North America Toyota and walked out when he wasn't given a day off when his wife prematurely gave birth to twins. Prior to this he was anti-union but now he works for government. He will never drive a Toyota.

None of these really surprise me. Japan has a bunch of problems in work culture and has been stealing some practices from american work culture that makes them worse. Especially contractor culture and retail culture. I will say that JR East surprised me.

If JR East workers go on strike, how many weeks would there need to be no train service before management capitulates and reverses the 20% pay cut?

Honestly the Japanese workers only have themselves to blame. Japan is facing a severe labor shortage, the perfect condition for workers to fight for better rights and pay. Yet due to some misguided notion of “loyalty” this is not happening.

Seeing those salarymen all wasted on the train was funny when I first got to japan but it ended up being pretty sad by the end. Makes me really question how bad their work life is, because that's not normal. I remember one guy on the Fukotoshin line, dressed very sharp and had a clean look to him, he boards the train and his eyes can't stay open and he's stumbling around falling on people, the other passengers started pushing him around and eventually he just lied down in front of the train doors all passed out and people were stepping over him. He seemed mentally drained on top of being hammered.

Thanks for making this video, it was informative and concise. I would have liked to learn more about your methodology in ranking the companies, as there might be other factors to consider. For example, larger companies will naturally have more complaints simply due to having more workers, and using a complaints-per-employee metric would help adjust for that. I also worry that some work cultures are so bad that employees fear making a complaint at all, and would never be seen by a monitoring service. I understand that there was limited data to work with for this video, since Alarmbox only showed 3009 complaints over 16k+ companies, not a lot to work with.

I used to love visiting Yodobashi Camera when I was young. Nowadays, I can only be in there for less than 30 mins before the crowd, loudspeaker, and the THEME SONG drive me crazy.

Mappa studios: I'm you

Same applies to American JPN companies

I'm only 4 minutes in, and Yodobashi Camera sounds like working in door-to-door sales in America. You know people don't want what you're selling, but if you don't push the sale you make no money and you get berated for being lazy and uncommitted.

This is what is called natural selection. Japan's people work more than almost any country, yet they are falling behind. They are burning through their people until they run out. And a collapse will come. But it is hard to have sympathy despite knowing where it lead.

Hello. 😊Thank you for introducing Japan. Our standard is someone who can work 12 to 24 hours a day. We are looking for people who can tolerate low wages. If you don't mind, please come and work.

Hello, i'm looking for the name of the song played with flute in the first part, it reminds me a song I heard in Japan but I never found it

Japanese workers especially the blue collar ones suffered the most.And worst of all,they suffered in silence with their lips zipped

I was surprised not to see Uniqlo, Mitsubishi or Dentsu in the top 5. Plenty of "black companies" in Japan, so picking just 5 must have been difficult.

Culture is the #1 problem in Japan. . Creativity is suppressed. It won’t thrive unless the system breaks down as it did after the war or something equivalent happens to society. But having said that the situation elsewhere in the world isn’t that great either due to extreme greed.

And Japan's economic stagnation is catching up. The youth are despairing over an economy that shows no results and is producing many "Hikikomori". Customs that seem insane in the US and Europe are common sense in Japan. As a Japanese, we sometimes envy the working environment in the West.

Johnny & Associates is also among the worst places to work in Japan. The late founder Johnny Kitagawa had sexually abused hundreds of men from the 1970s to the 2010s. As many as 478 people have accused him of sexual misconduct. Sadly, justice can never be truly served, as Kitagawa died in 2019.

Kind of funny that the backing track for the Yodobashi Camera section of the video is actually the Bic Camera theme song (a modified version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic).

This is the same in America working for retail, fast food, anything, and it’s low pay, nothing changes, dealing with tons of customer complaints and not even able to support yourself with one job you have to have multiple jobs, you have to pick a job that you can deal with or you can set your own hours

Aw man, I live in Tokyo and I always loved buying from Yodobashi😣 Very disappointed they suck as a company.

The footage in the outro is cool, where's it from?

Im filipino and I have worked with 3 different japanese construction companies namely Sumisetsu Philippines (Sumitomo in Japan), Taisei Qatar, Modair Manila (Tonets in Japan). I can honestly say that the work environment really depends on the management. Japanese people as we know are hard workers but it really depends on the management and the your Japanese superior if they will abuse you or not. P.S. Japanese companies tend to really pay well and are known for being legal in all aspects. They respect the law and they as much as much as possible tend to abide by itt.

Anycolor should be on the list, The work environment was so toxic that one of its talents almost ended her life...twice

Is there a flipside? The best companies to work for in Japan? My mother worked for a small family run plastics factory. They were super nice. But this was in 1980. The exception.

Great place to visit, lousy place to work. Both Mrs. Rebo and I are happier living in Melbourne, Aus. Oh and if I had to work in Yodabashi or Bic Camera I’d go postal having to hear the advertising jingle blaring out every 30 seconds in the stores. Japan is so odd in that you can’t talk in the train but it’s fine to be assaulted with noise in the streets.

What would happen if everybody in Japan quits their overworked jobs and stayed home ?

Question: What's with the white chalk around those white collar workers who were sleeping/ knocked out?

No wonder isekai anime is on the rise.

How about pharmaceutical and medical company ? Is it any better ?

Dude, well done. I worked in Japan for years, mostly Tokyo, and I found this fascinating.

Worst company to work is actual 7-11, winning black company award for consecutive years. I believe their conbini food are seasoned with the soul of their employee.

Most of us don’t need to worry much because those companies mentioned won’t accept foreigners anyway.

@KonichiValue - I really like you video. I am shocked about JR East. Can you do a video on the following: 1) The Best Company to work for in Japan and why (benefits, superb employee satisfaction rating, etc) 2) Most enjoyable Millennial Corporations to work for in Japan.

How these companies are still in business is astounding!

Could you a do a video on 5 good modern companies to work for in Japan? This one is kind of depressing.

You can add "Nijisanji" to those black company list too

First thing that came to mind when I saw the thumbnail for this video was "EMOTIONAL DAMAGE !!!"

These companies pretty much sound like working in the movie industry - so if you wish for something similar and you live in the US or Europe... you don't need to go all the way to Japan to enjoy that sort of lifestyle.

Japan have for me near all my life been interesting due to society and buisness cultures are so different from the West. How companies and organisations value loyalty and respect. How the very aspect of any work is a duty to society. How education is valued more and how dicipline just as well is more. BUT the grass is not greener on the other side as Japan have its down-sides like evreyone else. Like this video says; the work houers, the over-time and stress filled houers are really scary stuff and even if loyalty is noble, that goes only so far in the matter of who us in charge and working for as that can be polarized to a nightmare if he/she is a douchebag person(s). And the crowd-filled enviroments, short space and bussy life overall really is not a life that works for most people combined with the impossible task of finding a decent housing in Tokyo that is not priced out of all sanity (!)

Great appearances and convenience instead of results and sustainability, also to help people to Justifty and even protect all the serious flaws in this nation that are supposed to be addressed instead, today there is a government public subsidy to keep the good jobs in the national territory, but if corporations does not want to be behind, and most of the Japanese money are ending up in related overseas investments, names like JT, and Sony already transferred full departments abroad.

Can anyone explain to me why there's white powder around all those passed out people?

not going to aeon and yodobashi again but cant avoid riding yamanote line tho

Who is old enough to remember when graduate students and the world's business were reading about Japanese management? Remember Theory Z? What happened?

I wonder my self how long a Japanese must to work to survive in Japan,is like China or India where people work like slaves but Japan take it to a new level,overworking is something aceptable for Japanese people like if been slave of work could be something good.😅

Is there even any place in Japan where work life balance exists? 😂

where is pub dining company Watami and Yunikuro?

I thought about Kurosanji ☠

came from youtube recommend on mac safari man, japan is a whole 'nother level with its workplace culture

Fav Japanese worker leave destination? Aokigahara Forest!

isnt the busiest bullet train line (tokaido) run by jr tokai? and its not accurate to say jr east cof-founded the shinkansen - it didnt even exist yet (JNR era)

You didn't specify if you just picked the companies with more complaints in absolute numbers or in ratio of complaints/employees.

no MAPPA and OLM 😮

9:18 the JR east don’t manage the busiest bullet Train that is operated by JR Tokai.

It’s been changed a lot. People usually leaves company before 19:00. There are still many fucked up companies but much less than 5th ago.

If someone better work for retail in this dreamy country, it’d better be, sing it with me now, Don Don Donki (Don Quijote)

It’s easier to asked which top 5 IS NOT at this point.

The best way to help employees of these companies convince him to quit get a better job than this😮

JGC should be included

As a japanese i recommend to not work for rakuten.

Japan Rail east is not training replacement workers these jobs are so specialized you can not recruit from technical college programs so skilled labor is going to get worse

Only 5?

no big motors?

normal work hours in our company is 16-18 hours ( with over time ) a day a lots staff sleep in office 😮‍💨

What about MAPPA Studio?

The JR situation is very similar for almost all of Japan. Pride over Salary Seniority over performance And with already abismal.salaries, it's no wonder that nobody in their 20s-30s can afford to have children

are you kidding? How does these 5 companies worst? working in the marketing business and office is 4 times worst than the TOP 5 listed.

My number #1 black companies they call in Japan....Gaming/Animation studios. Seriously mentally taxing works without set limits.. just deadlines. My friend son works for JC Staff and the poor guy is totally bald compared to his dad looks just as old as us.

As long as they get enough time off to look for another job...

Really Yodibashi is on the list wow!!!

Good video but you should try using other words instead of “especially” from time to time

The wagie shuffle

Errrr....... ngl, I'm just taking 3 days of paid leave just to play Final Fantasy and Mobile Legend.😅😅

Thank God that Toyota, Sony, Panasonic, Nintendo, Fujitsu, Yokohama (Tires), Denso, Nissan and Mitsubishi are not on this list. those are the brands I go to for Electronics and Automobile stuff... hopefully they know better not to be included to these types of list.

Why don't Japanese govt don't bring any laws

Client service; places like Toyota treat their vendors like sh*t.

8:47 ohhh no way that JR have the best train company in world you know how many train they handle and big passenger got some good to ride with it wven they face with harassement hmm they need to kick that out from train ,there is a financial proble that is why the shinkansen price went up last year

Too bad all of the employees of these companies can’t all quit at the same time and warn future applicants not to work there. It would serve these companies right if the employees voted with their feet. But that probably won’t work in Japan, different culture and such.

Wouldn’t companies that have the most complaints generally be among the largest companies?

Hey there’s misinformation in this video. You keep mentioning JR East is a bad company to work for but you keep using video footages of the Tokaido Shinkansen which is owned and operated by JR Central. These two corporations are separate companies and should not be mixed up.

How about Olympus? It’s a full medical device company now

Nijisanji

anime story is full story like this, so It is very true.

I worked for a credit card company in Japan for years. 13 hour shifts were very common and not all overtime was paid. I only went home by 11pm because my security cards turned off then. Arrived at work by 7am to do 2 hours of prep work without pay to start the day. I remember seeing one guy get pushed outside while still on his office chair to a waiting ambulance due to a mental breakdown. One of my coworkers would break down crying in one of the storage rooms sometimes. I was one of the businessmen that had passed out outside which is common, and in front of a police station near the train station no less. They never said anything but a concerned lady woke me up and was nicely concerned about me. We had a lot of jokes at work about never being able to take holidays and found it funny when we were granted more for years of service when we weren’t able to take them anyway. Wednesday was declared a no-overtime day to make up for no holidays. We still stayed to show we weren’t weak. I do miss the fact that everyone worked hard and would never refuse to do work unlike the West. I still carry the hard work mentality with me today which is why I lock horns with people where I currently work. I can’t help it…everyone can always do better. I plan to move back again in the future because I can no longer tolerate what I see as a lazy work culture here in the West. In case you were wondering, I was hospitalized once due to overwork but I wouldn’t change anything. This is all I know. In my job interviews I ask that they take away my holidays and benefits and instead pay me more. Wasn’t like I was going to use them anyway. During a job interview in Japan, that is the last time you can negotiate your salary. It will always stay the same after that.

I was wondering if mappa was on this list.

I'm not saying the companies you covered in the video are in any way good, but the way you seem to have chosen them is somewhat flawed. You said you ranked them by absolute number of complaints on that platform. But you should have ranked them by the ratio of complaints received in a limited time (say over the last year, 2 years, or such) over the number of employees. If a company only has 100 workers but received 30 complaints in the last year, that may be worse than a huge one like Yodobashi or JR that may have 10,000s of employees, has been in operation for decades, and received 1000s of complaints over the years. IMO. Also, I hope you don't live and work in Japan, because making a video like this is 100% defamation, over there, and they WILL sue you.

Karoshi..

今は法律が整備されてきて、残業時間を厳しくHRが制限している企業が増えてきました。 でも、仕事量が減るわけではないので、一部の人たちは家に仕事を持ち帰って仕事しています。 ただし、依然としてこの動画で紹介しているようなひどい会社は存在します。 そして死ぬまで働く人たちもまだ居ます。 Now the law has been put in place, and the number of companies that severely restrict HR on overtime hours has increased. However, the amount of work does not decrease, so some people take their jobs home and work. However, there are still terrible companies like the ones we are introducing in this video. There are still people who work until they die.

According to "Hours worked - Employment", Japan's average annual hours actually worked 2022 is 1607 hours. Australia's is 1707 hours. New Zealand is 1748 hours. Canada's is 1686 hours. Please abandon the stereotype that Japan is a country with long working hours.

8:35 how that the beautiful country with polite girl and sharming in asia and i proud to like japan isnce kids can be like that ,maybe cause japan dont change so much and they believe they so old to accept new things yeahh its what old people say ,but not the new people and young people want something good and can be acceptable like creta enew job that suitable in this moden era yes its good idea when see many young people work and have life what they need as human we need to be humanity laaa ,dont make me call this stupid mentality even its stupid so full

Vote with your wallet. Boycott these companies. Simple as that!

Where is Nijisanji? It was tagged as black company?