In April 2019, TBS started the Tuesday night drama Watashi, teiji de kaerimasu. (I’ll Go Home on Time), starring Yoshitaka Yuriko. Her character, Yui, carries a trauma from the past. Since then she has held that work is not something to risk one’s life for. She finishes her work with more concentration than anyone else and values her private life.
Staying Away from the Committee
On June 29, 2026, the Special Committee on Political Reform of the House of Representatives began deliberating a bill to reduce the number of seats. Five opposition parties, among them the Chūdō Kaikaku Rengō and the Democratic Party for the People, stayed away.
Murai Hideki, the chief whip of the Liberal Democratic Party on the House Steering Committee, criticized the boycott: Kokumin kara shokumu hōki to omowarete mo shikata nai. “They cannot complain if the public sees it as abandoning their duties.” Kyodo News called this one of the stock phrases the ruling side uses when the opposition refuses to deliberate.
Punished for Absence
In February 2023, the House of Councillors voted to punish Gāshī, whose real name is Higashitani Yoshikazu, a member for the NHK Party who had kept staying away from the Diet. He was ordered to apologize in the chamber. The Kobe Shimbun wrote in an editorial that a punishment for absence was unheard of in either house.
Attending the Wake
A business manners guide by All About describes a recent tendency. The funeral itself is often held for family and close friends only, and people from work attend only the tsuya, the wake. When several people from the same company attend, they go to the reception desk and offer incense in order of position, starting with the most senior.
Meetings in Doubt
In a 2025 survey by tldx Solutions, reported by Web Tantōsha Forum, 88.9 percent of 1,000 respondents aged 20 to 69 said that they had doubted whether they needed to attend a meeting. In a 2024 survey by the company Acall of 600 employees, the share of meetings felt to be truly necessary averaged 39.1 percent.
Five Minutes Early
Gofun mae kōdō means acting five minutes early. A first-year newsletter from a Japanese junior high school defines it as gathering at the place of an activity five minutes before it begins. It adds that in the adult world, too, the rule is considered “the key to trust.”
The newsletter also does the arithmetic. When one late person delays the start, the time lost is the delay multiplied by the number of people.
Staying Late
Sābisu zangyō, service overtime, is overtime work that is not paid. In a survey reported in 2015 by Rengo, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, about 40 percent of workers said that they had been in a situation where they had to do it. The average was 16.7 hours a month.
Tsukiai zangyō, keeping-company overtime, means staying at work after one’s own tasks are done, to match colleagues or the boss. In a survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 12.8 percent named ending it, with bosses sending staff home early, as a measure needed to reduce overtime.
The Katō Rebellion
In November 2000, the factions of Katō Kōichi and Yamasaki Taku in the governing Liberal Democratic Party planned to vote for the opposition’s no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Mori Yoshirō. On November 20, the two factions changed their position from voting in favor to staying away from the vote.
Katō proposed that the others stay away while he and Yamasaki alone attended and voted for the motion. Members of his faction pressed him to stay on as their leader instead. The motion was rejected shortly after 3 a.m. on November 21.
The open revolt became known as Katō no ran, the Katō Rebellion. It ended in an absence.
Perfect Attendance Award
A kaikinshō is an award for never missing a day of school or work. Many Japanese schools still give it. Few absences also help in recommendation-based admission to high schools and universities.
A Newsweek Japan article linked this culture to karōshi and suicide from overwork.