"It can happen suddenly to anyone. If you find a colleague suffering at your workplace, reach out to help them," urged the family of a man whose suicide in 2019 was recognized by labor authorities as stemming from depression due to overtime work.
A labor ministry survey revealed that many workers who committed suicide due to overtime work and other factors had developed mental illnesses shortly before their deaths.
"Happy birthday, dear Big Brother."
"Thank you. I've turned 30."
On Nov. 2, 2019, Shinha Abe, then 30, communicated with his family celebrating his birthday through the free communication app Line. Abe was a systems engineer for Toshiba Digital Solutions Corp., a group company of major electronics firm Toshiba.
Two weeks later, on the night of Nov. 16, Abe jumped to his death from his apartment.
The Kawasaki-Minami Labor Standards Inspection Office in Kanagawa Prefecture recognized Abe's suicide as work-related.
The labor office determined that a cause of his suicide was depression he suffered as a result of too much overtime work, and that the onset of the disease was "around mid-November," just before his death.
Abe joined the company in 2015 after completing his graduate studies at the University of Tokyo.
At the Ise-Shima Summit in 2016, because of his excellent foreign language skills, he was assigned to be an interpreter for promoting products of the company to dignitaries from overseas.
His family said after his death that he had seemed to be leading a fulfilling life.
In April 2019, in his fifth year with the company, he was transferred to a department where he was mainly involved in systems development related to a nursing care data service.
He often returned home from work before dawn and went to work very early in the morning. Around October that year, he started complaining of stomach pains and insomnia, but he never saw a psychiatrist. At that time, his overtime work exceeded 100 hours a month.
"I suspect that the company only paid attention to the progress of work and did not care about the employees' physical condition," his mother, Hiromi, angrily said. "Before he realized it, his mental stress must have built up, and he must have greatly suffered mentally and physically."
His father, Kunihiro, received a report from the company that on Nov. 10, six days before Abe's death, colleagues saw him appear depressed when he realized that he had made a mistake in his work. At a Nov. 13 meeting, it was decided that his work would be shared by colleagues. He took his own life three days later.
After Abe's death, people told his parents, "Your son was so earnest."
His mother said: "We should not handle this matter as a personal problem that could be solved by avoiding [the work] or quitting [the company]. This is a problem of the company where a particular person needs to do too much work, and the work style is prevalent. I want the company to change, so that people there can work with peace of mind and hope."
In response to the recognition of Abe's death as work-related, Toshiba Digital Solutions commented: "We are working on measures to prevent overwork and facilitate communication within the workplace. We are also working on measures to enhance employees' awareness of self-care of their own health. We will make further efforts to maintain and improve the mental and physical health of our employees."
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
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