For years, power harassment lived in the shadows of Japanese corporate life. It was whispered about in break rooms, logged quietly in HR inboxes, and endured by young employees who were told that tough love would make them stronger. This month in Tokyo, a judge drew a very different line. In a rare move, the Tokyo District Court compelled cosmetics maker D-up and its president, Mitsuru Sakai, to pay one hundred fifty million yen to the parents of a twenty five year old employee who died after attempting suicide. The court went further, pressing for leadership accountability at the very top. The president has resigned, and the company has issued a formal apology. The decision also locks in concrete prevention measures inside the firm, turning an individual tragedy into a legal milestone that other companies can no longer ignore.
What happened
The young employee joined D-up in the spring of twenty twenty one. Within months, routine workplace frictions escalated into sustained verbal abuse from the president himself, according to the case record and the family’s account. She was berated in meetings. She was insulted with language that stripped away her dignity. The following winter, a doctor diagnosed depression. In August of the next year she attempted suicide. She never regained consciousness and died in October of twenty twenty three. By May twenty twenty four, labor authorities concluded that the president’s conduct was a direct factor that triggered her illness and death, paving the way for a legal reckoning that would follow in court.
The family filed suit against the company and its president. On September nine of this year, the Tokyo District Court issued a decision in lieu of settlement, a tool judges sometimes use to resolve civil cases when both sides can accept strict conditions. The decision required D-up and its president to pay one hundred fifty million yen, to formally acknowledge responsibility, to apologize to the bereaved family, and to implement a set of prevention measures inside the company. Both sides accepted the ruling. The next day, the company confirmed that the president had resigned.
Why this ruling is different
Money judgments in harassment cases are not new in Japan, and high profile resignations have happened before. What stands out here is the depth of personal accountability tied to the top leader and the court’s forceful role in driving it. Japanese courts are typically cautious about dictating personnel outcomes. Corporate boards and ministries often handle those matters themselves under governance codes and administrative guidance. In this case, the court’s decision did more than assign a payment. It created a binding package that married compensation with prevention, apology, and leadership change.
That combination matters because it recognizes how power harassment works in the real world. Abuse at work is not a free floating insult. It flows down through authority. When a president berates a junior employee, the harm is amplified by the office the leader holds. The decision meets that reality head on and signals that courts are prepared to look past company platitudes to the conduct of individuals who set a workplace’s tone.
The legal backdrop Japan now operates under
In twenty twenty, Japan made the prevention of power harassment an employer obligation for large companies. From April twenty twenty two, small and medium employers were brought under that regime as well. The law sits within the Labor Measures Comprehensive Promotion Act and is backed by detailed guidelines from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. These require companies to set up consultation windows, establish clear rules that prohibit power harassment, train managers and employees, and protect people who report abuse from retaliation.
The law does not criminalize power harassment, nor does it assign an instant fine for every offensive remark. Instead, it demands systems that stop abuse early and hold perpetrators to account through workplace rules, discipline, and corrective action. Regulators can publicly name companies that flout their obligations. Civil courts then become the venue where victims and families pursue damages when preventive systems fail. The D-up ruling shows how these layers can work together. The labor authority’s recognition of the case as work related harm provided an official finding of causation. The court then used its tools to construct a remedy that reaches beyond the checkbook.
Inside the case record
Court documents and press reports describe a pattern of escalating scolding and humiliation. During a face to face meeting late in twenty twenty one, the president allegedly tore into the young employee for heading directly to a client site without permission. The next day the rebuke continued. Managers later confirmed that she had in fact secured her supervisor’s approval for the direct visit. That detail captures the essence of power harassment. It is not a dispute about performance rooted in facts. It is the exercise of dominance that does not care about facts, and it is that disregard that sinks morale and unravels mental health.
After her diagnosis in January twenty twenty two, the employee’s world narrowed. Panic layered on top of shame. Work became a minefield. Even as she withdrew to survive, the damage had already been done. In August of that year, she attempted to end her life. She survived the initial attempt but did not recover consciousness and passed away more than a year later. The family’s long struggle for recognition began. It ended this month with a decision that gives their loss a public meaning and a mandate for change.
A watershed for corporate governance
Japan has been pushing corporate governance reforms for a decade, strengthening outside director requirements, tightening disclosure, and encouraging boards to actively manage risk. Yet governance is not only about capital allocation and takeover defenses. It is about people. The D-up case takes the language of governance and puts it in human terms. Boards need to ask whether the culture they oversee protects employees from intimidation. Audit committees must treat harassment reports like the risk events they are. Nomination committees should evaluate leaders not only on strategy and numbers but on how they exercise authority day to day.
For listed companies, this ruling raises hard questions. Do whistleblower systems actually work when the accused sits at the top? Does the company have independent channels to receive complaints that involve the president or founder? Are there explicit rules in work regulations that allow for discipline or removal when power harassment is confirmed, even if the perpetrator is the most senior person in the building? Many firms have written policies. Fewer have practiced the response when the spotlight points upward.
What the decision requires inside D-up
The court’s decision requires prevention measures in addition to compensation and apology. While the full internal plan is not public, the direction is clear. The company must install consultation points that employees trust. It must train every manager on what power harassment is and what it is not. It must create a documented response protocol that triggers a third party review whenever a complaint implicates senior leadership. It must build a record of corrective actions and report those to stakeholders. For a cosmetics company with consumer facing brands, the stakes include reputation. But the deeper benefit is cultural. Healthy workplaces make better products because they allow people to speak up, learn, and try again without fear.
What this means for employees and families
This ruling does not rewrite the law in a single day. It does, however, change the expectations around what justice can look like when power harassment leads to irreparable harm. For employees, it affirms that a boss’s cruelty is not simply part of the job. For families, it shows that courts can address accountability at the level where harm originates. Support systems also matter. If you or a colleague face harassment, document interactions, preserve messages, and talk to someone who can help you see options clearly. Use internal channels, but if the person in question controls those channels, seek advice outside the company from a labor bureau, a lawyer, or a counseling service that knows the terrain.
Japan continues to expand resources. Prefectural labor bureaus offer consultation windows. Many municipalities fund free legal clinics. Unions and nonprofit hotlines can guide workers through steps that protect both health and rights. The law protects employees from retaliation for raising harassment concerns. That protection is only as strong as your ability to show what happened and when, which is why contemporaneous notes and saved emails often become decisive.
A message to leaders
Leaders sometimes think harassment is a personal flaw. It is more often a system flaw that leadership builds and sustains. Authoritarian styles produce short bursts of performance through fear and exhaustion, then sow crisis. The D-up decision invites leaders to do something harder than compliance. It asks them to imagine the daily experience of the youngest person in the room and to build a culture where authority exists to serve. That is not soft management. It is disciplined management that identifies abuse early and treats it as a risk event with human and financial consequences.
If you mentor first time managers, teach them how to give feedback that is specific, private, and anchored in observable behavior. Train them to separate frustration from instruction. Give them language for hard conversations that focus on tasks rather than identity. Build routes for staff to raise concerns without fear. And when reports arrive, take them seriously. The cost of looking away is written plainly in this case.
What to watch next
The ripples from this decision will extend through boardrooms, legal departments, and HR playbooks. Other plaintiffs will cite it when they argue for broader remedies. Defense lawyers will advise clients to settle earlier and more comprehensively. Insurers will ask harder questions about leadership training and complaint handling. Regulators may update guidance to make independent reporting lines standard. And the public will judge companies by how they respond in moments like this. The difference between a sincere reset and a cosmetic fix will be obvious within months.
For the family at the center of this case, none of these system level changes bring back the person they lost. At a news conference, they welcomed the result while expressing the pain of an apology that arrived too late. That testimony is the quiet heart of this story. The law can clarify duties. Courts can assemble remedies. Companies can revise manuals. But prevention begins long before a lawsuit. It begins in the everyday choices managers make and in the culture a president creates around them.
The larger cultural turn
Japan is not alone in confronting workplace abuse, but its history of long hours and hierarchical norms has made the shift more difficult. That is what gives this ruling its weight. It tells a new story about what leadership is for. Not to test the limits of a junior’s endurance, but to develop people. Not to dominate, but to set a standard that protects the most vulnerable while still pursuing excellence. As this case travels through business schools and training rooms, young managers will remember that a court in Tokyo treated power harassment as something more than a policy violation. It treated it as a failure of leadership that merits real accountability.
If that lesson takes root, the result will not only be safer workplaces. It will be better companies.