Japan's work culture is so cutthroat that it can be life threatening.
Death by overwork, or karoshi,
has been a legally recognized cause of death in Japan since the 1980s.
And it's on the rise.
Now, the Japanese government is trying to convince companies
to let their workers work less,
through a program they're calling "Premium Fridays," which started last week.
Dexter Thomas reports from Tokyo.
Sunny Side Up is a Tokyo-based PR agency.
It's one of a handful of companies embracing Premium Friday.
At 3:00 p.m. on Friday, a manager sent all the employees home early.
They even got a gift envelope of $30.
This was a carefully orchestrated event,
and it felt a little like a marketing stunt.
But in Japan, the concept of working too hard is no joke.
On top of the standard 40-hour work week,
one-in-four Japanese workers puts in an extra 20 hours of overtime.
Japan's overwork-related legal claims
reached a record high in 2015.
The government acknowledged karoshi as the cause of at least 189 deaths.
Noriko Nakahara's husband, who was the head of a private hospitals pediatric department,
was a victim of karoshi.
She says his department was understaffed and that his bosses kept pushing
to meet higher and higher sales targets.
He was forced to pull double-shifts and constant all-nighters.
In 1999, he jumped off the roof of the hospital and killed himself.
Since her husband's death,
Nakahara has become a core member of the National Karoshi Family Association.
The government has proposed new regulations,
including limiting the amount of overtime to 100 hours a month,
but anti-karoshi advocates say that's not good enough.
Karoshi was thrust into the international stage on Christmas Day of 2015,
when an overworked and sleep-deprived junior employee named Matsuri Takahashi
jumped off the railing of the company dormitory and killed herself.
She was 24-years-old.
Her mother's now joined the movement against karoshi.
Matsuri Takahashi worked at Dentsu,
a major Japanese advertising firm.
After her death, there was a massive public outcry
against corporations that exploit the workers.
Dentsu's CEO was eventually forced to step down.
A few months after Takahashi's death,
Japan's oldest business lobby, the Keidanren,
started developing Premium Friday.
The international media has been painting this
as a direct response to karoshi,
but it's a little more complicated than that.
Naohiro Ueda is a part of the team that developed the Premium Friday initiative.
The original idea was to give people time off work to spend more money.
But recently, Prime Minister Abe has mentioned Premium Friday
as part of his Work Style Reform campaign.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced
that there were at least 130 participating firms,
including Mitsubishi, Suntory and Sumitomo.
But one independent survey found that only 2.5% of employees
said their bosses were encouraging them to leave work early.
So there's some concern that Premium Friday could be a flop,
and for a lot of people who have heard of Premium Friday,
leaving work early sounds like a pipe dream.