The existence of so-called black companies that exploit their employees is hardly news here. But the December 2015 suicide of a young female employee of Dentsu ¡ª Japan¡¯s largest ad agency ¡ª focused renewed attention on the work practices that led to her death and are still all too common.

Based on a prize-winning novel by Emi Kitagawa, Izuru Narushima¡¯s ¡°To Each His Own¡± (¡°Chotto Ima Kara Shigoto Yamete Kuru¡°) is a serious treatment of this theme that flirts with fantasy in its first half but shades to heart-warming melodrama in its second. Save for the scenes of the beleaguered salesman hero (Asuka Kudo) being chewed out by his short-fused boss (Kotaro Yoshida), the story teeters on the edge of impossibility before finally descending into just-so fiction whose solution for °ì²¹°ù¨­²õ³ó¾± (death by overwork) is the real-life equivalent of winning the lottery ¡ª that is, hardly attainable for the majority who have to earn a living in this country rather than the film¡¯s idea of paradise.

The salesman is Takashi Aoyama, a new hire who recruits and services clients for a printing company. His boss is a door-slamming, wastebasket-booting terror who not only rips into Aoyama for the smallest error, but also forces him to do long hours of ¡°voluntary¡± (unpaid) overtime. Finally deciding that life is not worth living, Aoyama is about to fall into the path of a speeding train when he is rescued by a tall, lanky guy in a Hawaiian shirt. Calling himself Yamamoto (Sota Fukushi), he claims to be Aoyama¡¯s long-lost classmate.