American Way: “Karoshi: Survival of the Fittest”
By Charlotte Huff
  One man worked as many as 110 hours a week, and he died from a heart attack at age 34. Another, a bus driver, clocked 3,000-plus hours annually before suffering a stroke at age 37 after working for 15 days straight. A Tokyo businessman, whose death was also classified as work related, logged 4,320 hours annually -- about 83 hours a week, 52 weeks a year -- before his fatal stroke at age 58. And, according to the National Defense Counsel for Victims of Karoshi, a legal group in Japan, these men qualified for workers' compensation due to karoshi, or "death from overwork."

  Americans may gripe about the 24-hour PDA leash and working weekends, but the physical -- and potentially lethal -- risk of too much time on the job has become a documented and increasingly publicly discussed concern in Japan.

  The term karoshi was coined in the decades after World War II, when Japan's economic success was capturing headlines -- and creating excessive work schedules. By 1983, according to data published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Japanese employees worked an average of 2,095 hours annually (compared with 1,825 hours worked by employees in the United States and 1,713 hours banked by those in the United Kingdom. Contact for complete article.