Can people die from overwork?? Yes, we can. Today, I’m going to talk about ‘karoushi (death from overwork)’ as an example of how public feelings which are not examined in academic study affect the social structure.

Karoushi is a Japanese word meaning death from overwork. While Japan was experiencing ‘economic miracle’ from the 1960’s to 1980’s, a countless number of people died from overwork to keep the economic development. Ironically, as this crucial situation accompanying significant human cost came to be known around the world, the Japanese word ‘karoushi’ became a common word in the world. Now it’s even on Oxford dictionary!

The public feeling which we can see here is the shared feeling that didn’t allow them to express their emotions. They couldn’t say ‘I’m tired.’ I point out two reasons for this. One is this is a part of Japanese culture. In Japan, it was, or has been thought as virtue not to express our emotion or opinion in public. Therefore, however tired they were, they couldn’t show their tiredness at workplace. The other reason is the social structure. At that time, Japan was in the midst of economic development and nobody could or would stop it. If they said ‘I want to take a break,’ they would be kicked off and would never find a job. That’s how the public feeling of ‘karoushi’ was created and maintained.

Then, how this public feeling affect the social structure? Basically, this works toward fixation of the social structure. I’m going to explain this fixation in two ways. First, since this didn’t allow people to be against employers by showing their emotion and importantly, most of the profit, the fruit of their hard work went to the employers, this fixes the social structure, maintaing the division between the capital and the labour. In addition, the overwork deprived them of energy and they didn’t have motivation to take an action anymore. Thus, the ‘karoushi’ culture affected the society in a way that it fixed the social structure.

Though ‘karoshi’ is a sad word and as a Japanese, I feel very ashamed of this becoming a common word in the world, it implies a lot about public feelings. The more I had research, the more interested I am in the relationship between ‘karoushi’ and public feelings. I want to do further research and continuously consider this.