The creativity of the judge faced with new health-at-work problems: the Japanese case of karôshi and

Abstract

Recent court rulings in France have challenged work organization and management as major factors in psychosocial risks that can generate occupational stress leading to suicide. This global approach to work organization and managerial practices in the corporate world contrasts with the Japanese processual approach toward the criteria and conditions for establishing the causal link between labour and worker death (karôshi), and labour and worker suicide (karôjisatsu). In Japan, the individualization of cases and the withdrawal of the trade unions from the anti-karôshi struggle at the end of the 1980s transformed the nature of the movement into a legal mobilization. The organization of the movement by Japanese lawyers based on court decisions nevertheless led to profound changes in the law and in labour law.