As a Japanese-fluent American engineer who has been associated with the Japanese electronics industry for more than 30 years, I am deeply disappointed to see so many Western economists reaching false conclusions from the published data on Japanese working hours, which are utterly worthless due to the extremely widespread (indeed, almost universal) requirement there that employees work unpaid overtime. The Japanese call this "sabisu zangyo", "zangyo" being overtime, and "sabisu" meaning "free" (as in, "it's a service"). I first learned of this when working in Japan in the late '70s; a fellow employee commented to me that, "It's awful, we've been working 16-hour days and getting only one day a month off for months now -- and they're holding down overtime." When I asked him to repeat that because I must have misunderstood him -- how could they be working such insane hours if the company was holding down overtime(?) -- he informed me that it's quite common in Japan to go clock out and then come back and work hours more.

Two hours a day of sabisu zangyo is not at all unusual in Japan. When times are hard -- as they have been for more than a decade now -- that will rise. It will also rise when times are really good, and there are opportunities to "make hay while the sun shines".

There were some articles in the Wall Street Journal a year or two ago about an IBM Japan employee who was sueing the company over this.

Actual working hours in Japan are much, much longer than reported. The figure given in the Economist's graph is so low as to be ridiculous. The Japanese work many, many more hours than Americans or Europeans.