Karōshi — Death from Overwork

The Japan-coined institutional pattern of working hours so extreme — typically 80–100+ overtime hours per month — that they produce sudden cardiovascular death, stroke, or suicide; legally recognised as a workplace cause of death since 1987.

Why this habit matters

  • Sleep: Karōshi-pattern overtime systematically erodes sleep to 4–5 hours nightly during peak workload periods, producing the cognitive impairment, accident risk, and metabolic dysfunction documented in Japanese occupational-health literature.
  • Family: The karōshi work pattern is one of the most-cited contributors in Japanese family-court data to marital breakdown and to children growing up with effectively absent fathers; the collapse of fertility (TFR 1.20 in 2024) is structurally linked.
  • Health: Karōshi is one of the very few habits with documented sudden-death endpoints in healthy young adults; cardiovascular collapse, cerebrovascular events, and overwork-suicide are recognised legal outcomes since 1987.

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