Karōshi und die Reaktion des Rechts

Abstract

The Japanese term karōshi means “death by overwork”. As a result of work-related overwork, a fatal cardiovascular failure occurs or a mental illness develops leading to suicide (karō-jisatsu). Exact case numbers do not exist. While the accident insurers qualify only a few hundred deaths per year as deaths due to overwork, independent estimates assume up to 10,000 cases per year. The article first examines the causes of karōshi which are located in the employment relationship. It then discusses the relevant prevention mechanisms in the occupational health and safety laws, which were in force until 1 April 2019 and 1 April 2020, respectively. It is shown that the legal provisions on maximum working hours and days off could have been circumvented by specific agreements between the employer and employee representatives in accordance with Art. 36 Labor Standards Act. While there was and is little resistance to this practice due to the special features of the Japanese trade union system, one can identify a self-motivation by employees to work overtime. At the same time, the administrative and civil law measures taken to counteract this proved to be ineffective. Based on these findings regarding the old legal framework, the article then analyzes the main features of the 2018 “work-style reform”. The most important change has been the introduction of a statutory upper limit for overtime of generally 360 hours per year. Subsequently, the article presents the essential aspects of the liability law treatment of karōshi. The main focus is on the recognition of a death as work-related by the statutory accident insurance and civil law claims against the employer. In particular, the article deals with the Dentsū ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice in which the Court specified concrete terms for the employer’s duty of care and, for the first time, also applied these standards in tort law.