After the Christmas 2015 suicide of an employee at ad giant Dentsu Inc. was reported as an official case of karoshi (death from overwork) this month, making headlines nationwide, a manga portraying the mindset of those worn out on the job went viral earlier this week and had been retweeted over 131,000 times as of Friday.
The author, an illustrator who goes by the name Kona Shiomachi, says that when people are overworked, they aren't capable of making rational decisions, including on whether to change jobs, and embark on a vicious circle of negative thinking that, in some cases, leads to suicide.
The title of the comic, which went online Tuesday, is "Mukashi Sonokimo Nainoni Ukkari Jisatsu Shikakemashita," which can loosely be translated as "I was about to unintentionally commit suicide."
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