Why Do We Work? Understanding Different Motivations and Consequences

why do we work for some of us we work in order to survive to pay the next month's rent to pay for all the bills that seems to enter a mailbox on just an incessant basis for some of us work is a means for exteriorization we get that S dopam release when we purchase the new item through the money that we have earned from working whether it be the brand new iPad Pro the new Rolex the latest new item for some such as David gogin work is a means for self-actualization a tool to discipline and develop into a stronger version of oneself and for Matsui Takashi a Tokyo University graduate who began working at denu the biggest and most powerful advertising agency in Japan work was also her means of actualization but not in order to actualize anything for herself what she wanted to actualize was Financial Security for a single mother who raised mat City all by herself in not the best of financial circumstances her mother was suspected to have uterine cancer in the summer of 2015 which led mats to worry about what would happen if her mother does indeed have cancer so for maid work was her only way to have the economic means to secure the best of hospital treatment for her mother as well as make her mother not work another day in her life however despite her initial belief that work was going to be the means to Salvation for her family the very opposite tragically turned out to be the case on Christmas day of December 25th 2015 m left a message to her mother saying to quote her very own words I love you so much my dear Mother goodbye thank you life work it is all unbearable do not blame yourself mom you have been the best mom there ever was and made the decision too we believe you guys can already guess what kind of action she took afterwards after her passing became widely reported news in Japan as a case of Karoshi or death to overwork some in the nation such as Professor hasawa began criticizing mat City for being an individual was rather lacking in perseverance and grit to quote the words of Professor hasawa it's pathetic for people to die from overwork after working just more than 100 hours of overtime this video will make you understand just how much of a ridiculous statement this really is so today we look back at the life of mat Takashi the brave life that she lived through despite all the adversity in which she faced since childhood what her passing tells us about what it is like to work in what we call in Japan as the black companies of the nation and most importantly what her life teaches us on how we should respond to our friends and family in their times of highest personal despair so let us dive in money is not everything in life I mean we've all heard the phrase money cannot buy happiness but for young mats Takashi back in the year 2004 an elementary school student living in shisa prefecture at the time money while not everything was an element that was very much necessary for her to pursue the next stage of her life continue going to school coming from an economically disadvantaged single parent household her family did not have the finances to pay for her Junior and Senior High School tuition fees however what she did have was her exceptional brain and a positive never give up attitude with her having received near perfect grades throughout her time in elementary school mat entered Junior High School as a scholarship student with School tuition fee exemption and with her consistently getting exceptional grades throughout her time in school she was able to maintain her scholarship student status each year meaning that she was able to safely study up until the end of high school without having to drop out due to financial concerns and when we say that she was a bright student it was not in the lines of her being a top 20% or even top 10% in terms of grades in her class she was the type of student who eventually managed to get accepted to Tokyo University through just Sher self study as well as some help from high school teachers who respected her hard work and motivation and decided to provide after school supplementary classes for her knowing full well that her family could not afford any after school cram school or private tutoring most videos or articles regarding her published in English just nonchalant say something in the lines of mat graduated from Tokyo University in 2015 in a tone that makes it sound like it is rather not much big of a deal but me as an individual who also studied in order to attend a Japanese University as in the case of matsi but admittedly was still not at the level of being accepted to Tokyo University so attended waser I just know how insanely hardworking not to mention brilliant she must have been Tokyo University is where the Geniuses of the Geniuses had to in Japan and although not all by any means a large number of students who enter Tokyo University come from privileged backgrounds legitimate Legacy families of three generation politicians business Executives doctors lawyers and the likes of Japan and although I often find it hard to explain but more importantly make friends from other countries where such an academic system does not exist understand and feel the sheer importance of expensive private tutors and after school crime schools in East Asia I'll try to do my best as this is quite a significant point to go over regarding our argument of how maid can be classified as the very opposite type of individual to that of a one described by some in Japan such as Professor hasagawa who accused her of being pathetic and lacking in grit in countries such as Japan and South Korea with one of exam based University entrance systems the task of getting accepted to the top universities of the nation get exponentially more difficult the more disadvantaged your family is from an economic standpoint let us give you an example there student a student a has an elite private tutor who's currently already attending toker University majoring in mathematics teaching a multiple hours of the week on University entrance level mathematics the private tutor knows exactly what kind of questions are likely to come up in the University entrance exam math section and being the person who's already received a full score 4 years ago when the tutor him or herself was a high school student knows exactly how to tackle each type of question in the entrance exam same logic applies to the top level after school crme schools so student a has access to this kind of specialized Afterschool training very specifically geared towards performing his or her best in the upcoming University entrance exam for every single subject then there's student B all that student B has after school is just a school textbook some workbook for a subject bought in the bookstore you can think of the Barons and Princeton reviews for the SAT 1es and B's brain no one is there to explain things to B if B gets stuck in a question no one is there to nitpick for B regarding which question is more likely to come up in the entrance exam I guess it is safe to say that given that student A and B has similar levels of innate intellectual capacity who will score higher in the oneoff University entrance exam and enter the more prestigious University so four persons such as ma who's in the situation of student B even entering into the top 20 ranked University of the country will realistically be an amazing accomplishment but no she takes the tokko university entrance exam and actually receives a score that is high enough for her to get accepted to Tokyo University just through sheer brain power motivation and toil and she didn't just chillax or get complacent just because she entered the best university in Japan either during her time as a college student she worked as a trainer at the college lacrosse team worked parttime at the editorial department at asai shimun as well as not forgetting her past and helping economically disadvantaged Junior High School students whom she also once was by volunteering to teach them without pay but the fact that she came from a financially underprivileged family did not automatically change because she entered the most prestigious University in Japan paying tuition fees each semester was always her concern so she decided to alleviate the financial burden to her mother by receiving a scholarship from both the Japanese Ministry of Education culture Sports Science and Technology as well as the Chinese government and went off to China for a year to study abroad in her third year of University and in March 2015 Mai successfully graduated from the Tokyo University faculty of letters with more than a bright future ahead of her there was no such thing as having a break in Ma's life literally only a few days after our graduation ceremony held in March she officially began working right away from April 1st 2015 and when it came to the process of choosing which company in Japan to work for it was obvious that she was to have the option of working for the biggest and most reputable companies in Japan with her Tokyo University credentials and for her final decision she decided to join denu the largest and most influential advertising agency in Japan by not even a close margin the corporation alone accounts for 28% of the entire National advertising budget with New York Times WR writing an article on the company in 2021 liking the company to the one of CIA in terms of its sheer reach and influence within Japan from a revenue standpoint the company recorded 5.25 6 trillion Japanese yen in Revenue in the fiscal year of 2020 for reference the second largest advertising company in Japan hakuhodo recorded 895 billion Japanese yen in annual revenue not even one5 of the one of den so while the term advertising agency may not sound too intimidating in a self Den is not just a m advertising agency in Japan only highlighted by size this is a company that basically dominates the Japanese mass media entertainment agencies not to mention the nation's political tide to a degree with its heavy historical connection to Japan's ruling party of the liberal Democratic party according to Sakamoto mamaru who has past experiences of working directly with denu while he was in the advertising business stated the company's influence on society is enormous it is no exaggeration to say that Japan self has been created by danu both now and in the past many TV stations and newspapers are afraid of Dan's influence getting into a dispute with the company in business is nothing but a threat to one's own life however the Japanese advertising giant also has its historical downside the company's Infamous corporate culture highlighted by the proclivity to overwork his employees often times to the point of their passing in an interview with the Tokyo University newspaper Ma's mother later confessed that she initially did not support her daughter's decision to enter the company as she knew that Den as a company had a long reputation of overworking his employees to death with famous cases of death to overwork such as the passing of his employee Ichiro osma in 1991 however her mother states that she was unable to change mair's mind as she seemed to have full confidence that with hard work she would be able to handle the work atmosphere at denu and why not right as after all every single challenge that she faced throughout her life she didn't just kind of step up to the task but surpass all expectations so with such precedence from her life it was quite natural for her to have felt this way regarding her challenge ahead of working for density as well but things began to turn for the worse soon after Machi was hired the number of staffs in her assigned Department were cut drastically from 14 to 6 but the amount of workload within the department staying the same the company basically began to work her to physiologically Impossible levels according to atorney Kawai to hirosi she worked over 130 repeat 130 hours of overtime in the month of October 2015 based on her entry and exit records this means that it was normal for her to work throughout weekends and head home between 4: to 6:00 a.m. only to get 1 to 2 hours of sleep and head back to the office in the morning on November 3rd 2015 Machi tweeted it has been decided that I'll have to work on Saturdays and Sundays again and I seriously want to die so many of the old Boomers in Japan when they see a young individual being overworked to Life Training level often just wave off their hand and state that these young kids are lazy and soft and you know perhaps some of the younger generation in Japan are indeed so-call soft let's say that there's an unemployed 24-year-old living in Osaka for instance who cannot be bothered to wake up in the morning or work more than 2 hours a day so still lives with his parents and is financially supported by them then yeah all the lazy soft pathetic lacking great argument May indeed have some truth to them but no way on Earth can anyone say the about the 24-year-old matsi Takashi there comes a point where elements such as having motivation or a positive mindset is no longer enough if a human being has to work from 7:00 in the morning to 4:00 a.m. of the next day get 1 or 2 hours of sleep then have to return back to the office for more work not on some occasional basis but for 7 days a week for consecutive months then this individual is bound to inevitably breakdown either physically from deterioration of cognitive function leading to an accident such as falling down the stairs or compromised immune system from lack of sleep causing a serious illness or mentally from psychological illnesses such as depression or even downright hallucination which is very much a possible scenario for an individual who has slept an hour or two a day for weeks on end on December 18th 2015 just 7 days before she passed away mats mentioned in her tweet of how she was in the office for 20 hours a day and no longer knew what she lived for and on the morning of December 25th 2015 in her company dormatory provided to the female employees at Den made the decision to bring all of this suffering to an end there is no doubt in the world that the biggest contributing reason as to why matsi decided to take an Unfaithful choice for her own life was due to straight up humanly unbearable level of overwork Den as a company is notorious for the controversial Ten Commandments written in 1951 by the fourth President of the company including Commandments such as if you get a hold of a task do not let go of it until it is finished do not let go even if it kills you the Ten Commandments were a vital part of their employee training manual only to have it be removed after mat's death and this leads to our next point from outside looking in Den as much as how they have astronomically effed up at least seem as if they are admitting and owning up to their mistakes which led to the passing of maity such as removing the infamous Ten Commandments of the devil as it is often coined in Japan from their employee train manual after the request made by maid's mother to delete its existence and have it no longer included in future employee guidance and if you are to search around for a bit online regarding her case you'll see a number of images such as this the very president of den at the time bowing down in apologizing and actually taking responsibility and stepping down as the president of the company after her passing and on December 25th 2016 the president of the company also visited maid's family home to pay his respects and once again apologized to her mother and they did not end things with just a formal apology but actually did go on to implement physical changes inside the company as well such as their decision made on October 24th 2016 to turn off all lights in the company building between 1: p.m. to 5:00 a.m. in order to discourage employees from staying at work after 10 p.m. furthermore Den created a labor environment before office after the passing of ma created in order to monitor each department within the company and make sure that they compliance and follow the labor laws and regulations so at least on the surface matter of things Den being the gods of mass media control of Japan that they are have actually done a very good job at portraying an image to the world that they are truly repentant for the death of machir Takashi and are committed in preventing such a tragedy from reoccurring however if you're Japanese or have lived decade plus years in Japan as I have went to college here and have actually conducted the job hunting process within the nation so are aware of the reput Deens as a company has historically had within the Japanese domestic realms for the longest of time you also most likely know that this penitent veneer in which the company eventually decided to stick to is going to be by far far different from their real true sentiment of how they actually feel about the passing of machir Takashi at least for the case of the top Executives and managers in this company who have reached to those very positions by thriving in the rather let's just say unique Den corporate atmosphere for decades on end to elaborate Den has long prided itself as being how can we put this a company consisting of a rather hardcore group of people and the type of corporate culture in which the company pushed for for decades until they eventually ran into a myriad of labor law violation problems culminated by events such as the passing of several of his employees is a one if described as positively as possible intense but in a more realistic sense shra up jackass some of our viewers may think man isn't Al being a little too harsh on this Japanese advertising company with his wordings but that could not be further from the truth the type of activities that partly symbolized what many of his employees proudly coin as danism throughout the history of the company if not described as Jack cassery I really do not know how else to describe it in English so let us provide you with an interview given by an anonymous employee from Dena employee a who decided to talk with Japan's Business Journal a Japanese news site that mainly focuses on topics related to business industry and EC economy employee a states that if you're a new recruit at the company you first undergo a month of employee training where you thoroughly get taught the mindset of what he describes as the denim man and throughout this training period the newly recruited employee after the normal training finishes at 5:30 p.m. had to head out and drink with the senior employee until 4:00 a.m. employee a recollects that on his first day of work he was made by his senior employee to drink so much that he lost all his memory then when another newly recruited employee could know no longer tolerate any more alcohol so threw up and fell asleep the senior employee shouted you what are you doing and began beating the new recruit in full force then there were the occasions of employees coming into work the next morning with their shirt covered in blood from vomiting out so much blood from the night before you guys get the idea but then some may subsequently listen to this and say Okay so this employee a just had a lunatic of a guy as a senior manager but what if it was just that Superior of employee a who made his subordinates drink until they get unconscious then began smacking the [ __ ] out of them what if all other superiors were normal and we actually partly agree to this we are sure that not every single senior employee or manager at Den throughout the history of the company were so inclined to physically abuse their subordinate employees however it would also be on over defense and not the most accurate description of the reality of Life at the company to claim that such forceful drinking and physical assault was just a one-off type event either by the way we'll use the direct wording of physical assault from here onwards when describing the instances of beating of den employees by their superiors this is a stated by atorney Kito who in his career has handled 110 cases of Karoshi or death through overwork there is a faulty tendency in Japan to label all type of work rated abuse by the superiors to the junior employees simply as power harassment but he states that appropriate Waring has to be used and label physical violence properly as assault rather than just merely as power harassment and with that said there are just too many confessions made by either ex Den employees or current Den employees such as employee a who decided to give his interview under the absolute promise of anonymity of such make the subordinate strink until they go unconscious then smack their brains off out of seniorly love as witnessed by employee a being experienced by other dens employees as well and for the sake of having our Point come across let us provide you with just one more instance the type of harassment and assault that was suffered by Ichiro osima another former Den employee who decided to un alive himself as in the case of Machi due to the extreme overwork harassment and assault in which he had to face during his time working for the company now Ichiro did not tolerate alcohol too well but with the hardcore group of people that these So-Cal Den men are thought of this as a show of weakness and often forced them to drink the superior of each for instance poured beer into his shoe and asked ich to drink it then when he finished drinking the beer out of the shoe we believe you guys can already guess what the senior employee subsequently began doing to him yes start beating icho with the hill of issue the dens Superior when later summoned to the Tokyo district court in order to testify admitted that he has indeed conducted such physical assaults towards ichu so the type of act that you would typically imagine to occur from an episode of Jackass have a person take off his shoe pour beer into it make the person drink the beer inside the shoe then immediately start smacking the person with the heel of the shoe once the individual finished drinking the beer with everyone around the poor guy laughing their brains off while all of this is happening was actually being carried out in real life in the middle of Tokyo by the employees of the nation's biggest advertising firm but to be fair with Dena being one of the most if not the most scrutinous Corporation by the Ministry of Health labor and Welfare of Japan now due to their notorious reputation as a black company and countless precedents of violating the labor standards act more and more compliance rules are appearing within the company and employee a says that densa is turning more and more into a normal company and here is what we have found to be quite interesting the tone of employee a when talking about how denu is turning more and more into a normal company where such senseless beatings and racing naked on the street is no longer tolerated at least on the surface level is not a one of a relief but of disappointment as in when he is sharing his experiences he's always laughing and tells the story in the tone of when one talks about the good old times and he doesn't even really try to hide his sentiments he literally States within the interview that all of such Jack casser was the very aggressiveness that has been the source of Den's strength in business and how he is very worried that this normalization will lead to den weakening as a company so one cannot even really say that mentioning all the mandatory work until at least midnight forc drinking physical assault and running around naked aspect of Den's historical corporate culture is even speaking negatively of the company as many of the den men is especially the older employees such as employee a will go on to gladly tell you of such stories with pride and a sense of nostalgia in a tone that implies how they're just built different of course we absolutely cannot say that employee a can speak for the opinion of every single dens man and we're confident that there were more than a large number of the companying police back in the days who absolutely detested many aspects of the dens corporate culture however at least for many of the senior employees and high up Executives who survived and thrived in such an atmosphere for decades and is still working in the company those days were just good old times with Alphas doing Alpha things when people did not use to be such snowflakes times that were devoid of such incomprehensible compliance rules that are set in place today which allow the densy man to be truly aggressive but at the same time we at least have to praise the fact that employee a is also very self-aware as well he admits that throughout his ears and dances he has lost his Common Sense he literally says this with his own mouth he States that after never leaving for home before midnight and being forced to eat undate his body with alcohol on a daily basis for many years there came a point during his time working for the company that if he ever finished working before midnight he'd say I'm done early let's go drink then drink and head home at 3:00 or 4: in the morning anyways and in a sense imploy a basically symbolizes the So-Cal Den man who are in their 60s to 70s now at the very top of the company corporate hierarchy who have not only survived but thrived in the District atmosphere for multiple decades so if we are to apply just a basic level of Reason into the equation it is no rocket science to know that the top Executives at denza when first hearing of a 24-year-old new female employee claiming to die from overwork only after a few months of working for the company would most likely scoff at this notion as after all many may think that they had it 100 times worse back in the days when they were a newly recruited employee when the corporate culture within the company used to be even more intense and how do we know that the executives ents are not truly sympathetic to mach's passing because this is the truth journalist Masa watab managed to conduct an interview with a current employee and former colleague of ma Adent a three month after her passing under the condition that his name stay strictly Anonymous The Whistleblower stated that he agreed on doing the interview because to quote his words the company still does not truly recognize death from overwork as a serious matter I decided to do this interview because I wanted to help prevent the recurrences of work rated deaths but as we've mentioned earlier at least on the surface matter of things known to the general public it did seem as if Den was taking the passing of matui as a serious matter with their formal apology to her mother the creation of den labor environment reform office resignation of the president and CEO of den himself as an act of taking responsibility so on and so forth however according to the Whistleblower there is a behind story to this in which not many people outside of the company knows about and that is for the first n months since mach's passing from January to September 2016 the company tried the very best to frame her passing as something that was caused by personal issues unrelated to the company rather than plainly admitted as a case of Karoshi so for the first n months denel avoided taking any action that could remotely be seen as an admission of responsibility this includes not providing any financial support let alone in any way help in organizing Ma's funeral meaning that her mother was burdened with all the responsibilities of the funeral Arrangement at a time when she most likely could not even stand up straight from the sudden passing of her one and only daughter only a few staffs from the HR department as well as close colleagues of Mai attended her funeral with none of the higher Executives of the company being anywhere to be seen at the funeral let alone even send her mother just a letter of condolences they made sure that no disciplinary action or punishment was given to Mach superiors who are later confirmed to have harassed her during her time working for the company as that again could be seen as a sign of the company admitting that the senior managers of mat city were partially responsible for her passing so for the first 9 months after Mai was gone her Superior who harassed her on a daily basis and contributed to her life being a living hell worked in the company with his head up high and not feeling the smallest sense of guilt so in essence Den basically underestimated mat's mother they most likely thought what can this broke jobless single mother living in the countryside do against as a su us and frame Ma's case as just a flaky 24-year-old female employee breaking down from personal reasons however what Den did not realize was that mach's mother was indeed going to sue the company and she did not just hire any lawyer to defend her case she hired Kawai to hirushi the very lawyer who brought Den down to their knees in 2000 by making the Japanese Supreme Court give the final guilty verdict D in that the passing of their former Company employee Ichiro oan was indeed a case of Karoshi and that Den was responsible for his passing when we state that attorney Kao brought Den down to their knees some may think that this is a bit of an exaggeration but that is not the case Ichiro's parents initially did not even want to file a lawsuit against the company all they wanted was an apology from den and a promise from the company to work on preventing the occurrence of such death of their employees asked what happened with their son but when Ichiro's father sent a letter to the president of den they did not even provide him with a response Ichiro's family still did not Su at this point after being ignored by Den Ichiro's parents then submitted a formal petition to the company the company's response one simple sentence we take absolutely no responsibility this is when Ichiro's parents got absolutely outraged and decided to sue the company even when the lawsuit was filed Den continued to provide the same response we take absolutely no responsibility so as the lawsuit went forth Tori Kao did have a mammoth challenge ahead of him Den in the '90s was even more dominant of a company than they are right now essentially controlling the Japanese media and with many of the very ldp lawmakers inside the government being former Den men themselves the company really did believe that there was no way that the Japanese Court will give them a guilty verdict so they continued to please excuse my language but really did continue to keep talking straight out of their asses making famous statements such as icho working cloat was not that heavy or icho un alived himself because his family had a cold attitude against him after barely making him get any sleep for ears on end and frequently subject him to humiliation and downright physical assault such as make him drink beer out of his shoe then begin smacking him with the hill of his shoe they really had the absolute audacity to blame Ichiro's parents for his passing at court so atorney Kao and his team worked hard in order to gather evidence and this proof Dan his claims and in the first 1996 six ruling the Tokyo High Court ruled Den as guilty and ordered them to pay 126 million Japanese yen to each's parents in Damages highest fight ever made to a Japanese corporation for or karosi related penalty this was also the very first ruling in the legal history of Japan to fully acknowledge a company's responsibility for death through overwork but then we believe you can already guess how Den reacted to this farce ruling given by the judges at the Tokyo High Court they repeated there we accept no responsibility line and appealed against the ruling making the case go all the way up to the Supreme Court of Japan and in 2000 the Supreme Court still ruled Dan as guilty and now ordered them to pay even a higher fine of 163 million Japanese Yen and only then with the Japan Supreme Court ruling did Den finally sto with there we accept no responsibility nonsense paid Their fines and made their perfunctory apology so when Den part of the fact that mach's mother was working with atorney Kao for mach's defense their reaction must have been a one in the lines of oh hell no an attorney Kao as how it did with the case of Ichiro osima did a thorough job in collecting evidence which proved that Machi was indeed overworked by Den that went far beyond the numbers Allowed by the nation's labor laws which then got the very government involved on September 30th 2016 the very labor standards Inspection Office of the Japanese government officially recognized the death of materi as an industrial accident caused by overwork and not some girl on aling her herself from personal issues image densis was desperately attempting to frame it as for the first 9 months of her passing now the Japanese Ministry of Health labor and Welfare wrote a report of how there were 3,486 claims of death from overwork in Japan in the year 2022 and according to attorney Kao in his interview conducted with the Tokyo University newspaper he stated that only a tiny handful of these Karoshi cases are known to the Japanese general public largely due to the fact that most bed families who lost their family members from Karoshi do not want the incident to be made public and if the families do not wish to make the cases public then it is hard for the news media agencies to report on the cases in detail and such inclination to keep things quiet is no surprise in Japan where the shame and minaku avoidance culture runs deep into the society however in order to seek Justice for her daughter Ma's mother made the decision to make the story of her daughter's passing go public and revealed her daughter's real name and photographs for the Imp entire nation to see this at the time really did send a shock wave across Japan according to the words of atorney Kao with late mach's face being shown all over the Japanese news at the time with the Japanese general public largely sympathizing and mourning her death so things were not looking good for Den from all angles although they initially once again pulled off the we take absolutely no responsibility stance for the first n months after mach's passing believing that her mother would not be able to do much against it mach's mother made the decision to make the case come out public and make the entire nation Furious against then the very lawyer who embarrassed them in court and made them pay the highest fine ever in Japanese legal history back in 2000 has now returned to defend Ma's case the very labor standards Inspection Office of the Japanese government confirmed that maid's death was an industrial accident and hinted that density will not be getting away lightly with violating the labor laws again this time with the Tokyo Labor Bureau raing dens headquarters and conducting an on-site investigation and in the midst of all of this Den had two options maintain their position of claiming that Ma died of personal reasons such as unstable relationship with her boyfriend completely unrelated to work we take absolutely no responsibility and drag this case on for years for it to eventually go to the Supreme Court where they will most likely once again lose as with the case of Ichiro osima back in 2000 and completely destroy their company image to the Japanese general public throughout the process or come clean apologized to Ma's mother and at least begin acting in front of the Japanese general public that they are sorry and are repenting and reach a settlement with mach's Mother outside of Court as fast as possible so that it no longer comes out on the news and most likely after an emergency meeting between their high up Executives and lawyers they decided to go with the latter option of showing the image of accepting responsibility The Whistleblower employee directly said our company in the current position is afraid of backlash thus why just merely a few days after the Tokyo labor bureaus onight investigation at Den headquarters on October 14th 2016 Den changed their stance 180° and began taking actions such as turning off all lights in the office building from October 24th 2016 the den president who was nowhere to be seen on Ma's funeral suddenly visiting her family home back in shoka to pay his respects to her mother and all other subsequent acts of apology that followed now if you have watched the video up to this point you now know more than what 99% of even the Japanese general public know on mat's story and before we finish with today's video on the story of mat there is one final point that we'd like to go over harassment whenever there's a discussion of work related death in Japan the focus is always mostly on the number of overwork hours in which the employee had to suffer prior to her or his passing and for good reasons we really appreciate theal ology in which the Whistleblower employee from denu gave during his interview The Whistleblower created an analogy of karosi to a car accident caused by driving Under the Influence he states that if death to overwork is compared to a car accident then the absolute number of overwork hours is the equivalent to the amount of alcohol that has been consumed by the driver let's say that a stone happened to be lying on the road while a person was drunk driving then when the accident occurs no one is going to put the majority of the blame to the stone that was lying on the road that managed to tilt a car slightly to another Direction but rather the exorbitant amount of alcohol that was consumed by the driver so if we think from this perspective in the case of a worker passing from Karoshi everything else other than the absolute amount of hours of overwork are equivalent to the stone that was lying on the road in the car accident yes the stone did have a part in the accident but no one is going to say that the stone was the biggest reason why the accident occurred and we completely agree with this analogy made by The Whistleblower ma did receive a large degree of harassment from her company superiors during her time working for Den which we'll get more in depth into in just a minute however let's first imagine the maity received such harassment from her superiors under the condition that she was at least able to get not even eight but just 6 hours of sleep a day and was able to maintain her sanity with the Positive minded obstacle overcoming individual Mai has been from a young age we are very confident that she was most likely able to find a way to deal with the harassment without resorting to ending her own life whether it be to sue the superior confront him directly quit the company Etc however any one of our subscribers who have functioned on 1 to 2 hours of sleep a day knows that when you're overworked to the point of near death and severe chronic sleep deprivation all this positive mindset believe in yourself element of our psychology just becomes no longer tangible from my personal experience when I'm under slept to the degree of 1 to 2 hours a day not even for months on end as in the case of what my tit had to suffer but just for around 2 to 3 days I cannot cognitively function in a normal human way it's quite hard to explain but let me try my best to share what I felt when I'm sleep-deprived yes wanting to sleep is obviously one of the largest sentiments but more importantly although again I cannot say for anyone else but for me chronically under sleeping makes me lose this Human Side of myself even the smallest things aggravate me to the maximum for instance my whole personality changes to the one that becomes very negative and imagine the worst possible outcome for any given scenario an indignity that I could usually have easily just passed by with dignity is no longer possible my brain is just filled with negative thoughts and not in a constructive way in the lines of contemplating how I can fix such negative elements of my life but in a way that makes me think that everything exists in order to exhaust me out my thought process again more or less works in the lines of all of this Just Tires me out and I see no solution when did Earth become hell then obviously I finally get that opportunity to B sleep 10 plus hours return to my normal self and wonder why those elements that could eventually be overcome angered and frustrated me so much however mat city did not have the chance that I had to be able to binge sleep 10 plus hours with her still being required to work on Saturdays and Sundays during those demonic 3 months between October to December 2015 she essentially functioned on 1 to 2 hours of sleep a day during all that time this means that with her already on the verge of breakdown with months of inhumane overwork and chronic sleep deprivation the harassment in which her superiors at Den gave her was most likely not the main cause of her unal living herself however as The Whistleblower employee have stated other factors such as harassment is still that final nail in the coffin that stone in the road of the car accident analogy which nonetheless contributed to her tragic passing and thus needs to be discussed according to the Whistleblower the executive officer who was in charge of the direct marketing business department in which Machi was eventually assigned to was toshia oyama but unlike what some in Japan may think oyama was not the officer who was responsible for the power harassment conducted Oni with Den being a company that had a lot of layers there was a digital accounts Department within the dmbb department and this was the branch of the dmbb department in which maidi was working in and the director and thus the direct Superior of mat City in the digital accounts Department was an older guy by the name of hiroya Sasa The Whistleblower did really go all the way in his interview as up until his interview no one even in Japan knew the actual name of the direct Superior of Mai who contributed to her life being a living hell during the time that she was working for the company even when sassel was mentioned on the news he was always referred to as Mai Superior at Den with his name remaining Anonymous so shout out to The Whistleblower for bravely stepping up and we wish that he did not face too much negative repercussions after the interview from the higher opset den and thanks to the whistleblower's confirmation we know that all the records of power harassment which was posted on maid's Twitter account were mostly done by one individual hiroya Sasa Sasa tried to trivialize and make mattii feel as insignificant of a human being as possible for instance he constantly told her that the reason why she had to work a lot of overtime hours was not because of the objectively large amount of workload that was given to her but because she was an incompetent human being then when she came back to the office in the morning after what was most likely a 1 to three hour nap on the sofa of her employee dormatory Sasa did not console her in the lines off hey you're doing well things will get better in a few weeks if we manage to get more staff no what Sasa told her when he saw her in the morning was do not come to work with messy hair and bloodshot eyes mairi seems to have been particularly hurt by this comment ASA now running out of things to criticize her own began chastising her own something in which she had absolutely no control over ma tweeted is having bloodshot eyes now okay as well even top-notch professionals cannot control the constriction of their blood vessels and what she's saying is absolutely right how can a company director make her work until 3:00 to 4:00 in the morning every day for consecutive days and now that she has done a good job of all the given tasks still look for ways to disparage her and now attack her for having Bloodshed eyes an inevitable physiological manifestation caused by severe chronic lack of sleep that Mai can do absolutely nothing about all that she ever wanted was some encouragement from her superiors and a bit of acknowledgement over hard work on October 31st 2015 she tweeted when a superior said to me this isn't maid's fault that's all I thought that this was the most heart melting moment of the Year from a tweet we are guessing that maid's direct Superior was having another day in the office of let's go make fun of and Bully Mai as usual trying to nitpick the things that she may have done wrong only to have the scene spotted by another company senior employee who then told him that this is not something that mat have done wrong such a simple sentence meant so much to her that this was the most heart melting thing that she has hard for a long time but Sasa did not wave her and continued to throw harassing remarks on to maid just up until 5 days before she passed away at least as far as we know on December 20th 2015 at 5:45 p.m. my city tweeted I cannot stand it when my male Superior tells me that I have no feminine charm or whatnot even if he says that he's just joking even when an old man goes bold he's not told that he has to masculinity right I'm depressed what we see here is a clear form of verbal harassment that is at the point of borderline verbal s harassment it is socially unacceptable in Japan to go up to a small bold old man who most likely have less than 100 nanog per deciliter of testosterone in his body and tell him that he lacks masculinity so why is it the case that under the pretense of I'm just joking that the male counterparts can go up to women and make all kinds of humiliating remarks on their appearance and sexuality Ma really has time to sleep let alone take a shower so it is no wonder that Machi obviously could not have the most elaborate of makeup on her face and could not be the young female eye candy for all these senior oldheads at the company but to actually go up to her and tell her something which essentially implied a message in the lines of you don't even look like a woman anymore this could have indeed been the very moment when mat City finally broke down to the point of no return this very tweet was the second last tweet that she left in her Twitter account and she passed away 5 days later so then the question has to be asked is life like this for all the young newly recruit employees at D if you're a new male recruit have you drink alcohol until you vomit blood and if your Superior is the more aggressive type get your head smashed in and if you're a new female recruit constantly suffer from passive aggressive I'm just joking type verbal harassment from the older senior employees the answer is it depends on how you got into the company according to employee a from the previous Anonymous interview who shared a his experiences of working as a den man he states that around 20 to 30% of the total employees at dens are hired to connections Den being the biggest and most powerful advertising agency in Japan many of the children and relatives of high-profile politicians business Executives and media tycoons in Japan enter the company as a new employee employee a states that a lot of these Legacy Family kits have rare surnames that can easily be spotted or many of them just downright say my father is an executive at xxtv and for such employees whose fathers have large power and influence in their given fields of the Japanese Society the company superiors obviously have to be careful not to bully them as if they made the son of a such and such TV channel executive drink beer out of his shoe then smack his head with a shoe as in how they did to Ichiro osima all hell will break loose if the employee goes to tell his powerful dad on what kind of humiliation he suffered for example the wife of the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abbe AK Abbe comes from an extremely wealthy family in Japan with her father being the former president of morinaga in company one of Japan's largest contractionary companies and after she graduated from college she began working at den and we have a strong feeling that when Aki AB was a newly recruited employee at the company as in the case of ma she somehow was not forced to work until 3:00 to 4: in the morning every day for months and did not have senior managers ripping off the documents that she prepared and shout all your hours at this company is a waste of time or got told of how she does not have much feminine charm as unfair and outdated as this may sound this is just a reality of life not only at Dena but working in quite a portion of high-profile companies in Japan in general regarding how you're going to be treated at the company as well as how far up the corporate ladder you can ultimately climb up to although not in every single firm by any means your father's social standing is often going to be an important matter especially at a company with a long history and deep rooted influence to the nation's business and political scene such as Den where the employees around you try to initially identify right away of whether you are a connection employee or not so that they can know how far they can push it when it comes to treating you to how many overwork hours they should designate you Etc and from this perspective Machi was the easiest harassment Target there could objectively be she not only does not come from a family of a powerful media Tycoon but does not even come from what men Define as an ordinary family she was raised by a single mother in a nonn Tokyo region and was so poor to the degree that she had to receive scholarship just to attend Junior High and high school so even if she does get overworked and power harassed at the workpl who does she have to fall back to thus the reason why bad-natured beings such as hiroya Sasa mach's direct Superior had no hesitation in power harassing Machi to the Moon knowing that she had no powerful father to fall back to in one of mach's tweets it seemed as if she even contemplated on eventually suing her Superior in the future that is obviously no longer going to happen now now they she is no longer with us and Sasa continued to work comfortably in Den for the first 9 months after mach's passing during the time when the company was taking the we accept no responsibility stance regarding her death however after October 2016 when Dena decided to publicly accept responsibility for her passing Sasa was eventually forced to resign from the company although Sasa was summoned to the Tokyo District prosecutor's office for investigation the Tokyo prosecutors later decided not to indict mach's mother fully knowing how her daughter was treated under her direct Superior at the company held a press conference on January 25th 2018 and said that the known indictment of Sasa was unfair to quote her exact words should the actions of the superior be tolerated just because illegal labor practices is the culture a den or is it because several employees were engaged in similar illegal practices I would like to ask this question to the entirety of Japan however despite the plead from her mother Sasa nor any of the superiors of Mai were indicted now we do have to end this chapter by stating the fact that in the year 2024 matters regarding the workplace atmosphere at Dena most likely have changed for the better not trying to defend the company in absolutely any way but that is most likely the objective reality of the matter with Den implementing various compliance measures within the company after Mach passing in late 2016 not to mention the company once again being at the center of controversy in 2017 when famous Japanese writer and blogger Ito Haruka spoke out on the S harassment that she suffered from her Den Superior during her time working for the company it would just be more than unwise to put it most mouly for Dan to continue their corporate culture of power or S harassment especially in today's age of social media and further ruin the company's reputation and image many of you guys who may have studied Japanese know that the word mat City can have the meaning of the word Festival in English and we believe this is very much what her mother intended when she named her daughter have her daughter live the life of a festival of bright fireworks Joys and smiles and that is the type of life that every single one of us deserve to live as well our own little Festival of life with many small fireworks in between and when we say fireworks we don't mean some Grand scale fancy ones that you see on New Year's Eve or such but the type of modest ones that we have in our garden enjoyed with our friends and family and such small but meaningful occasions would be by a nice and Cal comfortable house for our parents marry the love of our lives and be blessed by our friends and family at a small wedding raise our children with love and watch them happily press through their dreams as they grow older celebrate the 60th wedding anniversary with our wife or husband with a cake and a glass of wine again nothing fancy or grandiose but our own small unique Festival of Life nonetheless and in a sense this is exactly the only hope that got ma going in the final few days of her life on her Twitter account we get a glimpse of what kind of dream dream she had in life that got her to not give up hope and it was not to buy the shinest new Chanel bag or buy the brand new Mercedes it was to buy a cat and a house on December 3rd 2015 my chitt tweeted my dream is to adopt this kitten and buy a house so I have to keep making money I have to keep getting up every morning and in one of her final tweets posted just 11 days before she passed away she wrote I'll work overtime again tomorrow with the precious memories of when my ex-boyfriend from my freshman year of college dried my hair in my heart so what we can essentially see is a young adult who just wanted the simplest things in life a house of her own a cat and a boyfriend or eventually a husband who can occasionally dry her hair for her in a loving way and of course although she did not publicly tweet regarding it due to it being a very private matter her biggest dream was to make enough money for her mother to be able to receive the best treatment possible regarding her potential cancer development but sadly mat was taken to early from us and could not see your dreams be actualized throughout our time of researching mat City story it was really hard for me to let my emotions in because when I see her in many ways I see myself now I'm not just saying this for the sake of this video I was also raised in a single parent household by my mother and relatives from my mother's side such as my grandmother as in the case of mat City also suffering financially I also could not attend almost any crime school let alone have a private tutor so squeeze my brains out with just a bunch of books in front of me with no one to explain to me once I got stuck on a Christian back in my high school days but then I knew that studying was the only hope that I had for a better life so slapped myself in the face when I got sleepy and just memorized memorized and memorized for the exams and in many ways I felt that she was essentially how can I put this an upgraded version of myself I thought I excelled back in high school especially for someone who self-studied without the private education but not as much as my city she objectively performed better than me academically and was able to get into Tokyo University while I had to settle for the second best in Japan for my major she also excelled more than me in terms of managing her time I have to be honest I do not have much memories of doing social or Club activities during my time as an undergraduate if I was not in classes or doing assignments I was working part-time washing dishes at a restaurant or working after midnight construction jobs at Tokyo Metro in order to pay rent and prepare for next semester's tuition fees at the the time when I enrolled in University 12 years ago back in 2012 the Japanese Yen was literally almost twice as strong as how it is right now by the way with Tokyo always being listed as one of the most if not the most expensive city to live in the world back in the days very different from the image of the cheap Japan that we're getting more and more used to in the recent phase but in the case of matsi although she was in a similar Financial predicament as I was was still able to participate in club activities such as being a trainer at the University lacrosse team or return back to the society by conducting volunteer work and teach underprivileged middle school kids while also working part-time as well the firm that she entered Den had more recognition and a higher base salary compared to the company in which I entered postgraduation to be completely honest with you guys I'm not even that proud of working in Japan after uni with Japan's population rapidly declining while its economy is still maintaining quite a bit of size it is quite easy to immediately work for a Japanese company postgraduation especially if you're a graduate of one of the top universities of the nation given that you're not too picky and with that said mat city was able to persevere through and tolerate way more overwork hours than I did is not even comparable really same with power harassment at work I did get that passive aggressive mockery here and there of the fact that I'm that kimchi eating South Korean the older guys with their joking tone making fun of my Japanese for how [ __ ] my accent sounds and imitating my way of speaking in that mocking way during the drinking gatherings little did they know I'm immune to the pronunciation mockery though I'm born with one of the shortest tongues that is attached onto a human being all of the Rolling the tongue axe absolutely impossible for me and as infrequently as I saw my dad whenever I saw him he used to pick my tongue with his fingers and pull it out all the way even until middle school saying that he could not understand what the FI was saying and that perhaps the tongue pulling would help and that is not all a foreign language he was pulling my tongue because he could not understand me speaking in my native language and when you have childhood experiences of having your tongue literally being picked and pulled out to the point of such physical pain as how I have a little mockery relatively does nothing from being just immune to all the pronunciation BS thanks to all the related experiences that I've had for as far as my memory goes so me narrating in English in this video is a miracle in and of itself and that anything can be possible although nowhere near Perfection still possible meaning that for many of our subscribers who want to start our YouTube channel but just cannot get yourself to do so from the fear of not being a native speaker having an accent or not the best of pronunciation if I can do it you can do it Shar your thoughts and life experiences screw the negativity but regarding the infamous power harassment in Japan still I did not have it as bad nor did I have to endure as much as maity no Superior had the audacity to tear off the documents that I worked overtime for and told me that my existence was a waste no Superior directly came up to me and said you're looking quite estrogen fi today where's old the masculinity at so when I state that when I see mat I see an individual that are in many ways a better version of myself I really do mean it with many parallels in our lives with heart excelling more on your charia than I do but the only one thing that I had it personally going better for me than mat I believe was the help and response that I got from the people around me in the times when I most needed it not many in Japan know this but from researching and reading almost every single interview in which mat City's mother gave we found that her passing wasn't the case of an individual who never ever discussed her problems to others kept everything inside herself then suddenly made the decision to unive herself she did seek help she talked to the HR office Den numerous times they obviously did not help much she talk to friends and people she knew but their responses were not something in the lines of quit immediately but more of a one in the lines of is Deno just do your best and take it easy and on October 1st 2015 mat City sent a message to her mother saying I want to quit my job however rather than telling her to quit immediately maid's mother consult her how things will be all right when her mother received the final text from maidi on the day she passed away on December 25th 2015 maid's mother immediately called her in which mat cidi answered and this is when her mother States one of the biggest regrets of her life has occurred when matsi answered her mother's phone call her mother told her on the phone don't die in which mats replied replied with a yes yes but mat hung up the phone then still went on to yeah in hindsight mat's mother says that she should have been more firm in telling her daughter to quit her job and when I read this part I knew exactly what she meant what Ma wanted to hear during her final days from the people around her was that she can quit working for Dan that things will be fine even if she quits that she can still work for some other company maybe not as famous or as high paying as Daner but get their Assurance from from others that she can still do well and earn enough money for her mother's Hospital fees and achieve all her other dreams but no one said this to her not a single person told her whether it be the HR department personnel at Den or her friends and acquaintances to get out from the hell on Earth of an office with all their responses in the lines of it's D though and how do I know this because this is what I went through as I entered my 30s in Japan now I'm not going to overdramatize for the sake of this video and say that I also had thoughts of taking the Unfaithful choice on my own life as in the case of my city that was just not the case such a thought just never entered my mind but what I did begin doing though was start questioning whether this is really what I worked my entire life for slap myself in the face every day to not fall asleep and memorize memorize and memorize for me to get the exam scores necessary to be admitted to my dream University wash dishes every day at a restaurant and work on construction sites along with attending classes to pay tuition fees all this life of pain that I had to endure through every day so that I can ultimately be this trivial dep personalized machine for a Japanese company until retirement no I progressively realized that this was not what I wanted my one and only life to be so when I shared my thoughts about quitting work to my mother she said do what you enjoy I'll fully support your decision and when I shared my thoughts with my wife she said we have enough savings write that book that you've been wanting to write make that YouTube channel you've always got it done and we'll get this done successfully as well at that time I thought these were rather natural responses but now after knowing the story of maity I know that I have angels as my family and should never take such unconditional support for granted and be thankful until deathbed for that I was able to have such wonderful people around me in my life at the times of biggest personal crisis and if just one person was to have told matsi in her final days with full conviction a message in the lines of your matsi Takashi the amazingly talented individual who got into Tokyo University through sheer self-study quit working for the den or whatever immediately you do not deserve that type of treatment again you're mat Takashi whatever else you decide to do out of Dan you'll Excel and succeed as you always have done if she heard just one person tell her this with full conviction rather than the they pay so much just endure do your best and don't think about dying or anything like that we actually believe that there's a chance that things could have turned out very differently she could still be alive at this point succeeding in whatever else Endeavor she chose to do as she always has done obviously if your friend is just being lazy and complaining as if he or she has the most difficult job ever when they just have a three hour workshift without any form of workplace harassment to be seen as well then we should justifiably tell them to stop being so lazy and get to work but for any of our subscribers who may have friends or relatives who may genuinely be suffering from a similar decent in life right now as in the one that was faced by mat City do not tell them something in the lines off your company is so hard to get in though your job pay six figuras a year though or if you just endure a year more you'll get the promotion though tell them to quit immediately nothing is more important than life all that overtime pay means nothing if we are no longer here to receive it so let us save ourselves first then worry about everything else that comes afterwards

why do we work for some of us we work in order to survive to pay the next month&#39;s rent to pay for all the bills that seems to enter a mailbox on just an incessant basis for some of us work is a means for exteriorization we get that S dopam release when we purchase the new item through the money that we have earned from working whether it be the brand new iPad Pro the new Rolex the latest new item for some such as David gogin work is a means for self-actualization a tool to discipline and develop into a stronger version of oneself and for Matsui Takashi a Tokyo University graduate who began working at denu the biggest and most powerful advertising agency in Japan work was also her means of actualization but not in order to actualize anything for herself what she wanted to actualize was Financial Security for a single mother who raised mat City all by herself in not the best of financial circumstances her mother was suspected to have uterine cancer in the summer of 2015 which led mats to worry about what would happen if her mother does indeed have cancer so for maid work was her only way to have the economic means to secure the best of hospital treatment for her mother as well as make her mother not work another day in her life however despite her initial belief that work was going to be the means to Salvation for her family the very opposite tragically turned out to be the case on Christmas day of December 25th 2015 m left a message to her mother saying to quote her very own words I love you so much my dear Mother goodbye thank you life work it is all unbearable do not blame yourself mom you have been the best mom there ever was and made the decision too we believe you guys can already guess what kind of action she took afterwards after her passing became widely reported news in Japan as a case of Karoshi or death to overwork some in the nation such as Professor hasawa began criticizing mat City for being an individual was rather lacking in perseverance and grit to quote the words of Professor hasawa it&#39;s pathetic for people to die from overwork after working just more than 100 hours of overtime this video will make you understand just how much of a ridiculous statement this really is so today we look back at the life of mat Takashi the brave life that she lived through despite all the adversity in which she faced since childhood what her passing tells us about what it is like to work in what we call in Japan as the black companies of the nation and most importantly what her life teaches us on how we should respond to our friends and family in their times of highest personal despair so let us dive in money is not everything in life I mean we&#39;ve all heard the phrase money cannot buy happiness but for young mats Takashi back in the year 2004 an elementary school student living in shisa prefecture at the time money while not everything was an element that was very much necessary for her to pursue the next stage of her life continue going to school coming from an economically disadvantaged single parent household her family did not have the finances to pay for her Junior and Senior High School tuition fees however what she did have was her exceptional brain and a positive never give up attitude with her having received near perfect grades throughout her time in elementary school mat entered Junior High School as a scholarship student with School tuition fee exemption and with her consistently getting exceptional grades throughout her time in school she was able to maintain her scholarship student status each year meaning that she was able to safely study up until the end of high school without having to drop out due to financial concerns and when we say that she was a bright student it was not in the lines of her being a top 20% or even top 10% in terms of grades in her class she was the type of student who eventually managed to get accepted to Tokyo University through just Sher self study as well as some help from high school teachers who respected her hard work and motivation and decided to provide after school supplementary classes for her knowing full well that her family could not afford any after school cram school or private tutoring most videos or articles regarding her published in English just nonchalant say something in the lines of mat graduated from Tokyo University in 2015 in a tone that makes it sound like it is rather not much big of a deal but me as an individual who also studied in order to attend a Japanese University as in the case of matsi but admittedly was still not at the level of being accepted to Tokyo University so attended waser I just know how insanely hardworking not to mention brilliant she must have been Tokyo University is where the Geniuses of the Geniuses had to in Japan and although not all by any means a large number of students who enter Tokyo University come from privileged backgrounds legitimate Legacy families of three generation politicians business Executives doctors lawyers and the likes of Japan and although I often find it hard to explain but more importantly make friends from other countries where such an academic system does not exist understand and feel the sheer importance of expensive private tutors and after school crime schools in East Asia I&#39;ll try to do my best as this is quite a significant point to go over regarding our argument of how maid can be classified as the very opposite type of individual to that of a one described by some in Japan such as Professor hasagawa who accused her of being pathetic and lacking in grit in countries such as Japan and South Korea with one of exam based University entrance systems the task of getting accepted to the top universities of the nation get exponentially more difficult the more disadvantaged your family is from an economic standpoint let us give you an example there student a student a has an elite private tutor who&#39;s currently already attending toker University majoring in mathematics teaching a multiple hours of the week on University entrance level mathematics the private tutor knows exactly what kind of questions are likely to come up in the University entrance exam math section and being the person who&#39;s already received a full score 4 years ago when the tutor him or herself was a high school student knows exactly how to tackle each type of question in the entrance exam same logic applies to the top level after school crme schools so student a has access to this kind of specialized Afterschool training very specifically geared towards performing his or her best in the upcoming University entrance exam for every single subject then there&#39;s student B all that student B has after school is just a school textbook some workbook for a subject bought in the bookstore you can think of the Barons and Princeton reviews for the SAT 1es and B&#39;s brain no one is there to explain things to B if B gets stuck in a question no one is there to nitpick for B regarding which question is more likely to come up in the entrance exam I guess it is safe to say that given that student A and B has similar levels of innate intellectual capacity who will score higher in the oneoff University entrance exam and enter the more prestigious University so four persons such as ma who&#39;s in the situation of student B even entering into the top 20 ranked University of the country will realistically be an amazing accomplishment but no she takes the tokko university entrance exam and actually receives a score that is high enough for her to get accepted to Tokyo University just through sheer brain power motivation and toil and she didn&#39;t just chillax or get complacent just because she entered the best university in Japan either during her time as a college student she worked as a trainer at the college lacrosse team worked parttime at the editorial department at asai shimun as well as not forgetting her past and helping economically disadvantaged Junior High School students whom she also once was by volunteering to teach them without pay but the fact that she came from a financially underprivileged family did not automatically change because she entered the most prestigious University in Japan paying tuition fees each semester was always her concern so she decided to alleviate the financial burden to her mother by receiving a scholarship from both the Japanese Ministry of Education culture Sports Science and Technology as well as the Chinese government and went off to China for a year to study abroad in her third year of University and in March 2015 Mai successfully graduated from the Tokyo University faculty of letters with more than a bright future ahead of her there was no such thing as having a break in Ma&#39;s life literally only a few days after our graduation ceremony held in March she officially began working right away from April 1st 2015 and when it came to the process of choosing which company in Japan to work for it was obvious that she was to have the option of working for the biggest and most reputable companies in Japan with her Tokyo University credentials and for her final decision she decided to join denu the largest and most influential advertising agency in Japan by not even a close margin the corporation alone accounts for 28% of the entire National advertising budget with New York Times WR writing an article on the company in 2021 liking the company to the one of CIA in terms of its sheer reach and influence within Japan from a revenue standpoint the company recorded 5.25 6 trillion Japanese yen in Revenue in the fiscal year of 2020 for reference the second largest advertising company in Japan hakuhodo recorded 895 billion Japanese yen in annual revenue not even one5 of the one of den so while the term advertising agency may not sound too intimidating in a self Den is not just a m advertising agency in Japan only highlighted by size this is a company that basically dominates the Japanese mass media entertainment agencies not to mention the nation&#39;s political tide to a degree with its heavy historical connection to Japan&#39;s ruling party of the liberal Democratic party according to Sakamoto mamaru who has past experiences of working directly with denu while he was in the advertising business stated the company&#39;s influence on society is enormous it is no exaggeration to say that Japan self has been created by danu both now and in the past many TV stations and newspapers are afraid of Dan&#39;s influence getting into a dispute with the company in business is nothing but a threat to one&#39;s own life however the Japanese advertising giant also has its historical downside the company&#39;s Infamous corporate culture highlighted by the proclivity to overwork his employees often times to the point of their passing in an interview with the Tokyo University newspaper Ma&#39;s mother later confessed that she initially did not support her daughter&#39;s decision to enter the company as she knew that Den as a company had a long reputation of overworking his employees to death with famous cases of death to overwork such as the passing of his employee Ichiro osma in 1991 however her mother states that she was unable to change mair&#39;s mind as she seemed to have full confidence that with hard work she would be able to handle the work atmosphere at denu and why not right as after all every single challenge that she faced throughout her life she didn&#39;t just kind of step up to the task but surpass all expectations so with such precedence from her life it was quite natural for her to have felt this way regarding her challenge ahead of working for density as well but things began to turn for the worse soon after Machi was hired the number of staffs in her assigned Department were cut drastically from 14 to 6 but the amount of workload within the department staying the same the company basically began to work her to physiologically Impossible levels according to atorney Kawai to hirosi she worked over 130 repeat 130 hours of overtime in the month of October 2015 based on her entry and exit records this means that it was normal for her to work throughout weekends and head home between 4: to 6:00 a.m. only to get 1 to 2 hours of sleep and head back to the office in the morning on November 3rd 2015 Machi tweeted it has been decided that I&#39;ll have to work on Saturdays and Sundays again and I seriously want to die so many of the old Boomers in Japan when they see a young individual being overworked to Life Training level often just wave off their hand and state that these young kids are lazy and soft and you know perhaps some of the younger generation in Japan are indeed so-call soft let&#39;s say that there&#39;s an unemployed 24-year-old living in Osaka for instance who cannot be bothered to wake up in the morning or work more than 2 hours a day so still lives with his parents and is financially supported by them then yeah all the lazy soft pathetic lacking great argument May indeed have some truth to them but no way on Earth can anyone say the about the 24-year-old matsi Takashi there comes a point where elements such as having motivation or a positive mindset is no longer enough if a human being has to work from 7:00 in the morning to 4:00 a.m. of the next day get 1 or 2 hours of sleep then have to return back to the office for more work not on some occasional basis but for 7 days a week for consecutive months then this individual is bound to inevitably breakdown either physically from deterioration of cognitive function leading to an accident such as falling down the stairs or compromised immune system from lack of sleep causing a serious illness or mentally from psychological illnesses such as depression or even downright hallucination which is very much a possible scenario for an individual who has slept an hour or two a day for weeks on end on December 18th 2015 just 7 days before she passed away mats mentioned in her tweet of how she was in the office for 20 hours a day and no longer knew what she lived for and on the morning of December 25th 2015 in her company dormatory provided to the female employees at Den made the decision to bring all of this suffering to an end there is no doubt in the world that the biggest contributing reason as to why matsi decided to take an Unfaithful choice for her own life was due to straight up humanly unbearable level of overwork Den as a company is notorious for the controversial Ten Commandments written in 1951 by the fourth President of the company including Commandments such as if you get a hold of a task do not let go of it until it is finished do not let go even if it kills you the Ten Commandments were a vital part of their employee training manual only to have it be removed after mat&#39;s death and this leads to our next point from outside looking in Den as much as how they have astronomically effed up at least seem as if they are admitting and owning up to their mistakes which led to the passing of maity such as removing the infamous Ten Commandments of the devil as it is often coined in Japan from their employee train manual after the request made by maid&#39;s mother to delete its existence and have it no longer included in future employee guidance and if you are to search around for a bit online regarding her case you&#39;ll see a number of images such as this the very president of den at the time bowing down in apologizing and actually taking responsibility and stepping down as the president of the company after her passing and on December 25th 2016 the president of the company also visited maid&#39;s family home to pay his respects and once again apologized to her mother and they did not end things with just a formal apology but actually did go on to implement physical changes inside the company as well such as their decision made on October 24th 2016 to turn off all lights in the company building between 1: p.m. to 5:00 a.m. in order to discourage employees from staying at work after 10 p.m. furthermore Den created a labor environment before office after the passing of ma created in order to monitor each department within the company and make sure that they compliance and follow the labor laws and regulations so at least on the surface matter of things Den being the gods of mass media control of Japan that they are have actually done a very good job at portraying an image to the world that they are truly repentant for the death of machir Takashi and are committed in preventing such a tragedy from reoccurring however if you&#39;re Japanese or have lived decade plus years in Japan as I have went to college here and have actually conducted the job hunting process within the nation so are aware of the reput Deens as a company has historically had within the Japanese domestic realms for the longest of time you also most likely know that this penitent veneer in which the company eventually decided to stick to is going to be by far far different from their real true sentiment of how they actually feel about the passing of machir Takashi at least for the case of the top Executives and managers in this company who have reached to those very positions by thriving in the rather let&#39;s just say unique Den corporate atmosphere for decades on end to elaborate Den has long prided itself as being how can we put this a company consisting of a rather hardcore group of people and the type of corporate culture in which the company pushed for for decades until they eventually ran into a myriad of labor law violation problems culminated by events such as the passing of several of his employees is a one if described as positively as possible intense but in a more realistic sense shra up jackass some of our viewers may think man isn&#39;t Al being a little too harsh on this Japanese advertising company with his wordings but that could not be further from the truth the type of activities that partly symbolized what many of his employees proudly coin as danism throughout the history of the company if not described as Jack cassery I really do not know how else to describe it in English so let us provide you with an interview given by an anonymous employee from Dena employee a who decided to talk with Japan&#39;s Business Journal a Japanese news site that mainly focuses on topics related to business industry and EC economy employee a states that if you&#39;re a new recruit at the company you first undergo a month of employee training where you thoroughly get taught the mindset of what he describes as the denim man and throughout this training period the newly recruited employee after the normal training finishes at 5:30 p.m. had to head out and drink with the senior employee until 4:00 a.m. employee a recollects that on his first day of work he was made by his senior employee to drink so much that he lost all his memory then when another newly recruited employee could know no longer tolerate any more alcohol so threw up and fell asleep the senior employee shouted you what are you doing and began beating the new recruit in full force then there were the occasions of employees coming into work the next morning with their shirt covered in blood from vomiting out so much blood from the night before you guys get the idea but then some may subsequently listen to this and say Okay so this employee a just had a lunatic of a guy as a senior manager but what if it was just that Superior of employee a who made his subordinates drink until they get unconscious then began smacking the [ __ ] out of them what if all other superiors were normal and we actually partly agree to this we are sure that not every single senior employee or manager at Den throughout the history of the company were so inclined to physically abuse their subordinate employees however it would also be on over defense and not the most accurate description of the reality of Life at the company to claim that such forceful drinking and physical assault was just a one-off type event either by the way we&#39;ll use the direct wording of physical assault from here onwards when describing the instances of beating of den employees by their superiors this is a stated by atorney Kito who in his career has handled 110 cases of Karoshi or death through overwork there is a faulty tendency in Japan to label all type of work rated abuse by the superiors to the junior employees simply as power harassment but he states that appropriate Waring has to be used and label physical violence properly as assault rather than just merely as power harassment and with that said there are just too many confessions made by either ex Den employees or current Den employees such as employee a who decided to give his interview under the absolute promise of anonymity of such make the subordinate strink until they go unconscious then smack their brains off out of seniorly love as witnessed by employee a being experienced by other dens employees as well and for the sake of having our Point come across let us provide you with just one more instance the type of harassment and assault that was suffered by Ichiro osima another former Den employee who decided to un alive himself as in the case of Machi due to the extreme overwork harassment and assault in which he had to face during his time working for the company now Ichiro did not tolerate alcohol too well but with the hardcore group of people that these So-Cal Den men are thought of this as a show of weakness and often forced them to drink the superior of each for instance poured beer into his shoe and asked ich to drink it then when he finished drinking the beer out of the shoe we believe you guys can already guess what the senior employee subsequently began doing to him yes start beating icho with the hill of issue the dens Superior when later summoned to the Tokyo district court in order to testify admitted that he has indeed conducted such physical assaults towards ichu so the type of act that you would typically imagine to occur from an episode of Jackass have a person take off his shoe pour beer into it make the person drink the beer inside the shoe then immediately start smacking the person with the heel of the shoe once the individual finished drinking the beer with everyone around the poor guy laughing their brains off while all of this is happening was actually being carried out in real life in the middle of Tokyo by the employees of the nation&#39;s biggest advertising firm but to be fair with Dena being one of the most if not the most scrutinous Corporation by the Ministry of Health labor and Welfare of Japan now due to their notorious reputation as a black company and countless precedents of violating the labor standards act more and more compliance rules are appearing within the company and employee a says that densa is turning more and more into a normal company and here is what we have found to be quite interesting the tone of employee a when talking about how denu is turning more and more into a normal company where such senseless beatings and racing naked on the street is no longer tolerated at least on the surface level is not a one of a relief but of disappointment as in when he is sharing his experiences he&#39;s always laughing and tells the story in the tone of when one talks about the good old times and he doesn&#39;t even really try to hide his sentiments he literally States within the interview that all of such Jack casser was the very aggressiveness that has been the source of Den&#39;s strength in business and how he is very worried that this normalization will lead to den weakening as a company so one cannot even really say that mentioning all the mandatory work until at least midnight forc drinking physical assault and running around naked aspect of Den&#39;s historical corporate culture is even speaking negatively of the company as many of the den men is especially the older employees such as employee a will go on to gladly tell you of such stories with pride and a sense of nostalgia in a tone that implies how they&#39;re just built different of course we absolutely cannot say that employee a can speak for the opinion of every single dens man and we&#39;re confident that there were more than a large number of the companying police back in the days who absolutely detested many aspects of the dens corporate culture however at least for many of the senior employees and high up Executives who survived and thrived in such an atmosphere for decades and is still working in the company those days were just good old times with Alphas doing Alpha things when people did not use to be such snowflakes times that were devoid of such incomprehensible compliance rules that are set in place today which allow the densy man to be truly aggressive but at the same time we at least have to praise the fact that employee a is also very self-aware as well he admits that throughout his ears and dances he has lost his Common Sense he literally says this with his own mouth he States that after never leaving for home before midnight and being forced to eat undate his body with alcohol on a daily basis for many years there came a point during his time working for the company that if he ever finished working before midnight he&#39;d say I&#39;m done early let&#39;s go drink then drink and head home at 3:00 or 4: in the morning anyways and in a sense imploy a basically symbolizes the So-Cal Den man who are in their 60s to 70s now at the very top of the company corporate hierarchy who have not only survived but thrived in the District atmosphere for multiple decades so if we are to apply just a basic level of Reason into the equation it is no rocket science to know that the top Executives at denza when first hearing of a 24-year-old new female employee claiming to die from overwork only after a few months of working for the company would most likely scoff at this notion as after all many may think that they had it 100 times worse back in the days when they were a newly recruited employee when the corporate culture within the company used to be even more intense and how do we know that the executives ents are not truly sympathetic to mach&#39;s passing because this is the truth journalist Masa watab managed to conduct an interview with a current employee and former colleague of ma Adent a three month after her passing under the condition that his name stay strictly Anonymous The Whistleblower stated that he agreed on doing the interview because to quote his words the company still does not truly recognize death from overwork as a serious matter I decided to do this interview because I wanted to help prevent the recurrences of work rated deaths but as we&#39;ve mentioned earlier at least on the surface matter of things known to the general public it did seem as if Den was taking the passing of matui as a serious matter with their formal apology to her mother the creation of den labor environment reform office resignation of the president and CEO of den himself as an act of taking responsibility so on and so forth however according to the Whistleblower there is a behind story to this in which not many people outside of the company knows about and that is for the first n months since mach&#39;s passing from January to September 2016 the company tried the very best to frame her passing as something that was caused by personal issues unrelated to the company rather than plainly admitted as a case of Karoshi so for the first n months denel avoided taking any action that could remotely be seen as an admission of responsibility this includes not providing any financial support let alone in any way help in organizing Ma&#39;s funeral meaning that her mother was burdened with all the responsibilities of the funeral Arrangement at a time when she most likely could not even stand up straight from the sudden passing of her one and only daughter only a few staffs from the HR department as well as close colleagues of Mai attended her funeral with none of the higher Executives of the company being anywhere to be seen at the funeral let alone even send her mother just a letter of condolences they made sure that no disciplinary action or punishment was given to Mach superiors who are later confirmed to have harassed her during her time working for the company as that again could be seen as a sign of the company admitting that the senior managers of mat city were partially responsible for her passing so for the first 9 months after Mai was gone her Superior who harassed her on a daily basis and contributed to her life being a living hell worked in the company with his head up high and not feeling the smallest sense of guilt so in essence Den basically underestimated mat&#39;s mother they most likely thought what can this broke jobless single mother living in the countryside do against as a su us and frame Ma&#39;s case as just a flaky 24-year-old female employee breaking down from personal reasons however what Den did not realize was that mach&#39;s mother was indeed going to sue the company and she did not just hire any lawyer to defend her case she hired Kawai to hirushi the very lawyer who brought Den down to their knees in 2000 by making the Japanese Supreme Court give the final guilty verdict D in that the passing of their former Company employee Ichiro oan was indeed a case of Karoshi and that Den was responsible for his passing when we state that attorney Kao brought Den down to their knees some may think that this is a bit of an exaggeration but that is not the case Ichiro&#39;s parents initially did not even want to file a lawsuit against the company all they wanted was an apology from den and a promise from the company to work on preventing the occurrence of such death of their employees asked what happened with their son but when Ichiro&#39;s father sent a letter to the president of den they did not even provide him with a response Ichiro&#39;s family still did not Su at this point after being ignored by Den Ichiro&#39;s parents then submitted a formal petition to the company the company&#39;s response one simple sentence we take absolutely no responsibility this is when Ichiro&#39;s parents got absolutely outraged and decided to sue the company even when the lawsuit was filed Den continued to provide the same response we take absolutely no responsibility so as the lawsuit went forth Tori Kao did have a mammoth challenge ahead of him Den in the &#39;90s was even more dominant of a company than they are right now essentially controlling the Japanese media and with many of the very ldp lawmakers inside the government being former Den men themselves the company really did believe that there was no way that the Japanese Court will give them a guilty verdict so they continued to please excuse my language but really did continue to keep talking straight out of their asses making famous statements such as icho working cloat was not that heavy or icho un alived himself because his family had a cold attitude against him after barely making him get any sleep for ears on end and frequently subject him to humiliation and downright physical assault such as make him drink beer out of his shoe then begin smacking him with the hill of his shoe they really had the absolute audacity to blame Ichiro&#39;s parents for his passing at court so atorney Kao and his team worked hard in order to gather evidence and this proof Dan his claims and in the first 1996 six ruling the Tokyo High Court ruled Den as guilty and ordered them to pay 126 million Japanese yen to each&#39;s parents in Damages highest fight ever made to a Japanese corporation for or karosi related penalty this was also the very first ruling in the legal history of Japan to fully acknowledge a company&#39;s responsibility for death through overwork but then we believe you can already guess how Den reacted to this farce ruling given by the judges at the Tokyo High Court they repeated there we accept no responsibility line and appealed against the ruling making the case go all the way up to the Supreme Court of Japan and in 2000 the Supreme Court still ruled Dan as guilty and now ordered them to pay even a higher fine of 163 million Japanese Yen and only then with the Japan Supreme Court ruling did Den finally sto with there we accept no responsibility nonsense paid Their fines and made their perfunctory apology so when Den part of the fact that mach&#39;s mother was working with atorney Kao for mach&#39;s defense their reaction must have been a one in the lines of oh hell no an attorney Kao as how it did with the case of Ichiro osima did a thorough job in collecting evidence which proved that Machi was indeed overworked by Den that went far beyond the numbers Allowed by the nation&#39;s labor laws which then got the very government involved on September 30th 2016 the very labor standards Inspection Office of the Japanese government officially recognized the death of materi as an industrial accident caused by overwork and not some girl on aling her herself from personal issues image densis was desperately attempting to frame it as for the first 9 months of her passing now the Japanese Ministry of Health labor and Welfare wrote a report of how there were 3,486 claims of death from overwork in Japan in the year 2022 and according to attorney Kao in his interview conducted with the Tokyo University newspaper he stated that only a tiny handful of these Karoshi cases are known to the Japanese general public largely due to the fact that most bed families who lost their family members from Karoshi do not want the incident to be made public and if the families do not wish to make the cases public then it is hard for the news media agencies to report on the cases in detail and such inclination to keep things quiet is no surprise in Japan where the shame and minaku avoidance culture runs deep into the society however in order to seek Justice for her daughter Ma&#39;s mother made the decision to make the story of her daughter&#39;s passing go public and revealed her daughter&#39;s real name and photographs for the Imp entire nation to see this at the time really did send a shock wave across Japan according to the words of atorney Kao with late mach&#39;s face being shown all over the Japanese news at the time with the Japanese general public largely sympathizing and mourning her death so things were not looking good for Den from all angles although they initially once again pulled off the we take absolutely no responsibility stance for the first n months after mach&#39;s passing believing that her mother would not be able to do much against it mach&#39;s mother made the decision to make the case come out public and make the entire nation Furious against then the very lawyer who embarrassed them in court and made them pay the highest fine ever in Japanese legal history back in 2000 has now returned to defend Ma&#39;s case the very labor standards Inspection Office of the Japanese government confirmed that maid&#39;s death was an industrial accident and hinted that density will not be getting away lightly with violating the labor laws again this time with the Tokyo Labor Bureau raing dens headquarters and conducting an on-site investigation and in the midst of all of this Den had two options maintain their position of claiming that Ma died of personal reasons such as unstable relationship with her boyfriend completely unrelated to work we take absolutely no responsibility and drag this case on for years for it to eventually go to the Supreme Court where they will most likely once again lose as with the case of Ichiro osima back in 2000 and completely destroy their company image to the Japanese general public throughout the process or come clean apologized to Ma&#39;s mother and at least begin acting in front of the Japanese general public that they are sorry and are repenting and reach a settlement with mach&#39;s Mother outside of Court as fast as possible so that it no longer comes out on the news and most likely after an emergency meeting between their high up Executives and lawyers they decided to go with the latter option of showing the image of accepting responsibility The Whistleblower employee directly said our company in the current position is afraid of backlash thus why just merely a few days after the Tokyo labor bureaus onight investigation at Den headquarters on October 14th 2016 Den changed their stance 180° and began taking actions such as turning off all lights in the office building from October 24th 2016 the den president who was nowhere to be seen on Ma&#39;s funeral suddenly visiting her family home back in shoka to pay his respects to her mother and all other subsequent acts of apology that followed now if you have watched the video up to this point you now know more than what 99% of even the Japanese general public know on mat&#39;s story and before we finish with today&#39;s video on the story of mat there is one final point that we&#39;d like to go over harassment whenever there&#39;s a discussion of work related death in Japan the focus is always mostly on the number of overwork hours in which the employee had to suffer prior to her or his passing and for good reasons we really appreciate theal ology in which the Whistleblower employee from denu gave during his interview The Whistleblower created an analogy of karosi to a car accident caused by driving Under the Influence he states that if death to overwork is compared to a car accident then the absolute number of overwork hours is the equivalent to the amount of alcohol that has been consumed by the driver let&#39;s say that a stone happened to be lying on the road while a person was drunk driving then when the accident occurs no one is going to put the majority of the blame to the stone that was lying on the road that managed to tilt a car slightly to another Direction but rather the exorbitant amount of alcohol that was consumed by the driver so if we think from this perspective in the case of a worker passing from Karoshi everything else other than the absolute amount of hours of overwork are equivalent to the stone that was lying on the road in the car accident yes the stone did have a part in the accident but no one is going to say that the stone was the biggest reason why the accident occurred and we completely agree with this analogy made by The Whistleblower ma did receive a large degree of harassment from her company superiors during her time working for Den which we&#39;ll get more in depth into in just a minute however let&#39;s first imagine the maity received such harassment from her superiors under the condition that she was at least able to get not even eight but just 6 hours of sleep a day and was able to maintain her sanity with the Positive minded obstacle overcoming individual Mai has been from a young age we are very confident that she was most likely able to find a way to deal with the harassment without resorting to ending her own life whether it be to sue the superior confront him directly quit the company Etc however any one of our subscribers who have functioned on 1 to 2 hours of sleep a day knows that when you&#39;re overworked to the point of near death and severe chronic sleep deprivation all this positive mindset believe in yourself element of our psychology just becomes no longer tangible from my personal experience when I&#39;m under slept to the degree of 1 to 2 hours a day not even for months on end as in the case of what my tit had to suffer but just for around 2 to 3 days I cannot cognitively function in a normal human way it&#39;s quite hard to explain but let me try my best to share what I felt when I&#39;m sleep-deprived yes wanting to sleep is obviously one of the largest sentiments but more importantly although again I cannot say for anyone else but for me chronically under sleeping makes me lose this Human Side of myself even the smallest things aggravate me to the maximum for instance my whole personality changes to the one that becomes very negative and imagine the worst possible outcome for any given scenario an indignity that I could usually have easily just passed by with dignity is no longer possible my brain is just filled with negative thoughts and not in a constructive way in the lines of contemplating how I can fix such negative elements of my life but in a way that makes me think that everything exists in order to exhaust me out my thought process again more or less works in the lines of all of this Just Tires me out and I see no solution when did Earth become hell then obviously I finally get that opportunity to B sleep 10 plus hours return to my normal self and wonder why those elements that could eventually be overcome angered and frustrated me so much however mat city did not have the chance that I had to be able to binge sleep 10 plus hours with her still being required to work on Saturdays and Sundays during those demonic 3 months between October to December 2015 she essentially functioned on 1 to 2 hours of sleep a day during all that time this means that with her already on the verge of breakdown with months of inhumane overwork and chronic sleep deprivation the harassment in which her superiors at Den gave her was most likely not the main cause of her unal living herself however as The Whistleblower employee have stated other factors such as harassment is still that final nail in the coffin that stone in the road of the car accident analogy which nonetheless contributed to her tragic passing and thus needs to be discussed according to the Whistleblower the executive officer who was in charge of the direct marketing business department in which Machi was eventually assigned to was toshia oyama but unlike what some in Japan may think oyama was not the officer who was responsible for the power harassment conducted Oni with Den being a company that had a lot of layers there was a digital accounts Department within the dmbb department and this was the branch of the dmbb department in which maidi was working in and the director and thus the direct Superior of mat City in the digital accounts Department was an older guy by the name of hiroya Sasa The Whistleblower did really go all the way in his interview as up until his interview no one even in Japan knew the actual name of the direct Superior of Mai who contributed to her life being a living hell during the time that she was working for the company even when sassel was mentioned on the news he was always referred to as Mai Superior at Den with his name remaining Anonymous so shout out to The Whistleblower for bravely stepping up and we wish that he did not face too much negative repercussions after the interview from the higher opset den and thanks to the whistleblower&#39;s confirmation we know that all the records of power harassment which was posted on maid&#39;s Twitter account were mostly done by one individual hiroya Sasa Sasa tried to trivialize and make mattii feel as insignificant of a human being as possible for instance he constantly told her that the reason why she had to work a lot of overtime hours was not because of the objectively large amount of workload that was given to her but because she was an incompetent human being then when she came back to the office in the morning after what was most likely a 1 to three hour nap on the sofa of her employee dormatory Sasa did not console her in the lines off hey you&#39;re doing well things will get better in a few weeks if we manage to get more staff no what Sasa told her when he saw her in the morning was do not come to work with messy hair and bloodshot eyes mairi seems to have been particularly hurt by this comment ASA now running out of things to criticize her own began chastising her own something in which she had absolutely no control over ma tweeted is having bloodshot eyes now okay as well even top-notch professionals cannot control the constriction of their blood vessels and what she&#39;s saying is absolutely right how can a company director make her work until 3:00 to 4:00 in the morning every day for consecutive days and now that she has done a good job of all the given tasks still look for ways to disparage her and now attack her for having Bloodshed eyes an inevitable physiological manifestation caused by severe chronic lack of sleep that Mai can do absolutely nothing about all that she ever wanted was some encouragement from her superiors and a bit of acknowledgement over hard work on October 31st 2015 she tweeted when a superior said to me this isn&#39;t maid&#39;s fault that&#39;s all I thought that this was the most heart melting moment of the Year from a tweet we are guessing that maid&#39;s direct Superior was having another day in the office of let&#39;s go make fun of and Bully Mai as usual trying to nitpick the things that she may have done wrong only to have the scene spotted by another company senior employee who then told him that this is not something that mat have done wrong such a simple sentence meant so much to her that this was the most heart melting thing that she has hard for a long time but Sasa did not wave her and continued to throw harassing remarks on to maid just up until 5 days before she passed away at least as far as we know on December 20th 2015 at 5:45 p.m. my city tweeted I cannot stand it when my male Superior tells me that I have no feminine charm or whatnot even if he says that he&#39;s just joking even when an old man goes bold he&#39;s not told that he has to masculinity right I&#39;m depressed what we see here is a clear form of verbal harassment that is at the point of borderline verbal s harassment it is socially unacceptable in Japan to go up to a small bold old man who most likely have less than 100 nanog per deciliter of testosterone in his body and tell him that he lacks masculinity so why is it the case that under the pretense of I&#39;m just joking that the male counterparts can go up to women and make all kinds of humiliating remarks on their appearance and sexuality Ma really has time to sleep let alone take a shower so it is no wonder that Machi obviously could not have the most elaborate of makeup on her face and could not be the young female eye candy for all these senior oldheads at the company but to actually go up to her and tell her something which essentially implied a message in the lines of you don&#39;t even look like a woman anymore this could have indeed been the very moment when mat City finally broke down to the point of no return this very tweet was the second last tweet that she left in her Twitter account and she passed away 5 days later so then the question has to be asked is life like this for all the young newly recruit employees at D if you&#39;re a new male recruit have you drink alcohol until you vomit blood and if your Superior is the more aggressive type get your head smashed in and if you&#39;re a new female recruit constantly suffer from passive aggressive I&#39;m just joking type verbal harassment from the older senior employees the answer is it depends on how you got into the company according to employee a from the previous Anonymous interview who shared a his experiences of working as a den man he states that around 20 to 30% of the total employees at dens are hired to connections Den being the biggest and most powerful advertising agency in Japan many of the children and relatives of high-profile politicians business Executives and media tycoons in Japan enter the company as a new employee employee a states that a lot of these Legacy Family kits have rare surnames that can easily be spotted or many of them just downright say my father is an executive at xxtv and for such employees whose fathers have large power and influence in their given fields of the Japanese Society the company superiors obviously have to be careful not to bully them as if they made the son of a such and such TV channel executive drink beer out of his shoe then smack his head with a shoe as in how they did to Ichiro osima all hell will break loose if the employee goes to tell his powerful dad on what kind of humiliation he suffered for example the wife of the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abbe AK Abbe comes from an extremely wealthy family in Japan with her father being the former president of morinaga in company one of Japan&#39;s largest contractionary companies and after she graduated from college she began working at den and we have a strong feeling that when Aki AB was a newly recruited employee at the company as in the case of ma she somehow was not forced to work until 3:00 to 4: in the morning every day for months and did not have senior managers ripping off the documents that she prepared and shout all your hours at this company is a waste of time or got told of how she does not have much feminine charm as unfair and outdated as this may sound this is just a reality of life not only at Dena but working in quite a portion of high-profile companies in Japan in general regarding how you&#39;re going to be treated at the company as well as how far up the corporate ladder you can ultimately climb up to although not in every single firm by any means your father&#39;s social standing is often going to be an important matter especially at a company with a long history and deep rooted influence to the nation&#39;s business and political scene such as Den where the employees around you try to initially identify right away of whether you are a connection employee or not so that they can know how far they can push it when it comes to treating you to how many overwork hours they should designate you Etc and from this perspective Machi was the easiest harassment Target there could objectively be she not only does not come from a family of a powerful media Tycoon but does not even come from what men Define as an ordinary family she was raised by a single mother in a nonn Tokyo region and was so poor to the degree that she had to receive scholarship just to attend Junior High and high school so even if she does get overworked and power harassed at the workpl who does she have to fall back to thus the reason why bad-natured beings such as hiroya Sasa mach&#39;s direct Superior had no hesitation in power harassing Machi to the Moon knowing that she had no powerful father to fall back to in one of mach&#39;s tweets it seemed as if she even contemplated on eventually suing her Superior in the future that is obviously no longer going to happen now now they she is no longer with us and Sasa continued to work comfortably in Den for the first 9 months after mach&#39;s passing during the time when the company was taking the we accept no responsibility stance regarding her death however after October 2016 when Dena decided to publicly accept responsibility for her passing Sasa was eventually forced to resign from the company although Sasa was summoned to the Tokyo District prosecutor&#39;s office for investigation the Tokyo prosecutors later decided not to indict mach&#39;s mother fully knowing how her daughter was treated under her direct Superior at the company held a press conference on January 25th 2018 and said that the known indictment of Sasa was unfair to quote her exact words should the actions of the superior be tolerated just because illegal labor practices is the culture a den or is it because several employees were engaged in similar illegal practices I would like to ask this question to the entirety of Japan however despite the plead from her mother Sasa nor any of the superiors of Mai were indicted now we do have to end this chapter by stating the fact that in the year 2024 matters regarding the workplace atmosphere at Dena most likely have changed for the better not trying to defend the company in absolutely any way but that is most likely the objective reality of the matter with Den implementing various compliance measures within the company after Mach passing in late 2016 not to mention the company once again being at the center of controversy in 2017 when famous Japanese writer and blogger Ito Haruka spoke out on the S harassment that she suffered from her Den Superior during her time working for the company it would just be more than unwise to put it most mouly for Dan to continue their corporate culture of power or S harassment especially in today&#39;s age of social media and further ruin the company&#39;s reputation and image many of you guys who may have studied Japanese know that the word mat City can have the meaning of the word Festival in English and we believe this is very much what her mother intended when she named her daughter have her daughter live the life of a festival of bright fireworks Joys and smiles and that is the type of life that every single one of us deserve to live as well our own little Festival of life with many small fireworks in between and when we say fireworks we don&#39;t mean some Grand scale fancy ones that you see on New Year&#39;s Eve or such but the type of modest ones that we have in our garden enjoyed with our friends and family and such small but meaningful occasions would be by a nice and Cal comfortable house for our parents marry the love of our lives and be blessed by our friends and family at a small wedding raise our children with love and watch them happily press through their dreams as they grow older celebrate the 60th wedding anniversary with our wife or husband with a cake and a glass of wine again nothing fancy or grandiose but our own small unique Festival of Life nonetheless and in a sense this is exactly the only hope that got ma going in the final few days of her life on her Twitter account we get a glimpse of what kind of dream dream she had in life that got her to not give up hope and it was not to buy the shinest new Chanel bag or buy the brand new Mercedes it was to buy a cat and a house on December 3rd 2015 my chitt tweeted my dream is to adopt this kitten and buy a house so I have to keep making money I have to keep getting up every morning and in one of her final tweets posted just 11 days before she passed away she wrote I&#39;ll work overtime again tomorrow with the precious memories of when my ex-boyfriend from my freshman year of college dried my hair in my heart so what we can essentially see is a young adult who just wanted the simplest things in life a house of her own a cat and a boyfriend or eventually a husband who can occasionally dry her hair for her in a loving way and of course although she did not publicly tweet regarding it due to it being a very private matter her biggest dream was to make enough money for her mother to be able to receive the best treatment possible regarding her potential cancer development but sadly mat was taken to early from us and could not see your dreams be actualized throughout our time of researching mat City story it was really hard for me to let my emotions in because when I see her in many ways I see myself now I&#39;m not just saying this for the sake of this video I was also raised in a single parent household by my mother and relatives from my mother&#39;s side such as my grandmother as in the case of mat City also suffering financially I also could not attend almost any crime school let alone have a private tutor so squeeze my brains out with just a bunch of books in front of me with no one to explain to me once I got stuck on a Christian back in my high school days but then I knew that studying was the only hope that I had for a better life so slapped myself in the face when I got sleepy and just memorized memorized and memorized for the exams and in many ways I felt that she was essentially how can I put this an upgraded version of myself I thought I excelled back in high school especially for someone who self-studied without the private education but not as much as my city she objectively performed better than me academically and was able to get into Tokyo University while I had to settle for the second best in Japan for my major she also excelled more than me in terms of managing her time I have to be honest I do not have much memories of doing social or Club activities during my time as an undergraduate if I was not in classes or doing assignments I was working part-time washing dishes at a restaurant or working after midnight construction jobs at Tokyo Metro in order to pay rent and prepare for next semester&#39;s tuition fees at the the time when I enrolled in University 12 years ago back in 2012 the Japanese Yen was literally almost twice as strong as how it is right now by the way with Tokyo always being listed as one of the most if not the most expensive city to live in the world back in the days very different from the image of the cheap Japan that we&#39;re getting more and more used to in the recent phase but in the case of matsi although she was in a similar Financial predicament as I was was still able to participate in club activities such as being a trainer at the University lacrosse team or return back to the society by conducting volunteer work and teach underprivileged middle school kids while also working part-time as well the firm that she entered Den had more recognition and a higher base salary compared to the company in which I entered postgraduation to be completely honest with you guys I&#39;m not even that proud of working in Japan after uni with Japan&#39;s population rapidly declining while its economy is still maintaining quite a bit of size it is quite easy to immediately work for a Japanese company postgraduation especially if you&#39;re a graduate of one of the top universities of the nation given that you&#39;re not too picky and with that said mat city was able to persevere through and tolerate way more overwork hours than I did is not even comparable really same with power harassment at work I did get that passive aggressive mockery here and there of the fact that I&#39;m that kimchi eating South Korean the older guys with their joking tone making fun of my Japanese for how [ __ ] my accent sounds and imitating my way of speaking in that mocking way during the drinking gatherings little did they know I&#39;m immune to the pronunciation mockery though I&#39;m born with one of the shortest tongues that is attached onto a human being all of the Rolling the tongue axe absolutely impossible for me and as infrequently as I saw my dad whenever I saw him he used to pick my tongue with his fingers and pull it out all the way even until middle school saying that he could not understand what the FI was saying and that perhaps the tongue pulling would help and that is not all a foreign language he was pulling my tongue because he could not understand me speaking in my native language and when you have childhood experiences of having your tongue literally being picked and pulled out to the point of such physical pain as how I have a little mockery relatively does nothing from being just immune to all the pronunciation BS thanks to all the related experiences that I&#39;ve had for as far as my memory goes so me narrating in English in this video is a miracle in and of itself and that anything can be possible although nowhere near Perfection still possible meaning that for many of our subscribers who want to start our YouTube channel but just cannot get yourself to do so from the fear of not being a native speaker having an accent or not the best of pronunciation if I can do it you can do it Shar your thoughts and life experiences screw the negativity but regarding the infamous power harassment in Japan still I did not have it as bad nor did I have to endure as much as maity no Superior had the audacity to tear off the documents that I worked overtime for and told me that my existence was a waste no Superior directly came up to me and said you&#39;re looking quite estrogen fi today where&#39;s old the masculinity at so when I state that when I see mat I see an individual that are in many ways a better version of myself I really do mean it with many parallels in our lives with heart excelling more on your charia than I do but the only one thing that I had it personally going better for me than mat I believe was the help and response that I got from the people around me in the times when I most needed it not many in Japan know this but from researching and reading almost every single interview in which mat City&#39;s mother gave we found that her passing wasn&#39;t the case of an individual who never ever discussed her problems to others kept everything inside herself then suddenly made the decision to unive herself she did seek help she talked to the HR office Den numerous times they obviously did not help much she talk to friends and people she knew but their responses were not something in the lines of quit immediately but more of a one in the lines of is Deno just do your best and take it easy and on October 1st 2015 mat City sent a message to her mother saying I want to quit my job however rather than telling her to quit immediately maid&#39;s mother consult her how things will be all right when her mother received the final text from maidi on the day she passed away on December 25th 2015 maid&#39;s mother immediately called her in which mat cidi answered and this is when her mother States one of the biggest regrets of her life has occurred when matsi answered her mother&#39;s phone call her mother told her on the phone don&#39;t die in which mats replied replied with a yes yes but mat hung up the phone then still went on to yeah in hindsight mat&#39;s mother says that she should have been more firm in telling her daughter to quit her job and when I read this part I knew exactly what she meant what Ma wanted to hear during her final days from the people around her was that she can quit working for Dan that things will be fine even if she quits that she can still work for some other company maybe not as famous or as high paying as Daner but get their Assurance from from others that she can still do well and earn enough money for her mother&#39;s Hospital fees and achieve all her other dreams but no one said this to her not a single person told her whether it be the HR department personnel at Den or her friends and acquaintances to get out from the hell on Earth of an office with all their responses in the lines of it&#39;s D though and how do I know this because this is what I went through as I entered my 30s in Japan now I&#39;m not going to overdramatize for the sake of this video and say that I also had thoughts of taking the Unfaithful choice on my own life as in the case of my city that was just not the case such a thought just never entered my mind but what I did begin doing though was start questioning whether this is really what I worked my entire life for slap myself in the face every day to not fall asleep and memorize memorize and memorize for me to get the exam scores necessary to be admitted to my dream University wash dishes every day at a restaurant and work on construction sites along with attending classes to pay tuition fees all this life of pain that I had to endure through every day so that I can ultimately be this trivial dep personalized machine for a Japanese company until retirement no I progressively realized that this was not what I wanted my one and only life to be so when I shared my thoughts about quitting work to my mother she said do what you enjoy I&#39;ll fully support your decision and when I shared my thoughts with my wife she said we have enough savings write that book that you&#39;ve been wanting to write make that YouTube channel you&#39;ve always got it done and we&#39;ll get this done successfully as well at that time I thought these were rather natural responses but now after knowing the story of maity I know that I have angels as my family and should never take such unconditional support for granted and be thankful until deathbed for that I was able to have such wonderful people around me in my life at the times of biggest personal crisis and if just one person was to have told matsi in her final days with full conviction a message in the lines of your matsi Takashi the amazingly talented individual who got into Tokyo University through sheer self-study quit working for the den or whatever immediately you do not deserve that type of treatment again you&#39;re mat Takashi whatever else you decide to do out of Dan you&#39;ll Excel and succeed as you always have done if she heard just one person tell her this with full conviction rather than the they pay so much just endure do your best and don&#39;t think about dying or anything like that we actually believe that there&#39;s a chance that things could have turned out very differently she could still be alive at this point succeeding in whatever else Endeavor she chose to do as she always has done obviously if your friend is just being lazy and complaining as if he or she has the most difficult job ever when they just have a three hour workshift without any form of workplace harassment to be seen as well then we should justifiably tell them to stop being so lazy and get to work but for any of our subscribers who may have friends or relatives who may genuinely be suffering from a similar decent in life right now as in the one that was faced by mat City do not tell them something in the lines off your company is so hard to get in though your job pay six figuras a year though or if you just endure a year more you&#39;ll get the promotion though tell them to quit immediately nothing is more important than life all that overtime pay means nothing if we are no longer here to receive it so let us save ourselves first then worry about everything else that comes afterwards

Transcript for:Why Do We Work? Understanding Different Motivations and Consequences

Transcript for:
Why Do We Work? Understanding Different Motivations and Consequences