By Mari Yamaguchi
TOKYO (AP) --Japanese authorities raided the country's top advertising agency Dentsu on Monday as they launched a criminal investigation into the suicide of a 24-year-old employee due to overwork on suspicion of systematic illegal overtime at the company.
Monday's investigation follows the government's recognition in late September that Matsuri Takahashi died of "karoshi," or death from overwork.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said investigators from the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry raided Dentsu Inc.'s Tokyo headquarters and three branch offices on suspicion the company broke the law by forcing Takahashi to engage in chronic overwork.
Investigators suspect widespread illegal overtime at the company. In Japan, labor officials can conduct criminal investigations and hand over cases to prosecutors for possible indictments.
Karoshi causes hundreds of deaths and illnesses every year in Japan despite efforts to curb overwork.
Labor officials found Takahashi's overtime pushed past 100 hours a month, way over 80 hours, a threshold for karoshi. But she reportedly was asked to report overtime only below the company's own monthly limit, which was 70 hours at the time.
On top of the 40-hour work week the labor standards law sets for most workers, as an exception that serves as a loophole companies can establish voluntary ceilings for overtime, making the law toothless.
At Dentsu and many other companies, much overtime routinely goes unreported, labor officials say.
Dentsu president Tadashi Ishii said the company will cooperate in the investigation. The company has acknowledged at least two other karoshi cases since the 1990s and says it is trying to prevent overwork, going so far as to turn off lights in its headquarters after 10 p.m.
Suga told reporters the government also will seek to reduce overtime. Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "womenomics" initiatives, the government is urging men to help out more at home, while encouraging businesses to create more job opportunities for women. The strategy seems to be making little headway, however.
"Nobody should lose their precious lives from overwork," Suga said. "We plan to push for reforms from the workers' point of view."
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More