Japanese man arrested after stabbing himself – to get a day off work
In what has to be a monumental case of the hump-day blues, a Japanese man literally stabbed himself to avoid going into work.
The disheartened employee, 54-year-old Masaru Miura, of Kasugai in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, reportedly stabbed himself in the hip in a subway station bathroom in the Nagoya Municipal at about 7:20am Wednesday.
Miura then went to a nearby police station and filed a false police report saying, “An unknown man stabbed me from behind,” Asahi reports.
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While he was awaiting treatment for the stab wound, police began questioning him further, leading Miura to cave and tell the officers that he had lied and stabbed himself to get out of going to work.
"I didn't want to go to work, so I did it. If I got hurt I thought I would not have to go to work," Miura said, according to TomoNews Japan.
Miura explained to officers that he found a knife near the subway ticket station and took the drastic measure because of the severe stress he was under at work. He was subsequently arrested for interfering with police duties.
READ MORE: Japanese firm mulls 3-day weekend to ‘boost productivity’
Overworking in Japan is an ongoing issue for the country, which had 2,000 people commit suicide in 2015, with work stress cited as one of the leading causes, according to police statistics.
Some companies considered extending weekends to three days after a 24-year-old woman jumped to her death on Christmas Day, after working more than 100 hours of overtime in one month.
