Man Killed Self From Overwork By YURI KAGEYAMA .c The Associated Press TOKYO (AP) -- In a nation of workaholics, a Japanese judge on Friday blamed a man's suicide on exhaustion from working 80-hour weeks and ordered the government to compensate his family -- possibly paving the way for thousands of such cases. Before Mori Iijima hanged himself in his garage in 1985, he was driven to depression from overwork at his job in a machine shop, the Nagano District Court ruled. Under Japanese law, the spouse and dependent children of a worker who dies from a job-related injury or illness can receive payments of about $17,000 a year from the government. But proving that overwork caused the suicide is extremely difficult. In Iijima's case, experts testified that he suffered from insomnia, extreme exhaustion and fears brought on by the nearly 160 hours of overtime each month. Iijima's case was only the second in Japan in which the government was ordered to pay for suicide from overwork. There was a similar ruling in 1996, and one other case is before a court. But Friday's ruling is significant because it addressed government liability. ``We welcome the ruling,'' said Fumio Matsumura, lawyer for Iijima's wife, Chieko, who filed the lawsuit in 1997. ``Up to now, the government has taken the view that suicide is the individual's choice and refused to help families.'' The ruling will encourage others who have lost a relative to suicide from overwork, Matsumura said. He estimated that as many as several thousand such cases could be filed in a nation dominated by an intense work ethic. Matsumura and other lawyers say that such suicides are on the rise. The phenomenon is so common that there is even a term for them: ``karo-jisatsu.'' The Labor Ministry official in charge of the case, Hiroji Koike, said the government was still studying the ruling, including the possibility of appeal. If Mrs. Iijima ultimately wins out, she will receive payments dating back to the time of her husband's death. In a similar 1997 case, the court ordered a leading advertising company, Dentsu, to pay $742,000 in compensation to the family of Ichiro Oshima, 24, who killed himself after working so hard that he averaged 30 minutes to two hours of sleep a night. He did not get a single day off for 17 months. Mrs. Iijima was not immediately available for comment Friday. But in an interview with The Associated Press last year, she said she sued because otherwise her husband would have died in vain. ``I felt so sorry for my husband,'' she said then in a telephone interview from Nagano, 110 miles northwest of Tokyo. ``People start out working for their livelihood, for their families, for happiness. Then why does it have to end up this way?'' Mrs. Iijima filed for government money shortly after her husband died, but her application was turned down by the local authorities in 1995. The Iijimas had two children. Like others who take their lives after working too hard, her husband was the kind of person who couldn't say ``No,'' Mrs. Iijima recalled. Lawyers familiar with suicides from overwork say the workers leave behind notes apologizing repeatedly for failing to measure up. They rarely blame their employers or co-workers -- only themselves.
