

A form of wage theft that’s common in the US (and elsewhere) is that workers are expected to still do work when they have already clocked out (such as closing up the shop).
I have a Japanese friend who told me that it’s not uncommon that if your work colleagues are going to the bar after work, you are expected to go along. If you don’t, it shows a lack of commitment to your job. As it’s not a formal requirement, of course you don’t get paid for this, despite it being functionally mandatory. What’s worse is that you can’t just stick around for one drink and then head home — you are expected to stick around at least as long as your boss, even if he (let’s face it, the boss is probably male) is still drinking long into the night. I consider this to be an especially egregious form of the wage theft I described above.
It sounds so exhausting that I would likely be unable to do anything besides pretend to work, and even that would lead to inevitable burn out. I had heard that the work culture in Japan was bad, but I had no idea how bad until my friend shared some first hand experiences with me.
I think they’re doing it intentionally. A Jewish friend who visited Israel for study way back told me how jarring it was to see how Holocaust trauma seems to be actively being exacerbated so that it can be used for population control. Zionists believe that the state of Israel is absolutely necessary for Jewish people to be safe, and so antisemitism helps further that goal, both in terms of enticing Jewish people across the world to move to Israel, but also in effectively recruiting those who dont move to Israel to advocate for Israel’s aims and existence in their own country