The utopia of utopias is ¡°Utopia¡± by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). Its best feature is leisure. There are no idle nobles; everyone works. A burden shared is a burden lightened. Utopians ¡°do not wear themselves out with perpetual toil from morning to night, as if they were beasts of burden.¡± They work their daily six hours, then go on to more important things ¡ª not ¡°luxury and idleness¡± (which are forbidden) but the pursuit of culture.

Five hundred years later, there are no utopias. Japan certainly is not one. Japan works itself to death, to depression. °­²¹°ù¨­²õ³ó¾± (death from overwork) is a Japanese contribution to the global language, increasingly understood worldwide. ±«³Ù²õ³Ü²ú²â¨­ (depression) isn¡¯t, but is a recurring theme within the country. Much of it is work-related.

Spa magazine this month finds kar¨­shi evolving. In Japan until the late 1990s, as in Europe still, most victims were blue-collar workers. Now they¡¯re managers. Social conventions can fool you into wearing executive status proudly. It¡¯s a trap, says Spa. The long recession that began in the ¡®90s spawned deep ¡°restructuring¡± ¡ª mass layoffs, reduced hiring. Who picked up the slack? Managers, who were scarcely then, and are little more now, protected by labor laws limiting working hours.