I stumbled across Salaryman (2021) through an Amazon recommendation—a rare moment where the algorithmic gods actually delivered something worthwhile. Directed by Allegra Pacheco, the documentary dives into Tokyo’s infamous corporate grind.

You’ve probably heard the stereotypes, but seeing it on screen is something else entirely: men in suits passed out on sidewalks, slumped against train station walls, or napping in cramped cubicles. Over the course of the film, Pacheco sprinkles chalk outlines around these sleeping salarymen, part art installation, part commentary. It’s a striking visual, a reminder that the line between exhaustion and tragedy is sometimes paper-thin.

Japan even has a word for it—Karoshi (過労死)—which translates to “overwork death.” It’s not hyperbole; it’s a documented phenomenon where workers will hustle themselves into a literal grave.

Some of the film’s most heartbreaking moments come from interviews with salarymen’s wives, who describe only seeing their husbands a few nights a week. They’ve taken on the roles of solo parents and part-time spouses, left to manage family life while their partners remain consumed by work. For these men, work isn’t just a job—it’s an all-encompassing reality.

And yet, as I watched, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this isn’t just a “Japan problem.” Sure, Salaryman showcases a particularly intense version of corporate culture, but the underlying themes—overwork, the erosion of personal time, and the gradual collapse of identity into productivity—are alarmingly universal. How many of us still answer work emails after hours, even when we don’t have to? How many of us feel a gnawing guilt when we’re not “getting ahead” during our free time?

Total Work

The German philosopher, Joseph Pieper, warned about this phenomenon in Leisure: The Basis of Culture, published back in 1948. He called it “Total Work”—a state where humans stop being people and start being workers, and everything in life becomes subordinate to productivity. Decades later, Andrew Taggart picked up Pieper’s idea and articulated it with a modern urgency:

“Total Work is the process by which human beings are transformed into workers and nothing else. By this means, work will ultimately become total, I argue, when it is the centre around which all of human life turns; when everything else is put in its service; when leisure, festivity and play come to resemble and then become work; when there remains no further dimension to life beyond work; when humans fully believe that we were born only to work; and when other ways of life, existing before total work won out, disappear completely from cultural memory.”

If that sounds a little abstract, Taggart has a way of making it concrete:

“We are on the verge of total work’s realization. Each day I speak with people for whom work has come to control their lives, making their world into a task, their thoughts an unspoken burden. A total worker takes herself to be primordially an agent standing before the world, which is construed as an endless set of tasks extending into the indeterminate future. Following this taskification of the world, she sees time as a scarce resource to be used prudently, is always concerned with what is to be done, and is often anxious both about whether this is the right thing to do now and about there always being more to do.”

Reading that, it’s hard not to picture the salarymen of Tokyo—working 16-hour days, crashing on benches or train station floors, squeezing the barest scraps of life into the cracks of their schedules. But it’s worth noting that what Pieper and Taggart describe is something subtly different. Salarymen don’t necessarily define themselves through their work; for many, it’s a matter of survival, hierarchy, and cultural expectation. This isn’t the self-imposed grind of someone hustling for a dream—it’s a system where overwork is baked into the structure, and where saying no often isn’t an option.

And yet, the effects overlap. Whether it’s the self-taskification Taggart describes or the relentless demands placed on salarymen, the result is the same: everything outside of work becomes a chore to be completed. Errands, family obligations, even relaxation itself—all of it is reduced to a tick-box on an endless to-do list.

Ganbaru

Salaryman isn’t shy about showing the toll this takes. One interviewee mentions that overwork is often seen as beautiful in Japan—a sign of dedication and perseverance. This cultural ethos is tied to Ganbaru (頑張)—which loosely translates to “Keep Going” or “Don’t Complain.” It’s admirable, in a peculiar way, but also relentless. Ganbaru doesn’t ask if the thing you’re persevering for is worth it—it just tells you to grit your teeth and push through. This is tradition unexamined, pressure without purpose.

This ethos takes on almost tragic proportions in one of the film’s more surreal moments: “Extreme Commuting.” Some salarymen wake before dawn to cram a kayaking trip, a mountain hike, or even just a good breakfast into the hours before work. On the surface, it looks kind of exhilarating. A feel-good story. Until you realize that these men are so desperate for a shred of personal freedom that they’re effectively turning leisure into a competitive sport to prove that somehow, sometimes, leisure is still possible.

It’s heroic, in a way, but also deeply sad. Leisure should be spontaneous, even restorative—not another challenge to fit into an already overbooked calendar.

The Escape Route

Watching Salaryman, I kept thinking about how Pieper argued that culture is built on leisure—not the forced, taskified kind, but the real thing: time to think, to create, to simply exist without a goal. Overwork strips that away, leaving nothing but motion without meaning. The kind of work-life that Bertrand Russell argues against in his legendary 1935 essay In Praise Of Idleness, in which he makes the case for workers to once again regain the capacity to indulge in active (not passive) leisure time.

One of the film’s interviewees suggests there’s always an escape route; people just forget to look for it. The challenge, though, is remembering that you’re not trapped—that it’s okay to set boundaries, to log off, to want something different. Maybe that means leaving a toxic workplace, or maybe it’s as simple as reclaiming your weekends, or the odd day off, without guilt.

Salaryman doesn’t offer easy answers, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a reminder that work, while important, isn’t everything—and it shouldn’t consume every part of who you are. Pieper’s warning about Total Work might sound lofty, but the underlying question is deeply practical: how much of your life is truly yours, and how much of it have you handed over to the grind?