Culture : When Life on the Job Is Literally Killing You : The dark side of Japan’s economic boom is karoshi--or the practice of working to death.

TOKYO — Ibuko Mabuchi Canlas never had a chance to say goodby to her 61-year-old husband. Quintin Canlas’ heart gave out in the middle of the Akihabara train station in July, 1988, after three months of grueling work, including 18-hour days and weeks on the road.

Sakae Iwata was just 23 years old when she suddenly died of an acute asthma attack triggered, her parents say, by extreme overwork as a window clerk in the securities division of a major bank. As overtime demands intensified in October, 1988, keeping her at work until 10 every night, Iwata lost weight, had increasing trouble breathing, complained that stress was going to kill her.

Printer Teizo Miyazaki, 58, was found dead in the plant locker room. Despite chronic high blood pressure, he was made to work 24-hour shifts every other day, without regular holidays, from 1968 to 1975. Last May, the Tokyo High Court ruled that his work schedule was directly responsible for his cerebral hemorrhage and ordered the firm to pay compensation to his family.

All three were among Japan’s corporate warriors--the men and women who have fought to transform this nation into the world’s second-largest economic power. But as they work the equivalent of one to three months more per year than their Western counterparts, a growing number are also dying on the battlefield. The cause is called karoshi --death by overwork.

Behind Japan’s booming economic growth, its diligent work ethic and enviable productivity rates, are the broken lives of people such as Canlas, Iwata and Miyazawa. But despite what victims’ groups say are 10,000 karoshi deaths per year, institutional Japan is slow to acknowledge their claims. The Ministry of Labor says the problem is widely exaggerated and last year awarded only 33 workers’ compensation claims out of 597 filed.

And last November, the Supreme Court ruled that firms may force overtime on employees. It dismissed a lawsuit filed by a former electronics factory worker who claimed he was fired because he refused overtime.

“Time can’t heal my heart,” says Ibuko Mabuchi Canlas, who has since thrown herself into organizing a support group for the families of victims. “Until Japanese people say no to overtime, karoshi will increase.

“But,” she adds sadly, “Japanese can’t say no.”

The heart of the problem, Mabuchi Canlas and others contend, is Japan’s fabled work ethic, competitive drive, group loyalty and obedience to authority gone astray.

In the pressure cooker of Japan’s business world, the corporate warriors are expected to throw themselves into battle and follow their leaders without complaint. That means routine overtime, weekend work, taking less vacation than allotted, and accepting transfers without complaint, even if it means leaving the family behind.

Having the gall to refuse overtime, take vacation or call in sick--all legitimate rights in the United States--can jeopardize promotion and alienate workers from their colleagues and bosses, said Hideaki Omori, a Tokyo attorney specializing in karoshi cases.

“Americans and Europeans can refuse overtime but Japanese cannot,” Mabuchi Canlas says. “Americans will think of their own health and families, but Japanese workers are just devoted to their companies.

“It’s the terrible and shameful side of our national economic power.”

Japanese authorities downplay the problem. Kiyotaka Segami, occupational health officer for the Ministry of Labor, said it is “impossible” to prove a direct and quantifiable link between overwork and death. Lifestyle factors, including diet and exercise, are also important factors in a person’s health. As a result, he said, there is no way to precisely define what constitutes karoshi, one reason the ministry has recognized so few cases.

In those few cases the ministry has awarded workman’s compensation, working hours had suddenly escalated or other conditions had changed just before death. Indeed, in a confidential manual leaked a few years ago, it was revealed that for the ministry to consider someone a karoshi case, they had to meet certain standards, such as having worked twice the normal number of hours for seven days without rest or having worked three times normal hours the day before collapse.

The courts, in individual cases, have shown a greater tendency to award judgments to those people more vulnerable to stress, such as those with high blood pressure or asthma, Omori said.

Still, the victories are few and far between. Omori said neither the Labor Ministry nor industry can afford to begin recognizing more cases, or they would be deluged with costly claims. And labor unions have been co-opted by management to not press the issue, focusing on wage increases rather than shorter working hours, Mabuchi Canlas said.

Meanwhile, many victims’ families choose to suffer in silence. The reluctance to challenge authority is rooted in the feudal tradition, some say, while Omori cites a more practical fear of backlash against other relatives working at the same company.

“The corporate warrior becomes a corporate war criminal if his family presses his case,” said one social critic, in a recent commentary in a local business magazine.

Families of victims say employers tend to shun them, refusing to disclose the employee’s work hours prior to death. In one case, a firm refused to return a deceased employee’s passport to his wife, who wanted to document his relentless overseas travel.

But efforts to introduce legislation mandating that firms turn over such information have gone nowhere, since the majority party won’t support such measures and opposition parties are too weak to force them on the agenda, Omori said.

Still, public recognition of the problem is growing slowly. The National Defense Center for Karoshi Victims has set up hot line counseling centers in 53 cities. Recently, the group expanded abroad to New York and Brussels, noting a troubling trend of karoshi deaths overseas as more and more Japanese executives are sent abroad.

Calls to the hot line indicate that most victims are in their 40s and 50s; 40% are white-collar workers, including corporate executives and public servants, while 23.6% are drivers, factory and construction workers.

In recent years, the government has begun a campaign for “shorter working hours and more leisure time.” In 1988, labor law was revised to gradually shorten the work week to 40 hours from 48, and most financial institutions adopted the five-day work week a year later. But a year after the legal change, employees of only 9.6% of Japanese firms were down to a five-day work week.

Importantly, the motive behind the government’s “work less” campaign had nothing to do with karoshi. Rather, foreign criticism of perennial Japanese trade surpluses has pressured Tokyo into trying to at least appear less commercially aggressive.

Faced with an unsupportive government, apathetic public and politically powerful industry, victims’ groups are not optimistic that much will change. Japan’s economic battles will continue to extract an unspeakably high price on its men and women warriors, they say.

Just before he collapsed at home and died at age 43, advertising executive Toshitsugu Yagi wrote of his frustration:

“Can’t it be said that today’s armies of corporate workers are in fact slaves in every sense of the word?

“They are bought for money. Their worth is measured in working hours. They are powerless to defy their superiors.

“And these corporate slaves of today don’t even share the simplest pleasures that forced laborers of ages past enjoyed: the right to sit down at the dinner table with their families.”