🇺🇸 USA · 🇯🇵 Japan
*By Priya Mehta, The Global Office
Japan coined the term karoshi — death from overwork — in the 1970s. The United States has not needed a word for it because the culture has never fully accepted that overwork could be the problem. These two countries sit at the apex of developed-world working hours and burnout rates, but they arrive there via different cultural narratives: Japan through obligation, hierarchy, and group loyalty; America through ambition, identity, and the conviction that hustle is its own reward. For someone moving between them, the practical experience of daily working life is distinct enough that the comparison requires some unpacking.
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Read your company culture over the national one — American work-life balance varies enormously between a Silicon Valley startup, a Midwest manufacturing firm, and a Wall Street bank | Assume that a stated "unlimited PTO" policy means you will actually take it; research shows most American workers on unlimited PTO take less vacation than those on capped plans |
| Negotiate hours and flexibility at the point of hire — this is more acceptable in the US than in most other countries, and sets expectations clearly | Expect laws to protect your working hours; the US is the only OECD country without a federal legal cap on hours for salaried workers |
| Understand that availability signalling matters — being responsive on email outside hours is, in many US industries, an implicit expectation | Openly complain about overwork to senior colleagues before you understand the culture; in many US environments, this reads as lack of commitment |
| Take the mental health benefits offered, if any — American employers increasingly include therapy, wellness, and EAP benefits that go underused | Confuse work-life balance rhetoric (which is universal in US job postings) with work-life balance practice (which varies enormously) |
| Track your hours if you are an hourly worker — US federal law protects overtime pay for non-exempt workers, and this is a legitimate protection worth using | Feel guilty about using paid sick leave; this is a legal entitlement and, unlike PTO, is generally accepted without social consequence |
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Understand the unwritten rule about leaving time — in many traditional Japanese offices, leaving before your manager is considered inappropriate; observe first, then adapt | Leave loudly and cheerfully at 5pm before you have understood the culture of your specific workplace; this will be noticed and interpreted |
| Know your legal rights — the Work Style Reform Act (2019) caps regular overtime at 45 hours per month and 360 hours per year; these limits exist and are increasingly enforced | Accept sabisu zangyo (unpaid overtime) as simply "the way things are" without understanding your legal protections |
| Track mental health and take breaks seriously — Japan's labour ministry provides resources and the cultural conversation is shifting | Stay late purely because colleagues are staying late; this performative presenteeism is what the Work Style Reform Act was designed to address |
| Take advantage of the mandatory paid leave system — Japanese workers are legally entitled to annual paid leave, and recent reforms have encouraged actual use | Assume Japanese work culture is monolithic; tech companies, startups, and international firms in Japan often have significantly different norms from traditional corporations |
| Use the phrase "I have a commitment" to leave on time if needed — the cultural shift is real, and younger managers are increasingly sympathetic | Frame personal time as a professional weakness; the generational change in Japan means younger colleagues may actually share your priorities |
The United States works more hours annually than any other wealthy democracy in the Western world. According to OECD data, American workers averaged 1,791 hours per year — significantly more than most European counterparts, and the country has no federal legal ceiling on the hours that salaried workers can be asked to work. This is not an accident. American work culture has, for generations, coded overwork as virtue: productivity is a moral quality, busyness signals importance, and the willingness to sacrifice personal time for professional outcomes is treated as ambition rather than exploitation.
A 2024 Gallup survey found that 49% of American and Canadian workers reported experiencing work-related stress daily. More than half of all American employees (52%) reported burnout in 2024. The OECD's Better Life Index ranks the US 29th out of 41 countries on work-life balance. None of these statistics appear to have materially altered the cultural consensus that working hard, working long, and being always reachable are positive professional attributes.
What makes the US case complex is its internal diversity. A tech company in Austin may offer generous parental leave, flexible hours, and genuine respect for personal time. A law firm in New York may expect 80-hour weeks as a baseline and treat anything less as lack of seriousness. The national culture sets a tone — hustle is aspirational — but implementation varies enormously by industry, company, and manager. Foreign professionals moving to the US are often caught by this variance: the public rhetoric about work-life balance coexists with working cultures that systematically undermine it.
Japan's relationship with work is historically built on collective obligation: the duty to the team, the organisation, and the hierarchy. The concept of sabisu zangyo — "service overtime," meaning unpaid work expected outside contracted hours — is a structural feature of traditional Japanese corporate culture. According to a 2024 government survey, approximately one in ten Japanese workers was logging more than 80 hours of overtime per month — the threshold the government defines as a risk factor for karoshi. In 2024, officially recognised karoshi cases rose nearly 18% to a record 1,304.
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Japan's Work Style Reform Act, enacted in 2019, set legal overtime limits for the first time: 45 hours per month, 360 hours annually as a general rule, with stricter limits for workers in high-stress industries. These limits represent a genuine structural shift, driven partly by demographic crisis — a shrinking workforce cannot sustain the attrition of overwork — and partly by the MZ generation's explicit rejection of traditional presenteeism. The McKinsey Health Institute found in 2023 that only 25% of Japanese employees reported good overall wellbeing, compared to a global average of 57%.
The paradox of Japanese working hours is statistical: Japan's OECD-measured average (1,607 hours annually) is actually lower than the US average. What the aggregate data misses is the distribution: the average is pulled down by part-time work and service sector hours, while the professional corporate sector experiences a more extreme version of overwork concentrated in specific categories of worker.
Both countries have developed cultural narratives that make overwork invisible as overwork. In the US, it is reframed as ambition and personal choice. In Japan, it is reframed as loyalty and group obligation. Neither framing acknowledges that the consequences — burnout, health deterioration, reduced productivity, and, in extreme cases, death — are the same regardless of the cultural story attached to them.
The practical difference for someone moving between these countries: American overwork is louder, more celebrated, and more voluntary-seeming. Japanese overwork is quieter, more collective, and more structural. Both will consume personal time. The American version is more negotiable on an individual level; the Japanese version requires understanding and navigating a system rather than simply asserting preferences.
r/japanlife — A US tech worker who transferred to a Japanese company described his first performance review feedback: he was praised for his output but gently told that leaving the office at 5:30pm "made his colleagues feel he was not a team player." He had been producing more than anyone else in the team. "The hours are the communication," he wrote. "The work is almost secondary."
Quora — A Japanese professional who moved to San Francisco for a startup wrote about her initial shock at American workplace performativity around overwork: "People would casually mention working all weekend, or send emails at midnight, not as complaints but as status signals. In Japan, overwork is shameful and hidden. In America, it was a brag."
Internations Japan — A British professional in Tokyo described the sabisu zangyo discovery: "I left at 6:30 for the first two months. My official contract said 9-6. Then I noticed that nobody else left before 8, and that my manager was always the last one out. I was not doing anything wrong legally. But I was sending a social signal I did not know I was sending."
japanlivinglife.com — Several foreign employees reported that the generational gap in Japanese offices is now significant enough to require reading the room carefully: younger Japanese colleagues in tech companies may genuinely leave at 6pm, while older managers in the same building follow entirely different norms. "The company is having two cultures simultaneously," one respondent wrote, "and nobody has formally announced which one is winning."
r/antiwork — An American who had worked in Japan, Germany, and the US described the US as the only country where he felt actual social pressure to not take his allotted vacation days. "In Japan there was pressure around hours but vacation was respected. In the US, the number was unlimited and the expectation was that I would use none of it."
If you are moving from the US to Japan, expect the overwork culture to be structural rather than chosen, and learn the signals before you start optimising your exit time. If you are moving from Japan to the US, expect considerably more individual variance and considerably more rhetoric about flexibility that may or may not match the reality of your specific workplace.
The honest line at the bottom of both countries' work-life balance record is roughly the same: the machine wants more of you than is sustainable, and the culture will dress this up in whatever language feels most natural. In Japan, that language is collective duty. In America, it is personal ambition. Your job, in both places, is to figure out how much of yourself you are prepared to offer before someone gives it a name.
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Priya Mehta
Staff writer covering financial markets and corporate strategy. Has strong opinions about spreadsheets.