Tokyo: Taking up the blame for the death of a 24-year-old employee, the executive head of a Japanese advertising company stepped down on Friday after it emerged that the employee was pushed into taking her life due to overwork.
According to a report in the Daily Mail, the president of Dentsu Inc., Tadashi Ishii, resigned 24 hours after prosecutors demanded that charges be laid against the company for driving Matsuri Takahashi to take her life last year.
Writing to her mother before jumping off her office balcony in December 2015, Takahashi said, “You're the best mum in the world. . . But why do things have to be so hard?”
Stepping down from the post of company president, Ishii conceded that working overtime remains one of the major problems that requires attention and with more than 100 employees working more than 80 hours over time.
“This is something that should never have been allowed to happen,” he said.
Curiously, the first person officially recognised by the Japanese authorities as having killed himself due to overtime in 1997 worked for Dentsu as well. 24-year-old Ichiro worked without any offs for 17 months at a stretch and barely had two hours sleep every day.
The government claimed that at least 2000 Japanese citizens kill themselves every year because of work related stress.
