Karoshi, in vocational psychology dictionary

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Dictionary of Vocational Psychology

Karoshi

Death through overwork (Japanese origin). Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular crises leading to death, presumably brought about through a combination of long work hours, high job stress, and cardiovascular disease. The matter became a serious topic of debate in Japan as early as the 1970s. The earliest book on "karoshi" per se was published in 1982. Japan's Health Ministry first recognized the phenomenon in 1987. By the late 1990s, Japan created a Ministry of Leisure (at least in part) to help combat the problem. Although it is likely the problem extends beyond Japan (there are reports, for example, or workers and managers in the early industrial revolution in England dropping dead from stress and exhaustion), research on this issue is still ongoing.

A case study of karoshi is provided through the story of the death of Mikio Mizuno (Alabaster, 2008). Mizuno, one of Toyota Motor Corporation's top automotive engineers, was routinely working more than 80 hours per week over a two-year period in order to develop a hybrid gas-electric version of the Camry. He regularly worked evenings and weekends, and died of ischemic heart disease just before the unveiling of the new car model at the Detroit Auto show in 2008. According to Alabaster's report, a Japanese labor board ruled that the death was in fact due to karoshi, allowing the dead engineer's family to collect benefits from his work insurance. Toyota offered its condolences to the family and said that it would improve monitoring of the health of its workers.

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