Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto has been compared to Adolf Hitler in the media for his authoritarian governing style, but on a realistic level he seems more like an overbearing boss. The famous tattoo controversy comes down to the notion that, as mayor, he employs city workers, and since the city's residents — in essence, his customers — voted for him to make decisions for them, he is exercising his prerogative by banning tattoos among civil servants, which he claims Osakans don't like. It's not a question of individual rights, but rather employer discretion. The same goes for teachers and the national anthem. They don't get to decide whether or not they will sing it, because singing it is in their job description.
Many people are alarmed by Hashimoto's popularity, because they think it indicates how much personal freedom people are willing to give up in exchange for perceived results. However, if we apply the boss model to Hashimoto's methodology, people may not really think they are giving up anything, because to them the concept of working for someone automatically carries with it a loss of freedom.
On Feb. 14, the Kanagawa Prefecture Labor Standards Office deemed the death of 26-year-old Mina Mori, who committed suicide on June 12, 2008, to be a case of karōshi, or "death from overwork." Mori killed herself two months after being hired as a regular employee at the Yokosuka branch of the Watami restaurant chain. Since starting the job Mori worked an average of 140 hours overtime per month, or 60 hours above the threshold at which the labor ministry deems karōshi "more likely to occur." The question of whether she was forced to work overtime is at the heart of the case, and the ministry has found that the company violated laws related to saburoku kyōtei, or agreements on working conditions concluded between employers and employees.