NHK discloses female reporter’s overwork death

October 5, 2017

TOKYO- Japan Broadcasting Corp., or NHK, revealed Wednesday that a female reporter in Tokyo died due to overwork in July 2013.

The direct cause of the death of the 31-year-old reporter, Miwa Sado, at the metropolitan broadcasting center was congestive heart failure. In May 2014, labor standards authorities determined it was overwork-related death, NHK said.

According to the public broadcaster, the labor standards inspection office in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward recognized that Sado worked about 159 hours overtime and took only two days off in the last one month before she died.

As a Tokyo government beat reporter, Sado was covering elections for the metropolitan assembly and the House of Councillors by doing overtime far surpassing the legal limit. On July 25, 2013, she was found dead at her home in Tokyo.

NHK did not disclose her death immediately but later decided to make it public in order to promote the media organization's workstyle reform, it said. Jiji Press