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It sounds like an insane concept, but apparently it is a real thing — in Japanese (karōshi 過労死) and Chinese (guòláosǐ 過勞死 / 过劳死).

…a Japanese term relating to occupation-related sudden death.

The most common medical causes of karoshi deaths are heart attacks and strokes due to stress and malnourishment or fasting. Mental stress from the workplace can also cause workers to commit suicide in a phenomenon known as karōjisatsu (過労自殺).

Karoshi is also widespread in other parts of Asia. Generally, deaths from overwork are a worldwide occurrence. For example, over 770 wage labourers die of overwork annually in Sweden, a country with robust labour regulations. The death toll is, however, expected to increase in the future.

(Wikipedia)

The notion of intense overwork that has a dangerous impact on one's mental and physical health is seeping into Silicon Valley in the form of the "996 working hour system":

The 996 working hour system (Chinese: 996 gōngzuò zhì 工作制) is a work schedule practiced illegally by some companies in China. It derives its name from its requirement that employees work from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, 6 days per week, so 12 hours per day and 72 hours per week. A number of Mainland Chinese internet and tech companies have adopted this system as their official or de facto work schedule. Critics argue that the 996 working hour system is a violation of the Labour Law of the People's Republic of China and have called it "modern slavery".

(Wikipedia)

I suspect that enthusiastic workers in most societies who want to please their superiors and "get ahead" are susceptible to overwork, but the pressure to succumb to it is especially heavy when employment opportunities are unabundant.  This has been particularly true in China during the last five years or so when the number of educated youth has increased significantly while the economy is stagnating.

 

Selected readings

• "Charlie Hustle in the AI industry" (9/29/25) — 996
• "'Toil tackler'" (12/4/23)
• "'Involution', 'working man', and 'Versailles literature': memes of embitterment" (12/23/20)
• "Involution, part 2" (12/25/20)
• "Involution, part 3" (1/15/23)
• "'Lying flat' and 'Involution': passive-aggressive resistance" (6/4/21)
• "'Lying flat' and 'Buddha whatever' (part 2)" (6/24/21)
• "The growing supinity of Chinese youth" (7/11/23)
• "WU2WEI2: Do Nothing" (3/10/09)
• "Blindly busy" (8/26/18)

Afterword on involution discourse

"Death from overwork" syndrome and "996" work schedule are recent developments in "involution" discourse.

Neijuan (Chinese: 内卷; pinyin: nèijuǎn; lit. 'to curl inwards' IPA: [nei̯˥˩tɕɥɛn˩˧]) is the Chinese calque of the English word involution. Neijuan is written with two characters which mean 'inside' and 'rolling'.       Neijuan has disseminated to nearly all walks of life in mainland China in the early 21st century, due to the uneven distribution of social, economic, and educational resources and ongoing economic malaise, especially in terms of higher education bodies and labour markets. Neijuan reflects a life of being overworked, stressed, anxious and feeling trapped, a lifestyle where many face the negative effects of living a very competitive life for nothing.

Involution was developed as a sociological concept by American anthropologist Alexander Goldenweiser in his 1937 book Anthropology: An Introduction To Primitive Culture.       In this work, Goldenweiser identifies involution as a cultural process. That when a society reaches its final form it cannot evolve nor stabilise itself. Instead, it can only complicate its internal elements. Goldenweiser uses Māori decorative art as an example.       The development of art was done within the framework of already existing patterns. The final pieces were elaborate and complicated in appearance but fundamentally the same as existing art.

This term was later utilised by fellow American anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who popularised the term in his 1963 book Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia.       In this work, Geertz analysed the rice farming process in Indonesia following Dutch colonial rule. Geertz found that despite the complexity of the process, coupled with the increasing amount of labour being assigned to it, productivity remained stagnant. All these efforts to increase productivity yielded little results, while complicating the already existing processes and systems. For Geertz this was involution.

Geertz's concept was introduced into Chinese rural studies by the Indian sinologist Prasenjit Duara and the Chinese historian Philip Huang (黄宗智; Huang Zongzhi), arousing some controversy in Chinese academic circles. Huang explained involution using the economic concept of diminishing returns in his book The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China (华北的小农经济与社会变迁), published in 2000, which deviated from Geertz's original explanation.

Since 2020, the word involution (neijuan) has become an internet slang word in mainland China, and by extension refers to a culture in which people are expected to keep ahead of others. It can also have other negative connotations including 'cut throat competition', and 'race to the bottom', depending on context. Xiang Biao, an anthropologist, describes involution as "a dead loop in which people constantly force themselves" and "a race that participants are not allowed to fail or exit".       Some other people       describe it as a process in which people "gain a slight advantage by exploiting themselves and competing excessively within a group". Influenced by its popularity, the number of academic papers containing the word involution has increased, but the meaning has further deviated from the original sociological sense, leading to some criticism that the word is being abused.

(Wikipedia)

Disambiguation

[Thanks to Ella Jewell and Bill Dai]

October 5, 2025 @ 1:46 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and business

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