10 ms·

How Japanese black companies oppress workers (2014)

179 points by rawgabbit 2y ago

infotainment 2y ago
> "I can't quit the job. If I say I'm going to quit, I'll be threatened that I will have to pay damages for quitting." Interestingly, this is actually possible under Japanese law/legal precedent. If an employee, for example, decides to put in notice and then half-ass their job until their departure date, a company could actually sue the employee and win. Other Japan-labor-law fun fact: if you are a contract worker, it is literally illegal for you to quit prior to your contract expiry date. Hope you like that job you signed onto! Obligatory disclaimer: IANAL
- vr46 2y ago
  All this has gone a long way to make me feel better about not keeping up my Japanese language skills after university. My youthful deep reverence for Japan and its culture shifted into realpolitik as I learned more and more, and I think another watch of Fear And Trembling is in order…
  - ninetyninenine 2y ago
    I kinda want to go there and purchase a 10k house in a village and chill. It’s basically a place where you can retire. I know a bunch of white people who have already done this. Just like how Japan isn’t characterized fully by anime it’s not fully characterized by corporate culture either.
    - vr46 2y ago
      Yeah, I think brown people are less welcome, although I still want to spend a month just wandering around record shops listening to Japanese jazz-funk and slurping noodles
    - astrange 2y ago
      The main issue for foreigners is that the pay is low. The culture can be bad (especially around tech) but it's not that bad. If you're really good, as I'd hope the people on here are, you can get into a foreign company and get paid… more than the average native.
      - adastra22 2y ago
        The pay is low, but the cost of living is also surprisingly low. It doesn’t take much to get by, so long as you’re not living in the most desirable areas in Tokyo.
        astrange 2y ago
        Sure, but unless you're going to stay forever you have more reason to care about costs wherever you came from. Might want to buy a house back there, or pay off student loans.
    - mc3301 2y ago
      Do you actually know many people (not through social media) that did this? I live here, and I know a few but they mostly fall into one of two camps. 1) Moving into and maintaining the house/land/community relationships is a labor of love, which involves a lot of work or 2) They don't last long once they realize the physical labor, the mental load of the language/culture/isolation. I'm in the process of buying a house here. I have helped other with the process, too.
      - ninetyninenine 2y ago
        I Airbnbed in the place of one guy who did it. And I know one more. The rest are on social media like you said. I think if a bunch of people just go into town and do it together it will be less isolating.
        ujikoluk 2y ago
        I don't think building an island is the answer. It will make it even difficult to integrate into the culture. And if you don't want to integrate into the culture, why are you there in the first place?
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        >And if you don't want to integrate into the culture, why are you there in the first place? A lot of immigrants leave their home countries not because they love the culture of their new country, but because they found living in their old country unbearable for some reason. Or just for economic reasons. Not everyone actually wants to integrate into a new culture; many don't. Just look at how many people in the US don't speak English, even though that's obviously the dominant culture.
    - pezezin 2y ago
      I actually live in the Japanese countryside, so let me tell you that there are two reasons why those houses are so cheap: 1. The construction quality of the average Japanese house is absolute garbage. Most likely you will need to demolish it and rebuild from scratch. 2. Outside of the big cities, Japan sucks hard. The average small city or village is just a bunch of big box stores and houses scattered everywhere. Many Japanese people want to move to the big cities just to enjoy proper services and some excitement in their lives. So if you move here I hope that you enjoy staying alone at home, because there is not much else to do.
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        >The average small city or village is just a bunch of big box stores and houses scattered everywhere. This sounds much like rural America. Houses scattered everywhere, and a super Walmart. The big difference I've noticed here in Japan (I live in Tokyo), at least from my window on the train going through rural areas, is that the houses tend to be clustered together much more closely. In rural America, everyone wants many acres of land to themselves, but in rural Japan, the land is usually used for farming and the houses are quite close together in a hamlet.
        pezezin 2y ago
        I understand what you mean, and perhaps "a collection of hamlets" is a more accurate description. In my experience, your perception depends heavily on your personal background. The city where I live (Misawa) hosts an American military base, and when talking with them nobody ever complaints about the urban sprawl, I guess it is normal for them. However, I am from Spain, a country where even small villages are very compact (we prefer to build all the houses together, and keep the farms outside), so for me Japanese villages feel very sparse. Another big difference is that in Spain we value public areas (the third space), and here public spaces range between infrequent and not-existent.
  - ivanbalepin 2y ago
    i wouldn't go that far, it's still a very fun language and a rich culture.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      It's also a lot nicer living here, in my experience, than in America in the last 8 years. Sure, there's some bad companies, but that's true everywhere.
      - adastra22 2y ago
        What has changed in America the last 8 years?
    - vr46 2y ago
      Oh, I still love it, just not in a rose-tinted goggles way, like I did when I was 18. I did work a few stints at a Japanese company in London and saw the slight clash of corporate cultures up close.
  - peterlk 2y ago
    Totally unrelated… I’m really excited to see VR46 as a username, especially since the championship was today
    - vr46 2y ago
      A good season, with the front runners doing something really special at times. Conflicted fan of the sprints and so many races due to the pressure to squeeze money from the sport, but enjoying the extra racing.
- arunc 2y ago
  For those not from the Usenet days, IANAL: I'm not a lawyer.
  - notpushkin 2y ago
    I think it's still a widely used acronym.
- kochikame 2y ago
  To balance this comment, if you are a full time employee you are super well protected and cannot be fired for any reason other than gross negligence or actively breaking the law. Managing out a poor performer in Japan is a grinding process that can easily take two years from start to finish
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    At a US F500 company, HR can still make it onerous to get rid of an underperforming employee. Wants multiple documented poor reviews to avoid any potential for follow-up legal action (which seems incredibly unlikely, but HR wants to cover their butts).
    - lumost 2y ago
      I suspect these processes are also there to prevent “rocking the boat”. There are a number of US F500 companies that are effectively static businesses with predictable market dynamics. In a stable environment, in a large organization, it doesn’t really make sense to fire people in the hopes of getting someone better. You are more likely to get someone worse, or more expensive, or who has a long ramp up period. It’s possible that the manager trying to exit an employee is exercising subjective/uncalibrated performance guidelines- or is covering their own incompetence.
  - irusensei 2y ago
    That explains this: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/16/bandai_namcos_layoff_technique_is/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/16/bandai_namcos_layoff_... > "Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws" > Canceling some game projects and shuttering existing ones has helped, but facing the need for further adjustments, Bandai Namco has reportedly turned to the unspoken Japanese tradition of layoff-by-boredom by stuffing unwanted employees into oidashi beya, or "expulsion rooms." > Do a quick online search for oidashi beya and you'll see plenty of websites explaining the practice, or otherwise discussing how difficult it is to fire people in Japan thanks to strong labor protections. It's not a new practice, either: For those that haven't been reading the Reg for the past 11 years, we even wrote about it way back in 2013 as a wave of the practice swept through Japan and hit tech workers at companies reportedly including Panasonic, Sony and other firms.
- jandrewrogers 2y ago
  The majority of developed countries have subtle versions of this. I was naive about this before I worked outside the US and saw the practical impact. The chains go both ways and have real downsides. Having seen the perverse incentives this creates and the various ways in which it can be abused, I have come to the conclusion that the American “at-will” employment model is actually a good thing and benefits workers. No one should discount the value of having the power to tell your employer to fuck off at a moment’s notice with no practical repercussions. No one should be required to stay in an abusive relationship a moment longer than they wish to.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    Yeah it is definitely an America-centric take. Most of Europe also has strong contract laws. “At-will employment” cuts both ways.
    - croes 2y ago
      Most of them have strong employee protection laws too which prevent such an abuse
      - adastra22 2y ago
        That’s what the phrase “cuts both ways” means.
        curiousgal 2y ago
        They're saying that it cuts one way.
        adastra22 2y ago
        Employee protection laws have nothing to do with what I was talking about. As an employee in the USA (contract or freelance), I can quit any time I like. My contract may be for two years, but I can cancel it tomorrow if I want, and only in extreme cases is there any penalty for doing so. In the EU, if I sign a 1-year contract there is an expectation that I will actually work that year. If I break contract by deciding to get another job without negotiating early exit with my employer, I could be on the hook for damages. This doesn't come up very often because in the EU people just don't break contracts like this--if you want to hire someone you ask when their contract is up and work around that. But the reason why people behave this way is because the termination of a contract is a serious deal and hard to navigate. The US is (mostly) at-will employment. One aspect of that everyone talks about is that the company can fire you at any time for almost any reason. That sucks. The flip side though is that you can fire your employer any time you like, and walk of the job to somewhere that pays you better or treats you better. This is at the root of a lot of American dynamism, and a good thing. At-will employment is definitely something that cuts both ways.
- chasontherobot 2y ago
  Neither of these things is completely true. 1. While it is technically true a company could sue a worker for quitting, the amount of damages they'd have to show is far beyond anything they'd be able to do outside of an upper management position. As far as I know, you could not sue someone for doing a half assed job. 2. I'm not even sure how you are using the word "illegal" here. AFAIK there is no provisions in criminal law for punishing people who break employment contracts. What I assume you are talking about is that a contract worker is bound by the terms of their contract as far as notice to quit goes, but there are a couple of limits to this. - This only applies in the first year of the contract. After the contract has been renewed once, standard Japanese labor law applies, which is two weeks of notice. - Similar to the above statement about suing someone for quitting, Japanese law only allows for suits to be for actual damages, so the company would have to prove significant damages to make the suit worth it. Contract workers are generally not high value employees so it would be unusual for one to be worth suing over.
  - hackit2 2y ago
    > a half assed job A judge would automatically throw out the case if this was the argument for suing an employee. The reasoning being, if you continued to pay the employee during the term of their employment, and you knew that the employee was not performing based on some KPI or some yard stick, you would issue warning to the employee to improve their performance, or you would fire the employee on the spot. Continuing keep an underperforming employee is giving tactic consent that their work is reasonably acceptable because if it wasn't, you would start disciplinary action or cease their employment. Threating a employee with coercive threats (such as threats of legal action) is going to land the business into hot water in any modern society.
    - lmm 2y ago
      > The reasoning being, if you continued to pay the employee during the term of their employment, and you knew that the employee was not performing based on some KPI or some yard stick, you would issue warning to the employee to improve their performance, or you would fire the employee on the spot. Continuing keep an underperforming employee is giving tactic consent that their work is reasonably acceptable because if it wasn't, you would start disciplinary action or cease their employment. We're talking about an employee on a fixed term contract, so there's not really any scope for disciplinary action of the "performance improvement plan" type. And the argument would be that they were hired because of a time-sensitive job (hence the need for this kind of irregular employee) and so just not paying them for work doesn't make the company whole, they needed someone to do that work at that specific point in time and if not then they have damages that are much larger than the salary they would've paid. Of course by the time you get to court you can poke several holes in this argument. But under Japanese law it's a valid argument on its face, so it's something the employer can use to threaten.
- skhr0680 2y ago
  > a company could actually sue the employee and win. It's difficult and costs money to prove that someone is half-assing their job on purpose, and that cost a company a specific dollar amount of losses. It's why they may threaten to sue, but rarely do. > Other Japan-labor-law fun fact: if you are a contract worker, it is literally illegal for you to quit prior to your contract expiry date. Hope you like that job you signed onto! It's technically a contract violation, but there are many exceptions that allow you to quit within the first year, and that's assuming the company is totally above board legally (hint: if it's a black company, then they aren't.)
- roobs 2y ago
  I live in Japan and while also not a lawyer I've had experiences with the labor bureau - this is totally false, and even explicitly stated in the Labor Standards Act: "Article 5: An employer must not force a worker to work against their will through the use of physical violence, intimidation, confinement, or any other means that unjustly restricts that worker's mental or physical freedom. ... Article 16: An employer must not form a contract that prescribes a monetary penalty for breach of a labor contract or establishes the amount of compensation for loss or damage in advance." (Source: https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3567 https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3567) This explicitly applies to contract workers (契約社員) too, and protections for employees (正社員) are so strong that it can often take months of documentation to dismiss someone. Whether people know they have these protections, knew they had them before they sign something their company gives them or feel comfortable actually reporting when a company has violated them is a different story. But basic salary is protected strongly enough that most Japanese companies heavily weight compensation on annual/semi-annual bonuses, housing allowances etc... (which are not protected).
  - jalapenos 2y ago
    I think this is only a prohibition on liquidated damages clauses though (plus making the act of even writing a penalty clause, which are already unenforceable, unlawful). It doesn't appear to be an exclusion of actual damages due to e.g. a one year contract worker quitting after 6 months, if it actually caused their employer damages.
    - roobs 2y ago
      I can't show you a specific legislation that says "you cannot hold workers liable for your losses", but the proposition seems a bit absurd to me because that just seems like unlimited liability on the worker; could you sue a worker who has to take extended sick leave because they become disabled or otherwise unable to work? Again to be clear I'm talking about contract employees 契約社員 who fall under the scope of the Labor Standards act - freelancers who agree to pay a penalty if they breach contract I'm not sure on how enforceable that would be.
- pif 2y ago
  > If an employee, for example, decides to put in notice and then half-ass their job until their departure date, Suppose you are fired, and the company decides unilaterally to halve your salary during the notice period, wouldn't you get nasty about it? > if you are a contract worker, it is literally illegal for you to quit prior to your contract expiry date As long as it is illegal for the company to fire you as well, I don't see any problem. Why should a party of a contract be free to breach it at will while the other remains constrained?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - JCharante 2y ago
    > I don't see any problem. Why should a party of a contract be free to breach it at will while the other remains constrained? Companies are run to make money, while people usually enter employment contracts in order to have money to feed their families and survive. Humans usually come to the consensus that people are more important than profits. A company doesn't need to be doing anything illegal for the working conditions to be unsafe. I am still boycotting Paris Baguette and their sister companies because of their stubbornness and refusal to go beyond the legal minimums in safety equipment. 2 years ago a 23-year old employee got pulled into a sauce making machine and was crushed to death, with nobody finding her body until the next day. Let's say you are a bright 22-year old from the Philippines who got offered 3x your peers salary for working at an industrial bakery. It doesn't sound so bad right? Now let's say your friend got killed by machinery, and the company refuses to take responsibility because the safety equipment that could have prevented their death was optional and not legally required. You're 4 months into your 12-month contract. Do you have enough money to even get a flight back home? Do you have enough money to break your contract and pay the company for your flight from your home country, pay the company for breaking your subsidized lease in the dorms, etc? No you don't. That is a bad situation to be in. If it were me I would break the contract and just never come back to Korea. They're not going to extradite you for this debt, but does everyone know that? Especially migrant workers? Now I know this is about Japan and not Korea. Look into how many Vietnamese go work in the textile industry in Japan and get injured. Should there really be more barriers and intimidation when it comes to forcing the workers to stay for the duration of their contract when their roommate was crippled by the machinery? Or should it be easier for people to leave potentially dangerous situations? --- This also applies to white collar workers. Do you know how many Indian college students are lured to go work at a Japanese company with the promise of a high salary, only to then move to Tokyo and realize they're spending way more money than they expected due to the higher COL? Companies absolutely take advantage of this system. In the US companies usually only offer contracts to highly skilled workers, while in other countries companies offer contracts in order to trap individuals into poor working conditions and being underpaid when they're naive to the job market.
- jalapenos 2y ago
  Constitution of Japan, Article 18, prohibition of forced labor. So "illegal" isn't the right word. While damages are theoretically possible for leaving a fixed term employment contract early (with an exception after one year has passed), I'd be very interested in the precedent you're talking of, regarding an actual case of a contract employee being sued for quitting early. Only case I found was the K's International case, 1992, where an employee quit after 4 days, and the employer sued and was awarded damages (amount unknown) due to the disruption it caused. I couldn't find any further details though.
- unscaled 2y ago
  > If an employee, for example, decides to put in notice and then half-ass their job until their departure date, a company could actually sue the employee and win. That sounds rather exaggerated. There may have been cases of an employee being sued for damages by their a employer for not performing their jobs well, but I've personally never heard of them and without digging deep into courts records, I doubt there are many of these. The reason I highly doubt that, is that even just firing employees in Japan who are half-assing their job requires going to court and providing ample evidence that the employee has been continuously under-performing even though they were notified, given opportunity and failed to improve. This standard is considered so high, that Japanese companies rarely fire employees for this type of reason (Ordinary termination 普通解雇 futsuu kaiko). When companies absolutely want to get rid of a certain employee, they often prefer to slowly make the employee's life miserable by giving them them demeaning tasks (or in some cases just no tasks at all!), bullying them and cutting their pay — a practice generally called iyagarase (roughly translated as "making someone feeling unpleasant"). That kind of play can also land the employer in legal trouble, but at least the burden of proof would fall on the employee. In many other cases still, companies just keep around employees that are under performing or convince them to take an voluntary retirement package. In addition to all of that, employment contracts generally require a 30 day notice before quitting in Japan (I guess this is the maximum set by law). Combine that with the fact that most employees tend to have at least 14 days of unused leave accumulated, which they'd use just before leaving, they're not left with so enough working days in which they can half-ass their jobs. I'm not quite sure about breaking your contract for contract employees, but it the original example ("I'll be threatened that I will have to pay damages for quitting") doesn't seem like a contract employee, and the term "black companies" and the discourse around usually refers to full-time employment. It's probably just threats, as the quote says. Managers sometimes say the craziest things to scare their companies out of quitting.
wenc 2y ago
Needs a (2014). This was from almost a decade ago.
- tacitusarc 2y ago
  *over (somehow)
- raverbashing 2y ago
  > (2014)... almost a decade ago. Oh bummer I cannot quite believe it but it checks out
- rawgabbit 2y ago
  Done.
k_sze 2y ago
Please add [2014]. It's an interesting read, but temporal context is important. The world has been through a lot. Even if we talk only about Japan, there has been - COVID - Tokyo 2020 Olympics - 3 prime ministers leaving their posts - Shinzo Abe getting shot
- fomine3 2y ago
  The biggest changes in this decade about work environment was the death of Matsuri Takahashi. Work environment in big company is significantly improved after that. https://www.mercer.com/insights/law-and-policy/japan-adopts-work-style-labor-reforms/ https://www.mercer.com/insights/law-and-policy/japan-adopts-...
- rawgabbit 2y ago
  Done.
- waihtis 2y ago
  > Shinzo Abe getting shot Assassinated, you mean.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Assassinated via getting shot, yes.
    - waihtis 2y ago
      Shot is much more inaccurate of a description than assassinated, unless you want to ignore/downplay a sitting political leader getting murdered for political purposes.
      - mekoka 2y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe
  - 2y ago
autumnstwilight 2y ago
As someone living in Japan (and working for a mostly reasonable Japanese-owned and operated company), I'm often a bit annoyed by the people confidently spouting second-hand Reddit knowledge that all Japanese workers are in situations like this (e.g. returning home from work at midnight, unable to quit, etc). If every company was a black company, they probably wouldn't have a word for it! That said, it is far more common to work overtime here than in my home country and I'm puzzled by how many Japanese people I encounter who are like "Yeah working too much overtime is bad and people shouldn't have to do it. I don't like having to work overtime. Also I work multiple hours of overtime every day and have no plans to do anything to change that, it is what it is." When I inquire further, it doesn't seem like they CAN'T change jobs, more like inertia and passivity (and perhaps a sense that it's too hard/unlikely to find a significantly better situation). Going through the job search and interviewing process again is apparently a higher immediate mental barrier than the annoyance of working overtime every day.
Culonavirus 2y ago
Funny seeing a post about these as that's what I was recently reminded of when reading this post: https://x.com/DOGE/status/1857076831104434289 https://x.com/DOGE/status/1857076831104434289 ("80+ hours per week" ... what kind of a psycho even writes this down and puts it out there as if it was normal in any way...)
- a13n 2y ago
  pretty normal in banking/consulting fields. not sure they write it in the job listing though.
  - lumost 2y ago
    80 hours is mostly a lie for folks experienced enough to have families. What becomes more common is 80+ hours of “I’m responsive whenever I’m asked.”
    - soared 2y ago
      +1 80 hours - if a low experience employee completed the work, but only 30 hours since I did.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      > mostly a lie for folks experienced enough to have families Surviving to that level is HARD. Most Junior Analysts in the IB and Consulting World flame out and exit the industry within 2-3 years.
      - lumost 2y ago
        Aye - it’s similar across most high end tech work. At the same time, most people in those positions have 5+ years of experience. Most studies show that such people maintain a lie about how much they are working.
        alephnerd 2y ago
labster 2y ago
There are multiple companies in Japan that specialize in quitting people’s jobs by proxy. I assume it helps because you can’t illegally threaten a person through a witness. https://soranews24.com/2024/11/13/japanese-job-quitting-service-contacted-by-other-job-quitting-service-because-employee-wants-to-quit/ https://soranews24.com/2024/11/13/japanese-job-quitting-serv...
MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
> The Benesse Group has constantly pursued “Benesse (well-being)” and focused on “people” to support the realization of their dreams and ideals. [0] This is the black company in the third spot. Curious. [0] https://www.benesse.co.jp/brand/en/about/ https://www.benesse.co.jp/brand/en/about/
- rawgabbit 2y ago
  This the parent company that sued the union for going on strike and was struck down on all counts by the Tokyo High Court. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_Berlitz_Japan_strike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_Berlitz_Ja...
rawgabbit 2y ago
“Black Corporations” Still Common in Japan https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01840/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01840/
anovikov 2y ago
Why don't they just emigrate? Work culture seems to be better just about everywhere and on top of that, salaries in Japan are shit, and anyone with half the Japanese work ethics will be a dream employee in U.S. or let alone Europe which is full of entitled, lazy slackers.
- autumnstwilight 2y ago
  At least in IT, it's not even necessary to emigrate- foreign owned companies offer significantly better salaries and working conditions. The sticking point is English ability. It's genuinely a very difficult thing to learn a second language to the point of being workplace-functional in it, and an additional level of daily stress and mental effort to do everything in your non-native language. The culture here doesn't exactly reward risk-taking and failing in public, and unfortunately becoming proficient in a language requires that you stumble through things a lot while you practice. Furthermore, most Japanese people have experienced fairly ineffective methods of teaching English in schools and ended up rather demoralized about their ability to learn it. (And if you're currently in a job that demands a lot of overtime, when do you study?)
  - anovikov 2y ago
    But isn't it kinda mandatory for any IT person to speak usable English, worldwide? Even if super closed societies where language education sucks beyond imagination, like Russia, they mostly do.
    - detaro 2y ago
      Not really, no. Being able to read it is harder to avoid, but usefully communicating in it is not needed in many places.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      Not really in Japan. Everything is available in Japanese if it's not Japanese made in the first place. Complete lack of English skill + wide coverage of industry is probably a huge moat for Japan even in IT.
Daz1 2y ago
this is mostly fantastical nonsense. I go home at 6pm everyday. go outside at 6pm and you will see businesspeople everywhere also on the commute home. also it is nearly impossible to fire anyone in Japan for anything
- goykasi 2y ago
  That is my experience too. In my neighborhood, by 8pm, the streets are crawling with drunk salarymen (and women) stumbling out of izakayas on their way to a snack and/or karaoke -- 5 days per week. They clearly werent working overtime with how often I see them.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    So they start work at 12?
    - goykasi 2y ago
      I would guess they start around 8 or 9 in the morning.
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        So they’re working 12 hour days 5 days a week? That sounds like overtime to me.
        goykasi 2y ago
        Not sure why youre being a contrarian. It seems like you didnt bother to understand my post. But yah, start work at 8-9, knock off at 6 to start drinking heavily at the local izakaya, hammered by 8 or 9 and stumbling towards the snack until last train (or later if the company pays for cabs). I see the same thing everyday.
        saagarjha 2y ago
kstenerud 2y ago
I still remember the day of the explosion down the road from our office in Nagoya. The worker had been driven to such desperation and rage that he sealed himself off in the boss's office after dousing everything (including himself) in gasoline. The cops were there, trying to talk him down, but the fumes had reached such a concentration that the next time the aircon kicked in, the place exploded. The worker exploitation in Japan is BAD, and has been for decades. When you employ someone, you don't technically own them, but culturally you absolutely do.
bcdtttt 2y ago
Now do "How American companies oppress workers and run lives". We got wage theft, abuse, sexual harassment, at will firings, wage slavery, and all sorts of fucked up healthcare forcing people to work here. Edit: to say nothing of our prison slave labor here.
papaver-somnamb 2y ago
On the point of Japanese companies shedding staff .. There is a friendly, win-win way to move skilled staff out of your company, but my impression is it's not widely known nor often occur. When a company finds that a particular staff member "isn't a good fit for the company" they will add this person to an informal list that is traded through back-channels with other companies. At some future time such personnel might be directly approached by headhunters on behalf of inquiring companies. Of course the current employer overlooks the poaching activity, they want the member gone. The only clue the office gets is one day out of the blue that member shows up to work wearing full interview attire, and might soon after announce that they are moving on. For the managerial tier and above, they frequently socialize and will have a sense of when it is time to move on, in accordance with societal expectations. Given that the managerial profession comprises a relatively smaller group in Japan, they can expect to land their next gig soon enough. As for the rest, I've heard of plenty of tactics used to induce (eventual) voluntary departure, "black" or otherwise. I don't advocate for them myself, but the culture, market, and law is what it is..
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  so - the implication is that they are good fits for these other companies? How does this work? How do you know that Bob is not a good fit for your company but a good fit for Apple? I would suppose then different metrics are used than just quality and quantity of work as that would imply being no good wherever you went?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
  That only works if it really is a fit issue/the process is primarily used for fit issues, no? Otherwise, why would a company headhunt an employee that is doing such a bad job that another company wants to fire them?
  - papaver-somnamb 2y ago
    Yes cultural fitness reasons. Everything off the top of my head (drawing from experience) are exactly that. Two quick examples: Conflicts of character between them and their uppers along the report line. Being tossed aside for failure due to reasons out of their control. But the staff member is still damn good at something, and is in need of a different venue to shine. This shedding activity is referred to as the child's playing-card game "baba-nuki" (Old Maid). You are drawing a card from the other company's hand but don't know what card it is because they aren't showing you the face side. There is an emotional element to it (as with nearly everything else here) but also, maybe most importantly, Japanese society is quite fluid this way, it's one of the country's strengths. Everybody can understand if it is explained to them.
d--b 2y ago
I worked at a onsen for a month in 2004. I was an intern learning Japanese so they were easy on me, but the ladies working there were doing 6.30am to 9.30pm, every day (including weekends), no pause. The hotel owned the apartments they lived in, and everything in the town was run by onsens, so there was no "job market" really to play. I don't know how much they were paid, but it didn't seem like they were rolling in it. Many of them were complaining about their husbands not working, drinking etc., so I can only imagine that at 9.30pm, they would actually take care of everything in their homes as well. One day, one of them just collapsed, and she was given a day off. Yet, the workers seemed to accept this as "business as usual" and were generally good-spirited. They were totally screwed over by management, cause the hotel was really expensive, and they knew they were being taken advantage of. But such is the effect of culture on people. Anyways, all this to say that I think that pretty much every job in Japan would be seen as the darkest shade of black in the West. And I can't imagine how awful the conditions must be for the blacker companies in Japan.
fexed 2y ago
A follow-up analysis 10 years later would be really interesting
gverrilla 2y ago
Anti-communism at it's best.
hulitu 2y ago
> "He even received a personal letter from the evil president in his paycheck envelope saying: "you should reflect on your sales this month by killing yourself."" This is illegal in some countries and will put one in jail.
vivekd 2y ago
this article was a bit annoying - several paragraphs of filler background, then a video from some movie - then a list of bad companies ... and then finally at the end you get told what exactly black companies are -list of common characteristics of black companies. Made for an irritating read
thenthenthen 2y ago
Sounds like every ‘normal’ job in Shenzhen, China
2112syrinx 2y ago
The term "black", etimologicaly speaking, is racist and should not be used. Japanese culture seems also to be racist, so not a surprise. Instead of "black companies", kindly use "evil companies" instead.
- 123yawaworht456 2y ago
  let's rename Niger and Nigeria while we're at it. goddamn racists
- mekoka 2y ago
  I suppose that's also why Japanese martial artists work their way toward a black belt.
  - 2112syrinx 2y ago
    I don't think this is related to what I mentioned. I'm truly surprised that this subject is not relevant to you or, treated like if I was joking. I am just saying the term has indeed the connotation of "what is black is wrong". I failed in providing an article to corroborate with my position. I will try to find something.
    - akimbostrawman 2y ago
      Black used in a bad context = THATS RACIST Black used in a good context = THATS UNRELATED you would think at some point cognitive dissonance would kick in but virtue signaling and victim complex high is just too addictive and rewarding
- krageon 2y ago
  This would read significantly less like empty trolling or virtue signalling if you added why you think it is culturally the case that the "black" in "black companies" is somehow related to skin colour (and not, say, the inherent danger of an unlit environment - such as at night). This would have a nice side-effect of you almost certainly realising you are wrong - as the connotation as far as I'm aware doesn't have racist overtones. In this way you'd be doing yourself a service because you'd need to be angry over less things and you'd be doing everyone else a service because they wouldn't read something so clearly born from a US-centric world view. A case could be made that having one of those and not bothering to learn about other cultures is itself fairly xenophobic.
commandlinefan 2y ago
> the Labor Ministry began a crackdown on black companies, too "We will definitely discuss the formation a task force to examine the ramifications of potentially instituting regulations in the future"

179 points by rawgabbit 2y ago

> "I can't quit the job. If I say I'm going to quit, I'll be threatened that I will have to pay damages for quitting." Interestingly, this is actually possible under Japanese law/legal precedent. If an employee, for example, decides to put in notice and then half-ass their job until their departure date, a company could actually sue the employee and win. Other Japan-labor-law fun fact: if you are a contract worker, it is literally illegal for you to quit prior to your contract expiry date. Hope you like that job you signed onto! Obligatory disclaimer: IANAL

vr46 2y ago
All this has gone a long way to make me feel better about not keeping up my Japanese language skills after university. My youthful deep reverence for Japan and its culture shifted into realpolitik as I learned more and more, and I think another watch of Fear And Trembling is in order…
- ninetyninenine 2y ago
  I kinda want to go there and purchase a 10k house in a village and chill. It’s basically a place where you can retire. I know a bunch of white people who have already done this. Just like how Japan isn’t characterized fully by anime it’s not fully characterized by corporate culture either.
  - vr46 2y ago
    Yeah, I think brown people are less welcome, although I still want to spend a month just wandering around record shops listening to Japanese jazz-funk and slurping noodles
  - astrange 2y ago
    The main issue for foreigners is that the pay is low. The culture can be bad (especially around tech) but it's not that bad. If you're really good, as I'd hope the people on here are, you can get into a foreign company and get paid… more than the average native.
    - adastra22 2y ago
      The pay is low, but the cost of living is also surprisingly low. It doesn’t take much to get by, so long as you’re not living in the most desirable areas in Tokyo.
      - astrange 2y ago
        Sure, but unless you're going to stay forever you have more reason to care about costs wherever you came from. Might want to buy a house back there, or pay off student loans.
  - mc3301 2y ago
    Do you actually know many people (not through social media) that did this? I live here, and I know a few but they mostly fall into one of two camps. 1) Moving into and maintaining the house/land/community relationships is a labor of love, which involves a lot of work or 2) They don't last long once they realize the physical labor, the mental load of the language/culture/isolation. I'm in the process of buying a house here. I have helped other with the process, too.
    - ninetyninenine 2y ago
      I Airbnbed in the place of one guy who did it. And I know one more. The rest are on social media like you said. I think if a bunch of people just go into town and do it together it will be less isolating.
      - ujikoluk 2y ago
        I don't think building an island is the answer. It will make it even difficult to integrate into the culture. And if you don't want to integrate into the culture, why are you there in the first place?
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        >And if you don't want to integrate into the culture, why are you there in the first place? A lot of immigrants leave their home countries not because they love the culture of their new country, but because they found living in their old country unbearable for some reason. Or just for economic reasons. Not everyone actually wants to integrate into a new culture; many don't. Just look at how many people in the US don't speak English, even though that's obviously the dominant culture.
  - pezezin 2y ago
    I actually live in the Japanese countryside, so let me tell you that there are two reasons why those houses are so cheap: 1. The construction quality of the average Japanese house is absolute garbage. Most likely you will need to demolish it and rebuild from scratch. 2. Outside of the big cities, Japan sucks hard. The average small city or village is just a bunch of big box stores and houses scattered everywhere. Many Japanese people want to move to the big cities just to enjoy proper services and some excitement in their lives. So if you move here I hope that you enjoy staying alone at home, because there is not much else to do.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      >The average small city or village is just a bunch of big box stores and houses scattered everywhere. This sounds much like rural America. Houses scattered everywhere, and a super Walmart. The big difference I've noticed here in Japan (I live in Tokyo), at least from my window on the train going through rural areas, is that the houses tend to be clustered together much more closely. In rural America, everyone wants many acres of land to themselves, but in rural Japan, the land is usually used for farming and the houses are quite close together in a hamlet.
      - pezezin 2y ago
        I understand what you mean, and perhaps "a collection of hamlets" is a more accurate description. In my experience, your perception depends heavily on your personal background. The city where I live (Misawa) hosts an American military base, and when talking with them nobody ever complaints about the urban sprawl, I guess it is normal for them. However, I am from Spain, a country where even small villages are very compact (we prefer to build all the houses together, and keep the farms outside), so for me Japanese villages feel very sparse. Another big difference is that in Spain we value public areas (the third space), and here public spaces range between infrequent and not-existent.
- ivanbalepin 2y ago
  i wouldn't go that far, it's still a very fun language and a rich culture.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    It's also a lot nicer living here, in my experience, than in America in the last 8 years. Sure, there's some bad companies, but that's true everywhere.
    - adastra22 2y ago
      What has changed in America the last 8 years?
  - vr46 2y ago
    Oh, I still love it, just not in a rose-tinted goggles way, like I did when I was 18. I did work a few stints at a Japanese company in London and saw the slight clash of corporate cultures up close.
- peterlk 2y ago
  Totally unrelated… I’m really excited to see VR46 as a username, especially since the championship was today
  - vr46 2y ago
    A good season, with the front runners doing something really special at times. Conflicted fan of the sprints and so many races due to the pressure to squeeze money from the sport, but enjoying the extra racing.
arunc 2y ago
For those not from the Usenet days, IANAL: I'm not a lawyer.
- notpushkin 2y ago
  I think it's still a widely used acronym.
kochikame 2y ago
To balance this comment, if you are a full time employee you are super well protected and cannot be fired for any reason other than gross negligence or actively breaking the law. Managing out a poor performer in Japan is a grinding process that can easily take two years from start to finish
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  At a US F500 company, HR can still make it onerous to get rid of an underperforming employee. Wants multiple documented poor reviews to avoid any potential for follow-up legal action (which seems incredibly unlikely, but HR wants to cover their butts).
  - lumost 2y ago
    I suspect these processes are also there to prevent “rocking the boat”. There are a number of US F500 companies that are effectively static businesses with predictable market dynamics. In a stable environment, in a large organization, it doesn’t really make sense to fire people in the hopes of getting someone better. You are more likely to get someone worse, or more expensive, or who has a long ramp up period. It’s possible that the manager trying to exit an employee is exercising subjective/uncalibrated performance guidelines- or is covering their own incompetence.
- irusensei 2y ago
  That explains this: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/16/bandai_namcos_layoff_technique_is/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/16/bandai_namcos_layoff_... > "Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws" > Canceling some game projects and shuttering existing ones has helped, but facing the need for further adjustments, Bandai Namco has reportedly turned to the unspoken Japanese tradition of layoff-by-boredom by stuffing unwanted employees into oidashi beya, or "expulsion rooms." > Do a quick online search for oidashi beya and you'll see plenty of websites explaining the practice, or otherwise discussing how difficult it is to fire people in Japan thanks to strong labor protections. It's not a new practice, either: For those that haven't been reading the Reg for the past 11 years, we even wrote about it way back in 2013 as a wave of the practice swept through Japan and hit tech workers at companies reportedly including Panasonic, Sony and other firms.
jandrewrogers 2y ago
The majority of developed countries have subtle versions of this. I was naive about this before I worked outside the US and saw the practical impact. The chains go both ways and have real downsides. Having seen the perverse incentives this creates and the various ways in which it can be abused, I have come to the conclusion that the American “at-will” employment model is actually a good thing and benefits workers. No one should discount the value of having the power to tell your employer to fuck off at a moment’s notice with no practical repercussions. No one should be required to stay in an abusive relationship a moment longer than they wish to.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Yeah it is definitely an America-centric take. Most of Europe also has strong contract laws. “At-will employment” cuts both ways.
  - croes 2y ago
    Most of them have strong employee protection laws too which prevent such an abuse
    - adastra22 2y ago
      That’s what the phrase “cuts both ways” means.
      - curiousgal 2y ago
        They're saying that it cuts one way.
        adastra22 2y ago
        Employee protection laws have nothing to do with what I was talking about. As an employee in the USA (contract or freelance), I can quit any time I like. My contract may be for two years, but I can cancel it tomorrow if I want, and only in extreme cases is there any penalty for doing so. In the EU, if I sign a 1-year contract there is an expectation that I will actually work that year. If I break contract by deciding to get another job without negotiating early exit with my employer, I could be on the hook for damages. This doesn't come up very often because in the EU people just don't break contracts like this--if you want to hire someone you ask when their contract is up and work around that. But the reason why people behave this way is because the termination of a contract is a serious deal and hard to navigate. The US is (mostly) at-will employment. One aspect of that everyone talks about is that the company can fire you at any time for almost any reason. That sucks. The flip side though is that you can fire your employer any time you like, and walk of the job to somewhere that pays you better or treats you better. This is at the root of a lot of American dynamism, and a good thing. At-will employment is definitely something that cuts both ways.
chasontherobot 2y ago
Neither of these things is completely true. 1. While it is technically true a company could sue a worker for quitting, the amount of damages they'd have to show is far beyond anything they'd be able to do outside of an upper management position. As far as I know, you could not sue someone for doing a half assed job. 2. I'm not even sure how you are using the word "illegal" here. AFAIK there is no provisions in criminal law for punishing people who break employment contracts. What I assume you are talking about is that a contract worker is bound by the terms of their contract as far as notice to quit goes, but there are a couple of limits to this. - This only applies in the first year of the contract. After the contract has been renewed once, standard Japanese labor law applies, which is two weeks of notice. - Similar to the above statement about suing someone for quitting, Japanese law only allows for suits to be for actual damages, so the company would have to prove significant damages to make the suit worth it. Contract workers are generally not high value employees so it would be unusual for one to be worth suing over.
- hackit2 2y ago
  > a half assed job A judge would automatically throw out the case if this was the argument for suing an employee. The reasoning being, if you continued to pay the employee during the term of their employment, and you knew that the employee was not performing based on some KPI or some yard stick, you would issue warning to the employee to improve their performance, or you would fire the employee on the spot. Continuing keep an underperforming employee is giving tactic consent that their work is reasonably acceptable because if it wasn't, you would start disciplinary action or cease their employment. Threating a employee with coercive threats (such as threats of legal action) is going to land the business into hot water in any modern society.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > The reasoning being, if you continued to pay the employee during the term of their employment, and you knew that the employee was not performing based on some KPI or some yard stick, you would issue warning to the employee to improve their performance, or you would fire the employee on the spot. Continuing keep an underperforming employee is giving tactic consent that their work is reasonably acceptable because if it wasn't, you would start disciplinary action or cease their employment. We're talking about an employee on a fixed term contract, so there's not really any scope for disciplinary action of the "performance improvement plan" type. And the argument would be that they were hired because of a time-sensitive job (hence the need for this kind of irregular employee) and so just not paying them for work doesn't make the company whole, they needed someone to do that work at that specific point in time and if not then they have damages that are much larger than the salary they would've paid. Of course by the time you get to court you can poke several holes in this argument. But under Japanese law it's a valid argument on its face, so it's something the employer can use to threaten.
skhr0680 2y ago
> a company could actually sue the employee and win. It's difficult and costs money to prove that someone is half-assing their job on purpose, and that cost a company a specific dollar amount of losses. It's why they may threaten to sue, but rarely do. > Other Japan-labor-law fun fact: if you are a contract worker, it is literally illegal for you to quit prior to your contract expiry date. Hope you like that job you signed onto! It's technically a contract violation, but there are many exceptions that allow you to quit within the first year, and that's assuming the company is totally above board legally (hint: if it's a black company, then they aren't.)
roobs 2y ago
I live in Japan and while also not a lawyer I've had experiences with the labor bureau - this is totally false, and even explicitly stated in the Labor Standards Act: "Article 5: An employer must not force a worker to work against their will through the use of physical violence, intimidation, confinement, or any other means that unjustly restricts that worker's mental or physical freedom. ... Article 16: An employer must not form a contract that prescribes a monetary penalty for breach of a labor contract or establishes the amount of compensation for loss or damage in advance." (Source: https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3567 https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3567) This explicitly applies to contract workers (契約社員) too, and protections for employees (正社員) are so strong that it can often take months of documentation to dismiss someone. Whether people know they have these protections, knew they had them before they sign something their company gives them or feel comfortable actually reporting when a company has violated them is a different story. But basic salary is protected strongly enough that most Japanese companies heavily weight compensation on annual/semi-annual bonuses, housing allowances etc... (which are not protected).
- jalapenos 2y ago
  I think this is only a prohibition on liquidated damages clauses though (plus making the act of even writing a penalty clause, which are already unenforceable, unlawful). It doesn't appear to be an exclusion of actual damages due to e.g. a one year contract worker quitting after 6 months, if it actually caused their employer damages.
  - roobs 2y ago
    I can't show you a specific legislation that says "you cannot hold workers liable for your losses", but the proposition seems a bit absurd to me because that just seems like unlimited liability on the worker; could you sue a worker who has to take extended sick leave because they become disabled or otherwise unable to work? Again to be clear I'm talking about contract employees 契約社員 who fall under the scope of the Labor Standards act - freelancers who agree to pay a penalty if they breach contract I'm not sure on how enforceable that would be.
pif 2y ago
> If an employee, for example, decides to put in notice and then half-ass their job until their departure date, Suppose you are fired, and the company decides unilaterally to halve your salary during the notice period, wouldn't you get nasty about it? > if you are a contract worker, it is literally illegal for you to quit prior to your contract expiry date As long as it is illegal for the company to fire you as well, I don't see any problem. Why should a party of a contract be free to breach it at will while the other remains constrained?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- JCharante 2y ago
  > I don't see any problem. Why should a party of a contract be free to breach it at will while the other remains constrained? Companies are run to make money, while people usually enter employment contracts in order to have money to feed their families and survive. Humans usually come to the consensus that people are more important than profits. A company doesn't need to be doing anything illegal for the working conditions to be unsafe. I am still boycotting Paris Baguette and their sister companies because of their stubbornness and refusal to go beyond the legal minimums in safety equipment. 2 years ago a 23-year old employee got pulled into a sauce making machine and was crushed to death, with nobody finding her body until the next day. Let's say you are a bright 22-year old from the Philippines who got offered 3x your peers salary for working at an industrial bakery. It doesn't sound so bad right? Now let's say your friend got killed by machinery, and the company refuses to take responsibility because the safety equipment that could have prevented their death was optional and not legally required. You're 4 months into your 12-month contract. Do you have enough money to even get a flight back home? Do you have enough money to break your contract and pay the company for your flight from your home country, pay the company for breaking your subsidized lease in the dorms, etc? No you don't. That is a bad situation to be in. If it were me I would break the contract and just never come back to Korea. They're not going to extradite you for this debt, but does everyone know that? Especially migrant workers? Now I know this is about Japan and not Korea. Look into how many Vietnamese go work in the textile industry in Japan and get injured. Should there really be more barriers and intimidation when it comes to forcing the workers to stay for the duration of their contract when their roommate was crippled by the machinery? Or should it be easier for people to leave potentially dangerous situations? --- This also applies to white collar workers. Do you know how many Indian college students are lured to go work at a Japanese company with the promise of a high salary, only to then move to Tokyo and realize they're spending way more money than they expected due to the higher COL? Companies absolutely take advantage of this system. In the US companies usually only offer contracts to highly skilled workers, while in other countries companies offer contracts in order to trap individuals into poor working conditions and being underpaid when they're naive to the job market.
jalapenos 2y ago
Constitution of Japan, Article 18, prohibition of forced labor. So "illegal" isn't the right word. While damages are theoretically possible for leaving a fixed term employment contract early (with an exception after one year has passed), I'd be very interested in the precedent you're talking of, regarding an actual case of a contract employee being sued for quitting early. Only case I found was the K's International case, 1992, where an employee quit after 4 days, and the employer sued and was awarded damages (amount unknown) due to the disruption it caused. I couldn't find any further details though.
unscaled 2y ago
> If an employee, for example, decides to put in notice and then half-ass their job until their departure date, a company could actually sue the employee and win. That sounds rather exaggerated. There may have been cases of an employee being sued for damages by their a employer for not performing their jobs well, but I've personally never heard of them and without digging deep into courts records, I doubt there are many of these. The reason I highly doubt that, is that even just firing employees in Japan who are half-assing their job requires going to court and providing ample evidence that the employee has been continuously under-performing even though they were notified, given opportunity and failed to improve. This standard is considered so high, that Japanese companies rarely fire employees for this type of reason (Ordinary termination 普通解雇 futsuu kaiko). When companies absolutely want to get rid of a certain employee, they often prefer to slowly make the employee's life miserable by giving them them demeaning tasks (or in some cases just no tasks at all!), bullying them and cutting their pay — a practice generally called iyagarase (roughly translated as "making someone feeling unpleasant"). That kind of play can also land the employer in legal trouble, but at least the burden of proof would fall on the employee. In many other cases still, companies just keep around employees that are under performing or convince them to take an voluntary retirement package. In addition to all of that, employment contracts generally require a 30 day notice before quitting in Japan (I guess this is the maximum set by law). Combine that with the fact that most employees tend to have at least 14 days of unused leave accumulated, which they'd use just before leaving, they're not left with so enough working days in which they can half-ass their jobs. I'm not quite sure about breaking your contract for contract employees, but it the original example ("I'll be threatened that I will have to pay damages for quitting") doesn't seem like a contract employee, and the term "black companies" and the discourse around usually refers to full-time employment. It's probably just threats, as the quote says. Managers sometimes say the craziest things to scare their companies out of quitting.

wenc 2y ago

Needs a (2014). This was from almost a decade ago.

tacitusarc 2y ago
*over (somehow)
raverbashing 2y ago
> (2014)... almost a decade ago. Oh bummer I cannot quite believe it but it checks out
rawgabbit 2y ago
Done.

k_sze 2y ago

Please add [2014]. It's an interesting read, but temporal context is important. The world has been through a lot. Even if we talk only about Japan, there has been - COVID - Tokyo 2020 Olympics - 3 prime ministers leaving their posts - Shinzo Abe getting shot

fomine3 2y ago
The biggest changes in this decade about work environment was the death of Matsuri Takahashi. Work environment in big company is significantly improved after that. https://www.mercer.com/insights/law-and-policy/japan-adopts-work-style-labor-reforms/ https://www.mercer.com/insights/law-and-policy/japan-adopts-...
rawgabbit 2y ago
Done.
waihtis 2y ago
> Shinzo Abe getting shot Assassinated, you mean.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Assassinated via getting shot, yes.
  - waihtis 2y ago
    Shot is much more inaccurate of a description than assassinated, unless you want to ignore/downplay a sitting political leader getting murdered for political purposes.
    - mekoka 2y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe
- 2y ago

autumnstwilight 2y ago

As someone living in Japan (and working for a mostly reasonable Japanese-owned and operated company), I'm often a bit annoyed by the people confidently spouting second-hand Reddit knowledge that all Japanese workers are in situations like this (e.g. returning home from work at midnight, unable to quit, etc). If every company was a black company, they probably wouldn't have a word for it! That said, it is far more common to work overtime here than in my home country and I'm puzzled by how many Japanese people I encounter who are like "Yeah working too much overtime is bad and people shouldn't have to do it. I don't like having to work overtime. Also I work multiple hours of overtime every day and have no plans to do anything to change that, it is what it is." When I inquire further, it doesn't seem like they CAN'T change jobs, more like inertia and passivity (and perhaps a sense that it's too hard/unlikely to find a significantly better situation). Going through the job search and interviewing process again is apparently a higher immediate mental barrier than the annoyance of working overtime every day.

Culonavirus 2y ago

Funny seeing a post about these as that's what I was recently reminded of when reading this post: https://x.com/DOGE/status/1857076831104434289 https://x.com/DOGE/status/1857076831104434289 ("80+ hours per week" ... what kind of a psycho even writes this down and puts it out there as if it was normal in any way...)

a13n 2y ago
pretty normal in banking/consulting fields. not sure they write it in the job listing though.
- lumost 2y ago
  80 hours is mostly a lie for folks experienced enough to have families. What becomes more common is 80+ hours of “I’m responsive whenever I’m asked.”
  - soared 2y ago
    +1 80 hours - if a low experience employee completed the work, but only 30 hours since I did.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > mostly a lie for folks experienced enough to have families Surviving to that level is HARD. Most Junior Analysts in the IB and Consulting World flame out and exit the industry within 2-3 years.
    - lumost 2y ago
      Aye - it’s similar across most high end tech work. At the same time, most people in those positions have 5+ years of experience. Most studies show that such people maintain a lie about how much they are working.
      - alephnerd 2y ago

labster 2y ago

There are multiple companies in Japan that specialize in quitting people’s jobs by proxy. I assume it helps because you can’t illegally threaten a person through a witness. https://soranews24.com/2024/11/13/japanese-job-quitting-service-contacted-by-other-job-quitting-service-because-employee-wants-to-quit/ https://soranews24.com/2024/11/13/japanese-job-quitting-serv...

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago

> The Benesse Group has constantly pursued “Benesse (well-being)” and focused on “people” to support the realization of their dreams and ideals. [0] This is the black company in the third spot. Curious. [0] https://www.benesse.co.jp/brand/en/about/ https://www.benesse.co.jp/brand/en/about/

rawgabbit 2y ago
This the parent company that sued the union for going on strike and was struck down on all counts by the Tokyo High Court. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_Berlitz_Japan_strike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_Berlitz_Ja...

rawgabbit 2y ago

“Black Corporations” Still Common in Japan https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01840/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01840/

anovikov 2y ago

Why don't they just emigrate? Work culture seems to be better just about everywhere and on top of that, salaries in Japan are shit, and anyone with half the Japanese work ethics will be a dream employee in U.S. or let alone Europe which is full of entitled, lazy slackers.

autumnstwilight 2y ago
At least in IT, it's not even necessary to emigrate- foreign owned companies offer significantly better salaries and working conditions. The sticking point is English ability. It's genuinely a very difficult thing to learn a second language to the point of being workplace-functional in it, and an additional level of daily stress and mental effort to do everything in your non-native language. The culture here doesn't exactly reward risk-taking and failing in public, and unfortunately becoming proficient in a language requires that you stumble through things a lot while you practice. Furthermore, most Japanese people have experienced fairly ineffective methods of teaching English in schools and ended up rather demoralized about their ability to learn it. (And if you're currently in a job that demands a lot of overtime, when do you study?)
- anovikov 2y ago
  But isn't it kinda mandatory for any IT person to speak usable English, worldwide? Even if super closed societies where language education sucks beyond imagination, like Russia, they mostly do.
  - detaro 2y ago
    Not really, no. Being able to read it is harder to avoid, but usefully communicating in it is not needed in many places.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    Not really in Japan. Everything is available in Japanese if it's not Japanese made in the first place. Complete lack of English skill + wide coverage of industry is probably a huge moat for Japan even in IT.

Daz1 2y ago

this is mostly fantastical nonsense. I go home at 6pm everyday. go outside at 6pm and you will see businesspeople everywhere also on the commute home. also it is nearly impossible to fire anyone in Japan for anything

goykasi 2y ago
That is my experience too. In my neighborhood, by 8pm, the streets are crawling with drunk salarymen (and women) stumbling out of izakayas on their way to a snack and/or karaoke -- 5 days per week. They clearly werent working overtime with how often I see them.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  So they start work at 12?
  - goykasi 2y ago
    I would guess they start around 8 or 9 in the morning.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      So they’re working 12 hour days 5 days a week? That sounds like overtime to me.
      - goykasi 2y ago
        Not sure why youre being a contrarian. It seems like you didnt bother to understand my post. But yah, start work at 8-9, knock off at 6 to start drinking heavily at the local izakaya, hammered by 8 or 9 and stumbling towards the snack until last train (or later if the company pays for cabs). I see the same thing everyday.
        saagarjha 2y ago

kstenerud 2y ago

I still remember the day of the explosion down the road from our office in Nagoya. The worker had been driven to such desperation and rage that he sealed himself off in the boss's office after dousing everything (including himself) in gasoline. The cops were there, trying to talk him down, but the fumes had reached such a concentration that the next time the aircon kicked in, the place exploded. The worker exploitation in Japan is BAD, and has been for decades. When you employ someone, you don't technically own them, but culturally you absolutely do.

bcdtttt 2y ago

Now do "How American companies oppress workers and run lives". We got wage theft, abuse, sexual harassment, at will firings, wage slavery, and all sorts of fucked up healthcare forcing people to work here. Edit: to say nothing of our prison slave labor here.

papaver-somnamb 2y ago

On the point of Japanese companies shedding staff .. There is a friendly, win-win way to move skilled staff out of your company, but my impression is it's not widely known nor often occur. When a company finds that a particular staff member "isn't a good fit for the company" they will add this person to an informal list that is traded through back-channels with other companies. At some future time such personnel might be directly approached by headhunters on behalf of inquiring companies. Of course the current employer overlooks the poaching activity, they want the member gone. The only clue the office gets is one day out of the blue that member shows up to work wearing full interview attire, and might soon after announce that they are moving on. For the managerial tier and above, they frequently socialize and will have a sense of when it is time to move on, in accordance with societal expectations. Given that the managerial profession comprises a relatively smaller group in Japan, they can expect to land their next gig soon enough. As for the rest, I've heard of plenty of tactics used to induce (eventual) voluntary departure, "black" or otherwise. I don't advocate for them myself, but the culture, market, and law is what it is..

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
so - the implication is that they are good fits for these other companies? How does this work? How do you know that Bob is not a good fit for your company but a good fit for Apple? I would suppose then different metrics are used than just quality and quantity of work as that would imply being no good wherever you went?
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
That only works if it really is a fit issue/the process is primarily used for fit issues, no? Otherwise, why would a company headhunt an employee that is doing such a bad job that another company wants to fire them?
- papaver-somnamb 2y ago
  Yes cultural fitness reasons. Everything off the top of my head (drawing from experience) are exactly that. Two quick examples: Conflicts of character between them and their uppers along the report line. Being tossed aside for failure due to reasons out of their control. But the staff member is still damn good at something, and is in need of a different venue to shine. This shedding activity is referred to as the child's playing-card game "baba-nuki" (Old Maid). You are drawing a card from the other company's hand but don't know what card it is because they aren't showing you the face side. There is an emotional element to it (as with nearly everything else here) but also, maybe most importantly, Japanese society is quite fluid this way, it's one of the country's strengths. Everybody can understand if it is explained to them.

d--b 2y ago

I worked at a onsen for a month in 2004. I was an intern learning Japanese so they were easy on me, but the ladies working there were doing 6.30am to 9.30pm, every day (including weekends), no pause. The hotel owned the apartments they lived in, and everything in the town was run by onsens, so there was no "job market" really to play. I don't know how much they were paid, but it didn't seem like they were rolling in it. Many of them were complaining about their husbands not working, drinking etc., so I can only imagine that at 9.30pm, they would actually take care of everything in their homes as well. One day, one of them just collapsed, and she was given a day off. Yet, the workers seemed to accept this as "business as usual" and were generally good-spirited. They were totally screwed over by management, cause the hotel was really expensive, and they knew they were being taken advantage of. But such is the effect of culture on people. Anyways, all this to say that I think that pretty much every job in Japan would be seen as the darkest shade of black in the West. And I can't imagine how awful the conditions must be for the blacker companies in Japan.

fexed 2y ago

A follow-up analysis 10 years later would be really interesting

gverrilla 2y ago

Anti-communism at it's best.

hulitu 2y ago

> "He even received a personal letter from the evil president in his paycheck envelope saying: "you should reflect on your sales this month by killing yourself."" This is illegal in some countries and will put one in jail.

vivekd 2y ago

this article was a bit annoying - several paragraphs of filler background, then a video from some movie - then a list of bad companies ... and then finally at the end you get told what exactly black companies are -list of common characteristics of black companies. Made for an irritating read

thenthenthen 2y ago

Sounds like every ‘normal’ job in Shenzhen, China

2112syrinx 2y ago

The term "black", etimologicaly speaking, is racist and should not be used. Japanese culture seems also to be racist, so not a surprise. Instead of "black companies", kindly use "evil companies" instead.

123yawaworht456 2y ago
let's rename Niger and Nigeria while we're at it. goddamn racists
mekoka 2y ago
I suppose that's also why Japanese martial artists work their way toward a black belt.
- 2112syrinx 2y ago
  I don't think this is related to what I mentioned. I'm truly surprised that this subject is not relevant to you or, treated like if I was joking. I am just saying the term has indeed the connotation of "what is black is wrong". I failed in providing an article to corroborate with my position. I will try to find something.
  - akimbostrawman 2y ago
    Black used in a bad context = THATS RACIST Black used in a good context = THATS UNRELATED you would think at some point cognitive dissonance would kick in but virtue signaling and victim complex high is just too addictive and rewarding
krageon 2y ago
This would read significantly less like empty trolling or virtue signalling if you added why you think it is culturally the case that the "black" in "black companies" is somehow related to skin colour (and not, say, the inherent danger of an unlit environment - such as at night). This would have a nice side-effect of you almost certainly realising you are wrong - as the connotation as far as I'm aware doesn't have racist overtones. In this way you'd be doing yourself a service because you'd need to be angry over less things and you'd be doing everyone else a service because they wouldn't read something so clearly born from a US-centric world view. A case could be made that having one of those and not bothering to learn about other cultures is itself fairly xenophobic.

commandlinefan 2y ago

> the Labor Ministry began a crackdown on black companies, too "We will definitely discuss the formation a task force to examine the ramifications of potentially instituting regulations in the future"