Japanese Premier faces backlash for starting meeting at 3am

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is known as an inveterate workhorse. She often skips social gatherings and has openly rejected the idea of work-life balance.

- Javier C. Hernandez and Hisako Ueno

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at a Parliament session in Tokyo on Nov 14. She promised during her recent campaign to scrap her work-life balance upon taking office, saying she would “work and work and work and work”.

(PHOTO: AFP)

But even by Ms Takaichi’s standards, it was surprising when she emerged from her Tokyo residence shortly after 3am on a recent day to convene a meeting with aides ahead of an appearance before Parliament.

Ms Takaichi has drawn criticism for holding the meeting, which took place on Nov 7 and has become known in the Japanese news media as the “3am study session”. The issue is especially sensitive in Japan, where there have been high-profile cases in recent years of karoshi, or “death from overwork”.

Some argue that the meeting, which involved several aides and lasted about three hours, would feed into unhealthy extremes. Others said the new Japanese leader was placing unnecessary burdens on her staff.

Mr Yoshihiko Noda, a former prime minister who leads the main opposition party, called Ms Takaichi’s decision to hold the 3am meeting “crazy”. When he was Japan’s leader from 2011 to 2012, he would start work around 6am or 7am.

“It’s fine for her to work, but she should not be getting other people involved,” he said in an interview. “Everyone is in bed at that time of day. It’s a very sad attitude for the top leader of the country to show.”