Japanese workers invented a word for companies that work their employees to exhaustion.
Burakku kigyō (ブラック企業), literally "black company" or "black enterprise," is a Japanese term for employers that subject workers to extreme overtime, illegal labor practices, or psychologically abusive management.1 The word burakku is borrowed from the English "black," used in the Japanese sense of something corrupt or harmful, and kigyō (企業) means company or enterprise.
The term emerged in online forums in the early 2000s, initially among young workers sharing experiences of exploitation at companies that demanded unpaid overtime, discouraged the use of paid leave, and retaliated against employees who tried to resign.
By 2013, the term had gained enough public traction that the Japanese government acknowledged the phenomenon. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare began conducting inspections of companies suspected of violating labor laws, specifically using burakku kigyō as a category of concern.2
The same year, a nonprofit called the Black Company Award (ブラック企業大賞) began issuing annual prizes to the company judged most abusive toward its employees, drawing media attention and public shaming.3
The concept is closely linked to karoshi, death from overwork. In 2015, Matsuri Takahashi, a 24-year-old employee of the advertising firm Dentsu, died by suicide after logging more than 100 hours of overtime in a single month.4 Dentsu was subsequently fined and its president resigned.
Japan's labor law caps standard overtime at 45 hours per month. In 2019, reforms introduced criminal penalties for companies that exceeded a new absolute ceiling of 100 hours per month in a single period. The language invented by anonymous workers on internet forums had become the basis for national legislation.