Dentsu, the largest advertising house in Japan, has been fined JPY 500,000 (approximately USD 4,400) for having caused the karoshi (death from overwork) of a 24 year old female employee in late December 2015. The employee committed suicide after having been forced to work up to 105 hours overtime in the previous months. It is unusual for the Japanese authorities to bring charges against a company found to have problematic labour practices leading to karoshi.

The government has prepared a bill that would set for the first time a statutory limit on the amount of overtime that employees can be asked to perform: however, critics note that the limit is set at 100 hours overtime per month, which is the general recognised “karoshi line” used by the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare. The bill would also increase dramatically the categories of employees who would not be entitled to overtime pay at all, leading to concerns that in practice such employees would be forced to work without any limit.