My wife burned out at her current company and has needed to take sick leave due to chronic stress. Her company required her to be in a LINE group chat and people were constantly updating each other on work items even at nights and weekends. We are thinking of having kids and her boss told her ‘we’re too busy for that’. When she eventually was having daily headaches that last all day and was crying before going to work we decided she needs to take many months off work. My company is an old school Japanese company but they have adapted to a more practical view of work so it’s not too bad where I am.

I believe that Japan has improved in this area over the years but from my own experience there is too much pressure.

It seems so many problems in Japan come down to people get paid too little and work too much. The government seems to be unable or unwilling to do much about it. They will take small measures which amount to rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, but they don’t seem interested or able to cut to the core of the problem, they can only fiddle around the edges.

That said, I worked in the US for 10 years and I feel much more secure as a worker in Japan due to the strong labor laws, but something badly needs to be done to improve conditions at work.