International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling 17: 167-182, 1994. 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

. Printed in the Netherlands.

Overwork and career-centered self-validation among the Japanese: Psychosocial issues and counselling implications F. ISHU ISHIYAMA l & A K I O KITAYAMA 2
i University of British Columbia; 2National Institute of Public Health, Tokyo

Abstract. Overwork and workaholism among Japanese corporate workers and related psychosocial issues are explored. Ishiyama's (1989) model of self-validation is used as a conceptual framework. The Japanese culture and the corporate structure are treated as the context in which social pressure for overwork and obsessive work-preoccupation are espoused. The authors examine the nature and consequences of overwork and career-centered self-validation, in terms of family, marital, and existential issues, as well as stress and karoshi (death by overwork). Implications to counselling and social and systemic change are discussed.

Although Japan enjoys economic growth and an international reputation for strong work ethics, various medical and psychosocial problems are surfacing in Japan, associated with overwork. Japanese corporate workers, both blue collar and white collar, tend to spend a disproportionately large amount of time and energy at work. According to the International Labour Organization's 1993 World Labour Report (quoted in Uehata, 1993), the average Japanese person works for 2055 hours per year. This figure does not include extra, unpaid overtime. For example, an average bank employee works for 3000 hours per year, which is 12 hours per day for 250 days a year. According to the Japanese Ministry of Labor (1989), Japanese workers in the manufacturing industry work overtime 2.7 times as high as German counterparts, and take 30 holidays less per year than Germans do. It is widely known that chronic, excessive work habits and work-related stress can result in various mental, physical, and interpersonal problems, including death by overworking (Uehata, 1993). Helping professionals and social critics have recognized the necessity for improvements and reevaluation of how individuals, employers, society, and the government deal with workaholism and job stress. In the present paper, we will discuss the nature of overwork and related problems encountered in the modern Japanese society. Ishiyama's (1989) model of self-validation will be used as a conceptual framework, to explore the following areas: (a) the Japanese corporate culture, (b) stress and death from overwork, and (c) psychosocial (i.e., psychological, existential, marital, and familial) problems. Counselling implications and social issues will be briefly discussed. Because most of the overworkers are reportedly male workers, the masculine pronoun will be used throughout the paper. (According

168 to the 1989 report by the Japan Statistics Bureau, the male-female ratio of those who work over 60 hours per week was 7 to 1.)

Overwork and workaholism In this paper, we use 'overwork' as a general term, and 'workaholism' as a specific type of overwork. Workaholism refers to the worker's excessive preoccupations with work, a form of psychological addiction in which his energy is so consumed with work-related activities and concerns that his mental, physical, and social well-being is in jeopardy (Cherrington, 1980; Oates, 197 t; Schwartz, 1982). We hold that not all Japanese overworkers are workaholics, and that there are differences between obsessive workaholics and reluctant overworkers. The reluctant overworker feels pressured or obliged to overwork, is aware of imbalance in his lifestyle, and experiences inner conflicts about neglecting his health, family, and the pursuit of his own personal interests outside work.

Model of self-validation

The model of self-validation was developed mainly for understanding the experience of cross-cultural transition and adjustment (Ishiyama, 1989; Ishiyama & Westwood, 1992). We have found this model useful in examining and understanding Japanese workaholism and related psychosocial issues.

Self-validation needs and themes

Self-validation refers to a subjective experience of physical, social, personal, and spiritual well-being by means of affirmation of one's sense of self, purpose in life, and meaningful personal existence in a given sociocultural context. The model postulates that one is motivated to seek validation, and has the need to be validated (Ishiyama, 1987). The validation experience has the following five interrelated thematic components (Ishiyama, 1989): (a) security, comfort, and support, (b) self-worth and self-acceptance, (c) competence and autonomy, (d) identity and belonging, and (e) love, fulfillment, and meaning in life; see Fig. 1. While certain life events and circumstances contribute positively to one's sense of validation, the invalidation and undervalidation of self may be experienced in other situations, such as divorce, job loss, criticism and rejection by others, illness, disability, death of a loved one, relocation, and experience of failure. Validation comes from various internal and external sources (e.g., self, memories, family, friends, work, hobbies, sports, nature, places, symbolic objects, and religion), which form one's validation network. These sources of validation hold personal significance, and the loss of a certain validation source or multiple losses could cause a profound emotional and existential

169

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crisis. When one's validation sources are gone or become less accessible, one may experience undervalidation, This is often followed by a process of grieving the loss and/or an attempt to restore a sense of validation by other means. If one relies heavily on one source of validation, be it work or a particular relationship, one would become devastated and depressed when it became no longer available, For example, it is not uncommon among recently retired or unemployed Japanese corporate workers to become depressed and lose a sense of meaning in life because of the loss of the primary source of validation.
The multidimensional self

One's sense of self, or self-identity, is dynamic and complex. Different validation source validate different aspects of self. In the self-validation model,

170 self is regarded as multidimensional, having five experiential levels of self: (a) physical, (b) familial, (c) social-cultural, (d) transcultural-existential, and (e) transpersonal; see Fig. 2. The middle layer, the social-cultural self, contains a number of socially or culturally sanctioned roles and statuses, including occupational identity, group memberships, and ethnocultural identity. Holistic self-validation means respecting and validating all aspects of self and achieving a harmonious balance among them. One may develop a neurotic lifestyle and various problems when one tries to validate only a certain aspect of self and neglect, deny, or undervalidate the other aspects. In the case of workaholic persons, their career self, which is part of the social-cultural self, becomes the source of exclusive concern and validational addiction. Their physical self is in effect invalidated when they

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Fig. 2. Aspects of the holistic self to be validated.

171 overwork at the expense of their health due to various reasons (e.g., perfectionism, ambition, obsession with work, financial needs, and corporate and peer pressures). Alcohol, smoking, sauna and massage, and other stressreducing attempts do not necessarily restore health and reverse the abuse of their own body. At work where role-consciousness and a need for belonging and inclusion are reinforced, they may experience only limited, if any, validation of the existence self (i.e., affirmation and free expression of the genuine, unique and individuated self, not governed by one's roles, status, or concerns about social evaluation and disapproval). While a close, authentic friendship with a colleague may be developed and enjoyed, it still takes place in a work context and is subjected to the forces of the corporate culture and hierarchy. As Shigehisa, Kitagawa, Inoue & Fukui (1987) aptly indicated, the corporate and the individual self tend to overlap significantly, and one's corporate membership (i.e., the career self) occupies a major part of self-identity in Japan; see Fig. 3. Overidentification with the occupational rote and the

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Fig. 3. Self-validation sources and areas of shared values and meanings.

172 company and a failure to validate aspects of self other than the career self thus leads to a self-defeating process of preoccupation with work which may later result in psychosomatic stress reactions, family and marital alienation, and existential and identity crisis.

The Japanese corporate culture and psychosocial issues

The Japanese corporate culture It has been pointed out that the Japanese traditionally place high value on work, long-term selfless loyalty to the employer, and devotion to perfecting their vocational skills. These attitudes are socially and culturally reinforced, and traceable to the Buddhist and feudalistic traditions (Benedict, 1946). However, we also need to recognize the role played by the unique Japanese corporate management structure and corporate culture which effectively espouse family-like group dynamics and workers' interdependence in order to reinforce their corporate identity and devotion to work for greater corporate productivity and efficiency (Brown, 1974). The corporate self Workers are given an implicit promise for protection and employment security, which is reciprocated by their loyalty and personal sacrifice. Individual corporate members tend to work toward collective success, and value being a useful and contributing member who works harmoniously with others (Cathcart & Cathcart, 1985). Career progress depends upon one's ability to function collaboratively and selflessly. One's sense of loyalty and indebtedness to the company increases over time as one's corporate role becomes more important and responsible and as one's commitment and contribution are positively reinforced with various social and economic benefits. The corporate quasi-family The workplace in Japan is where one's needs for belonging and emotional security are met readily. The Japanese corporate system has a highly taskoriented structure for productivity and efficiency. It also contains a familylike infrastructure (Ives, 1992), which not only maintains a hierarchical social order but also meets its members' emotional needs (such as the need for amae or regressive self-indulgence in a protective relationship; Doi, 1974). Such a structure cultivates interdependence, group cohesion, and interpersonal enmeshment. For example, it is not uncommon that young workers develop a father-son-like relationship with an elder corporate member, whom they see as someone with more experience in life and wisdom for living. Therefore, we argue that the corporate culture (i.e., work-based relationships and social order) provides a quasi-family, which partially replaces their actual family and extended family. The corporate quasi-family vicariously meets the workers'

173 need to belong to a family (or extended family), and thus validates their familial self to a certain extent.

Other-orientedness, suppression of individuality, and social evaluation anxiety

In North America, the company is expected to honor the formal employment contract and respect individual rights and freedom. In contrast, Japanese corporate workers are expected not to challenge the organizational hierarchy or disturb the group harmony. One upmanship is often discouraged, as the Japanese saying goes: 'The state that sticks out will be hammered down.' Such corporate norms are implicitly understood in a 'high context culture' such as Japan (Hall, 1977). Instead, they are rewarded to work interdependently toward group goals. Strong group cohesion, mutual trust, and commitment to the group are espoused by the culturally reinforced virtue of self-devotion for group harmony and the absence of individualistic competitiveness. This type of group-orientedness results in a cooperative social and work environment, which in turn makes individuals very susceptible to group influence. At the subconscious level, Japanese corporate workers are highly conscious of themselves as the object of others' evaluation. The thought of being individualistic and self-assertive is thus counterbalanced by heightened public self-consciousness and social anxiety.

Career-centered self-validation
The corporate culture is the central domain of the worker's psychosocial existence and the most powerful source of social validation. It is a mini-culture whereby a sense of emotional security, familiarity, social support, interdependence, and self-importance are cultivated through relationships with peers and junior and senior workers (Cathcart & Cathcart, 1985; Ives, 1992; Stewart, 1985). In a family-like context, workers enjoy strong peer support, responsibility for guiding junior workers, and the availability of senior workers as mentors and advisors on general life issues. Hours of socializing after work gives an additional social dimension and maintains a social hierarchy and a sense of belonging. In this process, corporate members feel important and responsible to their colleagues. Thus, their social, emotional, and selfactualization needs are met at work to varying degrees. However, the less validation they experience outside the workplace, the more dependent they become upon the work-based validation they have. This forms a selfreinforcing cycle, and contributes to the fears of letting go of the career self as their primary self-identity and of facing a major existential task of defining who they are.

Stress and karoshi

Before we discuss the psychosocial aspects of overwork and workaholism, it is necessary to recognize concrete manifestations of self-induced and corporate-induced overwork and psychosomatic stress reactions. The most extreme

174 case is karoshi or death from overwork, an increasingly accepted concept at the international level.

Work stress According to Haraguchi, Tsuda & Ozeki (1991), workaholism is closely associated with high work stress. Psychological stress reactions include emotions such as depression, anxiety, anger, and irritability, and behaviors such as absenteeism, withdrawal, low productivity, and mistakes and accident proneness on the job. Somatic stress reactions include fatigue, ennui, sleep disturbance, and hormonal imbalance. These researchers found that persons with high stress reactions tend to have more working hours per week total (over 70 hours) and more overtime (50 hours per month). Further, they tend to take less holidays, and rink and smoke more. Generally, heightened stress is experienced by those working under high job demand with less social support and less freedom to make decisions and choices. Type A personality The Type A personality is a cluster of stress-prone attitudinal and personality traits, such as devotion to work, control-orientedness, competitiveness, hastiness, proneness to frustration, and aggressiveness. Yoshitake (1991) reported that Japanese Type A workers tend to exhibit more work devotion and less aggressiveness than American counterparts. Such Japanese workers score high on tenacity as a trait, feel tess tired while on task, and ignore symptoms of fatigue to continue working. Therefore, they are more prone to overwork and karoshi. What has driven them to successful career achievement ironically becomes a source of stress-related illness and premature death before they have a chance to learn to slow down and enjoy life. Karoshi It is commonly observed in Japan that many workers fall asleep on commuter trains and subways on their way to and from work, due to overwork, fatigue, and a lack of rest. Karoshi, is a term to refer to death from overwork, coined in the early 1980's by Tetsunojo Uehata at the National Institute of Public Health in Tokyo. It is gaining an international recognition as a cause of death among chronically overworking corporate workers, especially those in their 40's and 50's. Originally, karoshi was conceptualized as a death or permanent disability caused by cardiovascular illness and attacks mediated by excessive work stress and fatigue (Uehata, Ka & Sekiya, 1991). More recently, from the perspective of social medicine, cases of suicide and death caused by asthmatic attacks are also considered to be linked with heavy work demands. One newspaper article (Terry, 1991, September 21) described the workplace in Japan as a 'killing field.' To sum, stress-related physical and mental problems seem to result from various factors, such as: (a) long work hours; (b) unhealthy lifestyles and diet; (c) excessive pressure and stress at work; (d) high achievement motivation

175 and obsession; (e) work relationships and job performance used as primary or only sources of self-validation; and (f) the absence of healthy means of reducing stress and restoring balance in life (Haraguchi, Tsuda & Ozeki, 1991; Uehata, Ka & Sekiya, 1991; Yamazaki, 1991). Uehata (1993) recently reported that the primary contributing factor to deaths from overwork is excessively long work hours, and that two thirds of the 203 karoshi cases he had studied had worked either 60 hours or more per week, 50 hours of overtime per month, and/or more than half of the weekends and holidays. He argued that excessive psychological stress and fatigue are induced by frequent out-of-town work assignments, high performance expectations placed by the company, promotion to a more responsible post, job transfer, and career change.
Psychosocial issues

As discussed earlier, work provides much social and intrinsic validation of self. However, workers' over-adjustment to the corporate culture can cause various psychosocial and stress-related problems. Also, various psychosocial problems, including family and marital difficulties and existential crisis, seem to result from chronic obsession with work. In this section, we will discuss selected common themes which confront workaholics and overworkers who are trapped in the world of work.
Personal dilemma Seeking validation for the unique and autonomous self is normal and healthy. However, the Japanese other-orientedness creates a stressful inner conflict between individualism and collectivism, between pursuing personal desires and autonomy and maintaining corporate membership and group acceptance. For example, it is common that workers do not fully use their legitimate vacation days for the fear of others' criticism at being irresponsible toward the company. When a superior in the middle management gives up his/her holiday to work on an unfinished project, co-workers and subordinates feel obliged not to request a full vacation for themselves. All eggs in one basket One tends to get enmeshed with work in Japan, as characterized by long working hours and emotional commitment to work. Work and the work-based social network provide ample opportunities for validation, which strengthens one's career-centered self-identity. That is, work is where they experience emotional security, aspirations, a sense of control and competency, social recognition and rewards for their talents and success, and a sense of challenge and fulfillment in life. The Japanese corporate structure is designed so that social relationships, hobbies (e.g., golfing), and a sense of family-like affiliation with co-workers are easily developed. Work becomes a dominant arena of life, while family and non-work relationships and activities recede into the background. The danger that overworking and workaholic individuals face

176 is becoming over-dependent upon the work context as the only source of validation and the basis for their personal identity. Metaphorically, when the basket that holds all the eggs gets crushed, the worker loses his validation network and goes into an existential vacuum.

UndervaIidation of other aspects of self

Workaholics' validation needs are so contextualized in the world of work that the importance of the other aspects of life tends to become minimized or pushed to the background of their awareness. We consider this to be an important part of the dynamics of workaholism. Being with the family and friends outside work and engaging in meaningful dialogues and avocational activities can also provide feelings of wellness and validation which cannot be replaced by work-related experience. However, a company-devoted person has little time for activities other than work.

Avoidance of existential issues

For workaholic individuals, work and work-related relationships become the exclusive source of validation. However, instead of being content with their high output and achievement, they feel that they are not good enough. They would have to face the unknown if they stopped working and started looking at themselves. Coupled with their unreasonably high performance expectations and the corporate pressure for conformity and time-unlimited commitment to work, individuals gradually lose sight of, and lose access to, other sources of validation and other aspects of self to be validated. They thus develop an obsession with work which they regard as ultimately important. Work-preoccupation thus serves as a defense against an existential crisis. Workaholism is per-petuated by an illusion that the validation of their meaningful existence is only through work commitment and successful job performance.

Lack of fulfillment and meaning in life

What is fulfilling to a person needs to be understood in terms of which aspect of self is fulfilled. Work and career success may validate the career self, while the other aspects of self may remain undervalidated. Some workaholics are practically married to work, and divorced from the other domains of life. They may have not considered other sources of fulfillment and meaning in life. They fail to realize that they are pursuing career success at the expense of their own health (i.e., validation of their physical self) and their family and friendships. In a survey (Cole, 1979), Japanese and American workers equally chose enjoyment of leisure and hobbies as the main purpose of working. However, when they were asked about their career fulfillment, the Japanese found less meaning in work than did the Americans. This implies that the Japanese are not necessarily choosing to work long hours in self-devotion, but to some degree feel pressured to work due to an external force or incentive. Although career change is a well accepted practice in the West, people in Japan tend

177 to regard switching companies as a failure in staying in one job and making a lifelong commitment. As a result of social and corporate pressures and obligations and due to the absence of a promising alternative, one may end up staying with one company rather reluctantly.

The seven-eleven husband There is a recent Japanese expression, 'seven-eleven husband,' to refer to those who get up early in the morning to go to work and return home late at night while other family members are asleep. For overworked and exhausted husbands, the home becomes just a place where familiar sleeping facilities are provided without much emotional nourishment. Such husbands tend to feel like fringe dwellers whose main responsibility is to bring money home, but not to be directly and significantly involved in family activities and raising their children. The seven-eleven husband is often so tired even on the weekends that family outings and chores around the house sometimes become additional sources of stress and fatigue. He tends to have a rather marginal family membership, and receives only limited substantive validation for his familial self from the family. When the family forms an internal alliance excluding the marginal father, he is likely to feel displaced and unwanted at home, which in turn reinforces his wish to be back in a familiar working environment. The invisible father The father used to be a more visible and influential family member in the traditional Japanese culture. The demise of the father's status seems to be a relatively new phenomenon, due to the widespread and extremely high father absenteeism from home and the loss of his substantive and symbolic role as the familial head. In a patriarchal, extended family system, the contribution by the father as breadwinner was frequently acknowledged and respected by the family and society. The father was often back home to initiate a family dinner, and his presence was felt. His familial identity as father and his status were maintained and reinforced through the family's interaction patterns and daily rituals, such as the order of meals being served. As a complementary infrastructure, a matriarchal system took care of domestic and child-rearing functions, while disciplining and role modeling for boys used to be the father's responsibility. The mother was the gatekeeper of such a double structure, and the reinforcer of the father as the head of the family. However, especially among urban nuclear families in modern days, the patriarchal system seems to have been taken over by the formerly matriarchal infrastructure. This is due to the father's frequent absence from home and the weakening of his traditional role in the family. Children grow up without seeing and being directly influenced by their father or father substitute (e.g., grandfather). They begin to think that the family can function without the father's input as long as he provides financial security. The mother has to be a role model for both boys and girls in the family in his absence.

178 Without an extended family's influence, the mother becomes the creator and gatekeeper of the family interaction pattern and role structure. Thus, a fatherless family system is formed. In the case of workaholic fathers who are obsessed with work and show little concern for their families, the invisible father phenomenon becomes even stronger. As their career self may be strengthened, their familial self is given only marginal existence and recognition. It is not difficult to imagine how family members become resentful when their non-participating father suddenly demands respect from everyone in the family or tries to get involved in children's personal matters. Father absenteeism thus can leave a deep scar in the family, not easily healed by his weekend parenting.
Retirement as a validation crisis

For workaholic persons, the career self becomes the predominant part of selfidentity and the primary object of self-validation attempts. Their sense of self tends to be narrowly embedded in the work context as the primary source of validation. However, what would happen when they retire or unexpectedly become unemployed? Fig. 3 shows how they become socially and emotionally dislocated in life when they are removed from work and cannot fully reenter their own family system. They have been over-adjusted to the corporate culture, and the family reentry for them feels like moving to a new culture to which they do not really belong. This creates adjustment stress and culture shock. Without work, they feel homeless. Without the career self-identity, they feel like nobody. Thus, an existential vacuum is created in which they suffer the loss of an identity and meaning in life and results in an anxiety-provoking disorientation in life.
Nure-ochiba

Another contemporary expression, nure-ochiba (a wet fallen leaf), is a derogatory metaphor used by wives, to refer to retired husbands who do not know what to do other than work and who hang around at home and expect their wives to provide a structure in life. They follow their wives around, like unwanted, wet fallen leaves which are stuck to the bottom of one's shoes. Thus, competencies developed at work are not necessarily transferrable to a post-retirement lifestyle. The wife has lived all these years without her workimmersed husband's support, and has achieved emotional independence and ego-identity, She possesses appropriate skills for social survival and networking. On the other hand, the husband may lack such skills. He is like a fish out of water, and becomes dependent upon his wife, while the latter feels annoyed with him who constantly disrupts her routine and demands her attention.
The dislocated s e l f

An existential crisis may abruptly surface when the worker retires and loses his primary source of validation. In addition, a lack of abilities to establish

179 an open and honest communication and cultivate a friendship with his wife can heighten a sense of alienation. In a positive sense, this crisis could be an alarm demanding reevaluation of his values and lifestyle and signalling the necessity to find alternatives which are more self-validating and mutually validating in the marital partnership. However, the nure-ochiba phenomenon can also be a sad prelude to long, frustrating, and depressive years of life without much meaning and direction, and of loneliness and lovelessness in marriage. Metaphorically, the retired or unemployed worker feels dislocated out of both the family and work contexts. He falls through his validation network, and lands on an unknown territory where he faces the existential vacuum of becoming 'nobody' from being 'somebody.' Such a loss of self-identity can cause grief, depression, low self-esteem, accelerated ageing, and social withdrawal. Excessive drinking may become a coping method to mask the pain of undervalidation and to avoid existential issues.

Counselling implications
We have discussed workaholism and overwork-related psychosocial and familial problems. These are not only personal and psychological in nature, but also sociocultural. Societal and systemic change needs to parallel counselling, psychoeducational and medical interventions, and preventative efforts. For example, corporate employees are often caught in a dilemma between personal needs and corporate needs. Reluctant overworkers wish for more rest and time for themselves and their families and less pressure for working overtime and cutting their holidays short. At the same time, they are faced with implicit threats of social rejection, delayed promotion, and job loss, if they failed to conform to the corporate cultural norms (e.g., self-sacrifice, group-mindedness, and after-work socializing). In this section, we will briefly point out the needs for self-validation counselling and social and systemic change.

Self-validation counselling and competency building

Unlike North America, counselling is not widely available or easily accessible in the current Japanese social and corporate systems. Even where counselling is made available, it tends to be underutilized by potential users for various reasons, including fears of stigmatization, self-disclosure to a stranger, and breach of confidentiality. Therefore, public and within-company education is much needed on the value of counselling as an effective means of self-exploration and problem-solving. One most likely avenue for recruiting clients for counselling is medical consultations. Because workers feel less defensive about health-related consulations, physicians can in turn encourage their patients to seek counselling to deal with their personal issues.

180 Medical personnel and counsellors can effectively collaborate in facilitating a psychoeducational process of recognizing what underlies their stress symptoms and reassessing and exploring themselves. In counselling, workers may explore a wide range of issues such as: (a) work conditions and relationships, (b) personal and career goals, (c) stress reactions and health concerns, (d) family and marital problems, (e) recreational activities, (f) concerns about retirement and post-retirement lifestyle, (g) financial issues, and (h) personal values and existential issues in life. These issues are all interrelated, and we believe that an exploration of one issue inevitably leads to another. Attempts to validate the physical self and the familial self, for example, ultimately will result in changes in work habits and priorities in life. Learning skills and sensitivities for open and honest communication with their wives and children may be able to improve their marriage and home environment, and help workers recognize the importance of the family's well-being and mutual validation. Further, exploring and learning to validate the existential, authentic self becomes a critical developmental task. Individuals, long before retirement, need to be confronted by questions as to how they honestly feel about themselves and life, what they value, what are the sources of validation, and whom and what activities they have been neglecting at the expense of their pursuit of career success. Thus, counselling can provide overworking and overworked individuals with opportunities to acknowledge and explore various issues and ego-threatening feelings and thoughts such as loneliness, insecurity, self-doubt, emptiness, and hopelessness. Through counselling, clients can acquire cognitive, behavioral and interpersonal skills and stress-coping tactics, in order to restore health and inner balance and to promote constructive choices and commitments for personal and interpersonal wellness.
Societal and systemic change as a co-requisite

Without going into the details, we consider that the following improvements in society and work conditions are required: (a) emphasis on restoring the family unity and marital partnership and father's active involvement in parenting and child development; (b) improving the status of women and promoting gender equity at work and changing the male-dominated corporate culture; (c) education on the importance of holistic self-validation; (d) raising workers' awareness of human rights and improving the appeal system, (e) requiring the employer to pay for their overtime, instead of exploiting their 'voluntary' overtime; (f) legitimizing mandatory minimum holidays; (g) confidential counselling services made available at work in the areas of career, marriage/family, health, recreation, and personal and existential concerns; (h) supporting medical leaves and helpseeking attempts to cope with stress; and (i) close governmental monitoring of health-hazardous working conditions. As to karoshi, it has been pointed out that the labor law and insurance policies need to be improved (Yamazaki, 1991). For example, only about 10%

181 of the financial compensation requests by the families of karoshi victims are awarded after many years of legal disputes; the company and workers' compensation organization tend to evade their legal, ethical, and financial responsibilities (Uehata et al., 1991).

Conclusion

What we are suggesting here will probably meet resistance from the supporters of the corporate culture and those who place priority on corporate productivity and workers' social conformity. Japan seems to have maximized the workers' output at the expense of individuals' personal and familial wellness and their sense of inner balance and freedom which the Japanese culture has valued traditionally. Education of the worker, the employer, and society in general is urgently needed. Humanistic and existential self-validation counselling is presented here as a defense against dehumanization and as a prevention of self-abuse mediated by overwork and the neglect of the needs for more holistic self-validation. The results of effective counselling may not be fully compatible with the existing corporate culture; workers may become more individualistic and less conforming. However, we believe that this is a healthy direction to take, and that the corporate culture will also gradually shift in such a direction when more workers and policy makers begin to appreciate the importance of holistic self-validation.

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