Forum - View topicNEWS: Government Office Cites Overwork in Suicide of A-1 Pictures Staff Member
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Hoppy800
 Posts: 3331 |
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Japan needs to wake up about it's work culture, you can't be working people 600 hours a month, that's worse than even game designers who also work long hours. There should be a 8-10 hour cap on working hours in Japan. Also, it also a wake up call to improve the mental health system in Japan (which is utter crap compared to most of the developed world, even in the US where it often is bad, there's effective help everywhere, it's just few seek it, in Japan, there is little help available and almost no one seeks it).
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omiya
 Posts: 1833 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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I hope that:
"No humans were harmed in the production of this anime" will actually be true in all cases. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14784 |
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This is normal in Japan that they have official words for this: karoshi ("death from overwork") and karo jisatsu ("suicide from overwork").
Another related word is saabisu zanngyo ("service overtime") a.k.a. unpaid hidden overtime - employee doing it "as a service" to the company. A recent term circulating among young workers to describe companies that depend on such exploitation: burakku kigyo ("black company").
Japan's labor market isn't mobile with fluid employment opportunities, except maybe for part-timers. Besides, other companies do it, so there's nowhere to go. Last edited by enurtsol on Wed May 07, 2014 10:28 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5432 Location: Iscandar |
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I had no idea than an employee at A-1 Pictures committed suicide. Sadly, this does not surprise me. I am sure the management at anime studios have some blame, but from what I have heard anime staffers tend to be obsessed with their jobs. To me this could mean that the decision to work 20 hours a day could have come almost entirely from the dead employee.
These kind of news suck, but I hope both anime employers and employees learn from this, and tragedies like these are prevented in the future. |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14784 |
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It's the company's legal responsibility to make sure their workers aren't overworked. And that's why the deceased's family will be getting worker's compensation. |
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firedragon54738
 Posts: 3113 Location: wisconsin |
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600 hours why would anyone work that hard for a job even if you do like your job
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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luffypirate
 Posts: 3186 |
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Damn. I would have totally taken on half his work load. In the US people beg to get into the industry; in Japan the industry works them to death ;p
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gilg4mesh
 Posts: 73 |
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RIP
 My condolences to him and his family...
"Since I don't know them, there's no way they're popular." Duh, dude... |
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bluesheep02
Posts: 78 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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I'm not much of an anime fan anymore but I'm currently a college student at one of the upper universities in Japan. Doing "shuukatsu" or the "job hunting" activities is a nightmare. I successfully landed an internship for the summer but finding companies that don't enforce unpaid overtime is a tricky situation. Rakuten is notorious for such regulations and the term "black kigyouu" does carry a lot of weight. The fact is, while this generalization isn't all that sweeping. The problems are well known to me and my peers and we all have to avoid these companies like the plague, which can be difficult for some who are pressured to find work. These problems are so imbued within the society that for my last level Japanese language class we have to write a research paper using Japanese sources on "shakai no mondai", or Problems with Japanese companies. The problem really is THAT out of control. I personally refuse to work for anything other than a "gaishi" or "gaishikei" company. (Foreign or foreign-like). Let's make sure we know all our information and understand the conditions before pointing fingers at people, ne? |
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誤称
Posts: 549 |
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Cause you know... Big Windup and Kannagi were so financially successful and have such a loyal, fervent following. Every day I hear people shouting the praises of these works as masterpieces on the forums and the discussion threads are bursting at the seams with activity. Oh wait, they sold terribly and no one ever discusses them nor were they popular even when they aired. Hell, Kannagi was a monumental failure. It wasn't quite as terrible as the next work from the savior of anime, but its was anything but popular. Big Windup's anime didn't sell in Japan, it didn't sell so badly in North America that Lance Heskill reported that its second season would not be published. I have heard of both titles, but I don't live in a fantasy world where either title deserves being called popular. Even the thread for Big Windup has a whole 8 posts and there was not a new one created for the airing in Japan/release in America. Big Windup certainly, objectively, cannot be called popular in a factual way. Last edited by 誤称 on Wed May 07, 2014 11:42 am; edited 1 time in total |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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This is not really about time, but about money. Sure, they could move schedules so that they start a project one month or one season earlier, but they would have to pay them more. Please realize that the reason the company and the doctor had conflicting stories about how much hours he worked because they do not pay overtime to this people. As it is anime discs (the main revenue of the industry) are pretty expensive, if people are all worked up for a 3% increase due to taxes, then they would not accept a 100% increase no matter how much healthier the staff and their families would become. If there was a solution to this problem it would have been solved DECADES ago. No doubt this is just the same in animation studios with staff in china, korea or elsewhere. The only real solution might be if in the future animation becomes 100% computer driven and you need less staff to complete any given project (and then all those overworked fellows will become unemployed fellows). |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6268 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Thanks for the info, Enurtsol. Very useful indeed. |
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 2209 Location: Springfield, MO |
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Not being popular in US does not mean they weren't popular in Japan. The DVD volumes of Big Windup (the first series) sold 19,297 on average, while Kannagi sold 11,015 on average. That's very, very far from being a "monumental failure". |
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luffypirate
Posts: 3186 |
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@誤称 interesting handle I didn't know we could register that way. what made you go with it? Honestly I had to look it up sort of rare word to come by.
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