Japanese overtime work culture captured in new dice collection

Roll the dice with employees apologising in the windows of office tower blocks late at night.

Even the most normal of everyday objects has a special wow factor in Japan, where mops look like shaggy dogs, toilets have functions one can only dream of and pillows look and sound like fried chicken.

So it should come as no surprise that the humble six-faced die is another item that looks far from boring in Japan, and one specialty store dedicated to the cubes now has a lineup featuring a darker aspect of Japanese life: overwork.

Called “Late Night Overtime“, the new collection from Dice Shop Dorataco takes its inspiration from corporate office towers. And like the office blocks themselves, what goes on inside these buildings isn’t immediately evident until the sun goes down and the lights turn on, exposing some of the people and the late-night work that goes on inside them.

Expressions written on the below image show that “rewarding jobs” by day (left), look like they care for workers’ welfare with their beautiful office buildings, despite the fact that meetings take place during lunch hours. On the right, the night image shows that workers live for the company, lives shine by phosphorescence, and at midnight, it’s time to move onto the next work agenda.

Each side of the die has a different office scene to represent the numbers one to six. One = New Company Employee; Two = Apology; 3 = Office Romance; 4 = Cutting Work; 5 = Phone Correspondence; 6 = Document Validation.

▼ Stacked up on top of one another, the dice create the look of a busy city.

And at night they shine like a city as well, complete with rooftop heliports for those at the top who want to cut work and make a quick escape.

The “Late Night Overtime (Corporate Slave)” dice, as they’re described on the store’s official site, can be purchased online in sets of three or six for 1,700 yen (US$16.27) and 3,300 yen respectively.

The dice really bring to light one of the darker aspects of Japanese working life, and remind us of an image we saw of two buildings in Shibuya recently, which summed up the difference between Western and Japanese working cultures in one photo.

Source, images: Twitter/@dorataco
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