If employers in the private and public sectors are not prepared to take adequate steps to reduce the threat to life from excessive workloads, Japanese judges seem increasingly ready to remind them of their responsibility. The nation's courts are ruling with greater frequency in favor of the families of victims that overwork was indeed the cause of death for a husband, father or son. Japan's higher courts are rejecting appeals by employers, who can seem determined to avoid any acknowledgment of the connection. Even more surprising in a society that attaches great importance to employee loyalty, judges are ruling that some suicides are clearly the result of extremely heavy workloads.

Even though the Japanese word for death from overwork, "karoshi," has entered the English language and some experts believe the estimate of 10,000 such deaths each year in this country may be conservative, it has taken a long time for courts to act, and decisions in cases are not being reached quickly. The landmark ruling that made the change possible was the decision by the Supreme Court last March holding Dentsu Inc., Japan's largest advertising agency, responsible for the death of a young employee who committed suicide as the result of depression caused by his heavy overtime schedule.

In the most recent ruling, the Okayama Branch of the Hiroshima High Court late last month decided in favor of a man's widow that more than five years of overwork had caused the death of a local city government employee in Okayama Prefecture. Her husband succumbed to a fatal heart attack exactly 11 years ago, in November 1989. He was 42 years old at the time. Even though the victim sometimes worked past midnight as a designer on construction projects, the directors of the compensation fund for local government employees had argued his death was caused by illness, not work-related duties.