About 22% of Japanese work more than 49 hours a week, compared with 16% of US workers and 11% in France and Germany, according to data from the Japanese government. In spending 14 hours a day at work and giving up many of her paid holidays, Erika Sekiguchi is not even an extreme example. The 36-year-old trading company employee used eight of her 20 days of paid vacation in 2014, six of which counted as sick leave. “Nobody else uses their vacation days,” Sekiguchi said. She faces a dilemma: never to take time off or to invite criticism for leaving her colleagues in the lurch. Yuu Wakebe, a health ministry official overseeing policy on working hours, who admits putting in 100 hours of overtime a month, blames the irresistible pressure to match one’s colleagues, hour for hour. “It is a worker’s right to take paid vacations,” Wakebe said. “But unfortunately working in Japan involves quite a lot of volunteer spirit.”
Who says that Japanese workers don’t use their vacation days?
Erika Sekiguchi An old employee of a company Yuu Wakebe A journalist