Kirk Spitzer

USA TODAY

TOKYO — Think you have it tough at the office?

In Japan, employees at nearly one out of every four companies are at risk of dying from overwork.

Those are among the findings of the first-ever government report on karoshi — the Japanese term for death from working too much.

According to the report, 23% of Japanese companies had employees who worked 80 hours or more of overtime per month last year, which works out to about four hours per day. That’s the threshold at which the government considers the risk of death to be significant.

The report blamed overwork for at least 96 deaths from medical causes — mostly heart attacks and strokes — and at least 93 suicides last year.

The study’s findings are based on a survey of more than 1,700 companies and some 20,000 workers and covers a year, ending March 2015.

Japan’s National Police Agency puts the number of work-related suicides at more than 2,000 per year, an indication that the problem could be even greater than the government report suggests. The report figures are based on civil claims related to workplace suicides; the police figures are based on overall suicides judged by law enforcement authorities to be related to the workplace.

The study was the first under a 2014 law requiring the government to promote efforts to prevent death and suicides from overwork. A panel appointed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe began meeting last month to overhaul Japan’s workplace environment, which could include easing gender restrictions and overtime requirements, an indication Japan is finally addressing work-life balance issues.

The problem of employees working chronically long hours — and dying or suffering medical, psychological or emotional disorders as a result — has been well recognized in Japan since at least the 1980s.

“Historically, this has come out of the ‘Japan Inc.’ mentality of the company as a family-like organization where people felt so emotionally invested that they were willing to spend — for the men — practically every waking hour devoted to the company," said Kyle Cleveland, a sociology professor and associate director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University’s Tokyo campus. “Arguably, that was the engine that drove the miracle of the Japanese economy, (but) this is one of the consequences.”

Civil claims for karoshi deaths have increased in recent years, and the government has begun to take steps to address the problem.

Japan’s Labor Standards Law limits regular working hours to eight hours per day and 40 hours per week but allows up to 80 hours of overtime — or in certain cases, up to 100 hours — per month.