Photographer Emmanuelle Firman is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Karoshi, death by exhaustion’. To see Emmanuelle’s body of work, click on any image.
A day without end
Karoshi, death by exhaustion
Today, on the Asian continent, it is not exceptional to work twelve hours a day, six days a week, it is entrenched in the culture of many companies.
But this frantic pace weighs heavily on the health of millions of workers and even has a term: “Karoshi” literally “death by overwork”.
In the land of the rising sun, one employee in five risks dying at work due to overwork. The figures, opaque on the Chinese side, are at first sight identical, perhaps even higher in some industrial sectors.
During my last trip to the Asian continent, I observed, in the late hours, these men and women in the shadows, resigned, relentless workers, sometimes to the point of exhaustion.
In Shanghai, in the characteristic light of the nights of this megalopolis of more than 24 million inhabitants, I tried to restore, with the gentleness they deserve, their place in their environment, lost in spaces cluttered with cardboard, plastic or concrete, sometimes even to the point of disappearing, as if caught up in the city and its consumer needs.
All images and text © Emmanuelle Firman
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By Emmanuelle Firman
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I’ve heard of this, but your images make it so much more real. It’s a very sad state of affairs.
It’s the culture in Asisn countries, that causes, all of these companies to, demand these long workhours, overtimes, of the employees, and, because the employees are, in need of that wage, that’s why, a lot of them had been, overworked, to their, graves, and they hadn’t even, begun, spending what they had made, in, wages too, and, these companies, pay so measly, in the compensations of their, employees’, deaths too.