Sanae Takaichi orders faster review of Japan’s working hours on International Workers Day
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told relevant ministers on Wednesday to accelerate the review of Japan’s working-hours systems, including the discretionary labor system, during a meeting of the Japan Growth Strategy Council on international workers day. The instruction puts labor market reform at the center of the government’s effort to strengthen the economy.
Takaichi’s request comes as the government is aiming to raise labor productivity by 15% over five years. That goal sits against a harder number: Japan’s annual labor productivity growth has stayed at around 0% in inflation-adjusted real terms in recent years.
Japan Growth Strategy Council
The meeting placed working-hours rules inside a broader push for labor market reform, not as a standalone labor dispute. For employers and workers covered by those systems, the practical issue now is whether the review moves quickly enough to shape how hours are managed inside firms that rely on discretionary labor arrangements.
Sanae Takaichi, as prime minister of Japan, used the council meeting to push ministers toward faster action rather than a slow policy review. The instruction focused on systems related to working hours, which means the government is looking at the rules that govern how labor is recorded, organized, and counted.
Productivity target and reform
The 15% target over five years gives the review a clear economic purpose. The government says it hopes to lift productivity through human capital investment and labor market reform, so the labor-hours review is now tied to a wider agenda rather than a narrow administrative adjustment.
That creates the main pressure point for Japan’s next steps: ministers have been told to move faster, and the productivity target is already set. For workers and employers, the significance is not a finished rulebook but the direction of travel — more reform pressure, with the discretionary labor system inside the scope of change.
The next concrete step is the government’s own review process, now accelerated by Takaichi’s instruction at the Japan Growth Strategy Council.
