Categories
Health Society

Karoshi 過労死

Karōshi (過労死 : excess – labor – death) is a Japanese word that means “sudden death caused by excess of work”. This specific word only exists in Japanese, but it’s starting to be exported to other countries like Korea where the same problem is arising.

After the Second World War, Japan was able to recover very fast and became the second economy in the world in less than three decades. There are many reasons that helped Japan to recover so fast, one of the reasons was the effort that Japanese did working as much as they could. At the end of the 60s working 12 or more hours a day was considered normal. In 1969 the first case of “karoshi” occurred, he was a young employee (less than 30 years old) who suddenly died after working more than 40 days in a row.

The problem became more common at the end of the 80s when executives working under lots of stress started dying at their work places. Nowadays the Ministry of Labor has “karoshi deaths” public statistics. During the last years the average is 1.000 “karoshi” deaths, this is not a lot but if you put it together with the 10.000 people who die because of “stress/excess of work”, and the 30.000 people who suicide (mainly because they are not happy with their jobs) it starts to be scary.

One friend explained me how one of his workmates died from “karoshi”. One day, when they arrived in the morning to the company they found him “sleeping” in his workplace but when they realized that he was not waking up after some hours… He died from hear attack and he was only 27 years old!

Reading “National Defense counsel for Victims of Karoshi” I found more terrifying examples:

Miss Yoshida, died when she was 22 years old after working during 34 hours as a hospital nurse.

Mister Miyazaki, died after working during 4320 hours during his last year.

Mister Yagi, he used to work 70 hours a week and spent almost four hours a day commuting. He died when he was 43 years old. In his personal diary he wrote “At least slaves had time to eat with their families”.

Many people do not die, but the number of people who is really stress and ends up suffering mental illnesses is very high. A recent example is well known by everyone, prime minister Abe suffered from stress and lots of pressure from bureaucrats and the “Japanese dark side”. The day he resigned he was hospitalized in order to be treated from “stress related problems”.

Read this article if you wanna know more about “karoshi”.

Categories
History

Victims of both nuclear explosions

“Hibakusha” (被爆者: being exposed, bomb, person) is a Japanese word that means “nuclear bomb victim”. In this category of “hibakusha” there is the people who where within two kilometers from the hypocenter at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, those who where within five kilometers from the hypocenters sometime during the next two weeks from the explosion, and those kids who were born from women who are in the previous categories. Nowadays the Japanese Government says that there are 250.000 “hibakusha” who are still living with and average age of 75 years. Most of the receive monetary support from the government.

Yesterday I watched a documentary about seven victims who were very very unlucky. They were in Hiroshima the day of the first explosion and in Nagasaki the day of the second one. In this case, the victims are considered “Nijuu Hibakusha” (Two times exposed to the bombs) and it is believed that there were at least 160 victims in this category. Hidetaka Inazuka, the documentary director found seven “Nijuu Hibakusha” who are still alive and created a film about their experiences. The documentary explains with big detail what happened to a Mitsubishi employee who suffered both explosions. This Mitsubishi employee lived in Nagasaki but the day when “Little Boy” was dropped in Hiroshima he was there in a business trip. Fortunately he was inside a building with big walls that protected him against the first radiation. He was heavily injured but managed to return home(Nagasaki). He was explaining to his people about what happened in Hiroshima, and in that moment it happened again! He thought it was the end of the world, or maybe those terrific brilliant hot things were following him.

The documentary is called “Nijuu Hibakusha”, and I think there is only Japanese version.

Categories
Videogames

Face training

“Face training” is on sale here in Japan. I’ve already seen two nice office ladies playing in the train while commuting. “Face training” is one of those weird games that are launched in Japan once in a while and never get exported. “Face training” is not really a game, is a system that let’s you improve your facial expression. The game comes with a camera, and while you play the camera recognizes your face, if you are smiling or not, if you are making a “nice” angry face and gives you advice to improve your expressions.

Cara
“Face training” ad I saw at Yurakucho station.

Cara
DS while you play “Face Training”.