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You would also have to factor the amount of time spent socializing at work versus actually doing work. In Japan most of your friends are at work, and relationships are in work. Lots of coffee breaks, chatting about non work related matters,etc,etc. 8 hours spent at the office in US is much more work being done than 12 hours of busy Asian country. That being said there certainly was a good amount of people actually working themselves to death for 15hours day actually working while their bosses did not much work. Source: Worked at a Japanese company for almost a decade.