People in the Anime Industry in Japan Work Crazy Hours on Average According to a Study
In this day and age, nobody seems to bat an eye at working long hours, and in some parts of the world it is expected. One of those countries that people tend to associate with overworking jobs is Japan and one of their exports is anime. According to Sora News 24, even the Japanese find that people in the anime industry work ridiculously long hours. However, it wasn’t until recently that real numbers were actually given for how much time people involved in anime spend on work.
The Japan Animation Creators Association, Janica, worked with Dai Nippon Printing to conduct a study last November and December. In this study, they collected 382 responses from people ranging from animators to writers and producers and more. 312 of those responses included information about their work hours and the average came out to 230 hours a month. If you break that into a 4-week month and only working 5 days a week, that means that these folks are working 11.5 hours a day. Of course, this is an average, and so there are some who work less and some who work more.
In addition to long hours, 360 respondents shared how much money they made. The average income came out to 4.4 million yen (roughly $40,585.6 US) a year. If you break that down to an hourly basis, you get roughly 1,594.2 yen ($14.7 US) per hour. Once again though, we’re working with averages and roughly 40% of the 360 respondents reported earning less than 3 million yen ($27,672 US) a year.
This goes to show that people who go into the anime business aren’t really in it for the money. This, I’m sure, makes some fans love them and their work even more. However, this also shows that there might be some problems. One animator said:
“Every day, I’m eating into my savings, rushing blindly to get my work done, and I find myself thinking ‘Just what was it that I ever liked about anime? Why do I stick with this industry?’ Sometimes I can’t find the answers anymore. It’s using up all of my mental and physical strength, plus my money and my time.”
Another foreign-born animator who went to Japan to work in anime said:
“I haven’t been able to get hired to work on the anime series I like,” he said. “My work schedule is so busy that I don’t have enough time to practice and improve my drawing skills…My pay is low, and I barely make enough money to buy groceries, let alone afford insurance or pay into a pension.”
Hopefully, now that there’s hard data, maybe things can change for the better. The first step to change is realizing that it needs to happen and I can only hope that this information from Janica helps push the industry to improve.