Are long work hours in Japan an exaggeration by the West or a reality for Japanese?
During my early days in Japan I was working in a typical Japanese company. One fine day I had some more work left to finish at the end of the day and told my boss that I’m going to be working over-time for a bit. At first he was happy to see his sub-ordinate working so hard . The work took usual than longer so it went past 9:00 PM and my boss was ready to leave and told me strictly to not work beyond 11:00 PM. When I asked why, he said some 3–5 years ago an employee worked until next morning 5 AM something without taking any break and died of exhaustion due to which the company got into serious trouble and had to re-write the working hour rules.
And since then if any employee works beyond 11 PM unless until it’s absolutely necessary and with prior approval of his supervisor , the supervisor will be demoted . And I actually saw someone getting demoted from 副統括 ( Deputy Division Head) to Manager because his sub-ordinate worked until 11:30 PM something. In fact in some departments the managers used to leave only when all his sub-ordinates left due to fear of demotion.
Unfortunately, in typical Japanese companies it’s more quantity based reward than quality. The employee who has been clocking 12 hours or more a day is preferred more over a employee who works till regular working time for a promotion even when the latter does a better job. I can’t remember how many times I got the weird stare from Japanese colleagues for leaving at 17:35 (work timing was 9:00 - 17:30). According to them it’s very natural to do overtime every day. Lucky me , I always used the gaijin card (foreigner card) and got out with no hesitation.
In my opinion it’s not exaggerated at all and there’s a reason why there is a special term for them called SALARYMAN.
