A survey by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare found that in 2022, Japanese workers used more of their paid leave than ever.

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On average, those who worked in the private sector used 62% of their paid leave days. This was around 4% higher than the amount of paid leave used in 2021.

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But it's still not enough, according to the Japanese government, whose 2018 Work Style Reform Bill set a goal of increasing rates of paid leave use to 70% by 2025.

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The introduction of the Work Style Reform Bill saw changes to Japanese labor laws, including limits on long working hours, and more flexibility. The government has also tried to encourage workers to have better work-life balance.

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But Japanese society is known for being more collectivist than Western societies, and taking paid leave can be seen as creating a problem rather than using a right. So, many people still feel reluctant to take paid leave, in case it causes trouble for their co-workers.

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This reluctance to cause trouble to others can be seen in the survey's findings, too.

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In companies with 1,000 employees or more — where one person taking time off work would cause less trouble for others — workers used 66% of their paid leave days.

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But in smaller companies, with 30 to 99 workers, only 57% of paid leave was used.

And while the amount of paid leave taken might be increasing, there's still work to be done in other areas of Japanese working life.

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For example, the Work Style Reform Bill also introduced a "work-interval system," which set a specific number of hours between the end of one work day and the start of the next.

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The government aims to have at least 15% of companies using the work-interval system by 2025. However, the number of companies currently using the system is just 6%.