While a Work-Injury Claim Waits, Nothing Bridges the Bereaved — Six-Month-Plus Backlog Doubled to 2,329 in Five Years
A report that a work-injury claim took "seven years" to certify misleads: that was one worst case, and the state's rough guide is about four months for death and bereaved claims. Yet claims undecided past six months number 2,329, nearly double in five years. A living worker who can no longer work can partly bridge the wait with health-insurance sickness allowance, but the family of a worker who has died has no bridge. This reads the asymmetry of livelihood support during the wait for certification.
TL;DR
- The seven-year figure is a misreading of one case; the state's guide is about four months for death and bereaved claims, yet six-month-plus backlogs number 2,329, doubled in five years
- A living worker who can no longer work can partly bridge the wait with health-insurance sickness allowance, but the family of a worker who has died has no bridge
- The focus is not only whether a claim is certified but who bridges the gap before certification — the asymmetry between the living victim and the bereaved
Work-injury insurance pays only after certification. A living victim can partly fill the wait with health-insurance sickness allowance, but the family of a worker who has died has nothing to bridge it. Claims for death from overwork and the like doubled from 2,835 in FY2020 to 6,212 in FY2025, while labor inspectors grew only 3.4% in five years, so the wait for certification has, if anything, lengthened.
What Is Happening
The seven-year figure is one worst case, not the average; the guide is ~4 months, yet 2,329 claims exceed six months, doubled in five years
There was a report that a work-injury claim took "seven years" to certify. But the figure misleads. The reported case was an individual worst case: a worker who died by overwork suicide in 2018, whose family filed a work-injury claim in 2019, passed through the administration's denial and the dismissal of their review request, sued in 2024, and were finally certified by the Tokyo District Court in 2026 — some seven years in all, across administration and courts. The state's rough operational guide is about four months for death and bereaved compensation claims. "Seven years" is not the average.
Still, cases that drag past the guide are indeed rising. Claims still undecided more than six months after filing number 2,329, nearly double the 1,169 of 2021 over five years, and have stayed above 2,000 since 2023.
Behind this is a surge in claims. Claims for "death from overwork and the like," karoshi and overwork suicide, reached 6,212 in FY2025, more than double the 2,835 of FY2020. For mental disorders alone, FY2025 certifications came to 1,082, a certification rate of 28.2% (the rate is the share of decisions that grant, not the share of claims filed). Meanwhile the labor inspectors who handle the reviews number 3,122, and even the FY2026 quota of 3,145 is up just 3.4% in five years. Claims doubled; the hands barely grew. The wait for certification has, if anything, lengthened.
Background & Context
A living victim can partly bridge the wait via health-insurance sickness allowance, but the bereaved family has no pre-certification bridge
The problem lies less in the length of the wait than in how one lives through the gap. Work-injury insurance pays only after certification. During the gap between filing and certification, the livelihood of the victim or the bereaved is not supported by work-injury insurance.
A living worker who can no longer work has a partial bridge: the health-insurance sickness allowance. The Health Insurance Act, in principle, excludes work-caused illness and injury from its benefits (Article 1). But in practice, while a work-injury claim is pending and not yet certified, health insurance may pay the sickness allowance provisionally, treating the case as under work-injury confirmation, and claw it back if the injury is later certified as work-related. The Board of Audit's FY2017 audit report confirms this practice as observed in FY2014–2015. Since the structure by which health insurance excludes work injury is unchanged, this bridge appears to continue. It is not complete, but it fills part of the gap.
For the family of a worker who has died, however, there is no such bridge. Work-injury bereaved compensation includes an advance lump sum, but it is for those entitled to receive the pension — a post-certification device. It cannot be received before certification. Car-accident compulsory insurance has an interim payment that can be drawn without waiting for a decision, but work-injury insurance has no such mechanism. Read through the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act, no provision for an interim payment exists. What health insurance gives the bereaved is only a one-off funeral grant, not continuing income support. While they wait for certification, the public bridge the bereaved can rely on is all but absent.
Reading the Structure
The scheme details post-certification benefits but barely provides for the wait before it; prolonging deepens the asymmetry
Here lies an asymmetry. A living worker who can no longer work can partly fill the wait with the health-insurance sickness allowance. But the family of a worker who has died has nothing to bridge it. While they wait for certification, the bereaved must fall back on public assistance or bear the cost themselves. For the same waiting on work-injury certification, the weight of the gap differs utterly between the living victim and the bereaved.
Why does this asymmetry arise? The scheme has designed post-certification benefits in fine detail. Bereaved pensions and advance lump sums are all built on the premise of certification. But the gap before certification is thinly provided for. Between work-injury insurance, a labor scheme, and public assistance and health insurance, social-security schemes, the family waiting on certification falls into the seam.
Prolonging deepens this asymmetry. If a case settles within the four-month guide, the gap is short. But with 2,329 cases undecided past six months, doubled in five years, the gap often runs well beyond the guide. The longer the wait, the wider the gap for the bereaved, who have nothing to bridge it. The problem of time to certification is also a problem of review capacity. If inspectors barely grow while claims double, the time that can be spent per case falls, and decisions slow.
The standards for work-injury certification, and whether a claim is certified, have long been debated. But how to support the gap before certification has rarely been discussed. As certifications for work-related mental disorders keep setting records, who, and how, will bridge the living of those who wait — above all the gap for the family of a worker who has died? It deserves to be asked with the same weight as whether a claim is certified.
Further Reading
- 審査・再審査・裁判例に学ぶ 「脳・心臓疾患」「精神障害」労災認定の仕組みを理解する (Understanding How Work-Injury Certification Works, through Reviews, Re-Reviews, and Court Cases) (Ken Takahashi and Naoki Tsutsui, Rodo Shimbunsha, March 2026) — a practitioner's guide to the mechanism of work-injury certification for brain and heart disease and for mental disorders, following the actual reviews, re-reviews, and court cases. (In Japanese.)
References
FY2025 Status of Work-Injury Compensation for Death from Overwork and the Like — Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Labour Standards Bureau
Labour Inspection Annual Report (2024) — Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Labour Standards Bureau
FY2017 Audit Report — Board of Audit of Japan. Board of Audit of Japan
Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act (Act No. 50 of 1947) — Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. e-Gov Law Search
