In 2016 Japan's labour ministry found that a third of the country's workers had experienced 'power harassment' in the past three years
built his company from a small producer of engines to attach to bicycles into a global carmaking giant, he developed a reputation as a talented engineer and a maverick executive. He was also known to be an exacting boss, even a violent one. “When he got mad, he blindly reached for anything lying around, and started throwing whatever was in reach randomly at people,” one former executive later recalled. Such fiery tempers remain all too common among Japanese managers.
At the extreme end, workplace bullying can still include physical violence of the sort displayed by Honda. More typically, it manifests itself in all manner of verbal, emotional and psychological abuse. Japan’s labour ministry defines six categories of power harassment: physical attacks, mental attacks, social isolation, excessive demands, demeaning demands and privacy infringements. Suicides linked to power harassment are not uncommon. Cases cut across sectors and classes.
Although bad bosses are a universal phenomenon, Japanese workplaces can be particularly conducive to the worst sort of behaviour. Hierarchies are rigid and deeply rooted. What bosses see as tough love can come across as hurtful to junior employees, especially as behavioural norms change between generations, says Inao Izumi of Cuore. The inflexibility of Japan’s labour market compounds the problem.
Critics counter that the new law is both too vague and too toothless to help put-upon workers. Small and medium-sized firms do not have to comply until 2022. The law does not apply to part-time workers, who make up more than a third of the Japanese labour force. Nor does it specify punishments for harassers, leaving it up to companies to decide what action to take. “The law merely warns offenders—it’s like a yellow card,” says Kaneko Masaomi of the Workplace Harassment Research Institute.
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