posted by John Spacey, Japan Talk, June 23, 2012
Sleeping at work is so common in Japan that there’s a word for it in Japanese — Inemuri (居眠り).
To properly understand Japanese culture you need to look at Japanese ideas about sleep. In Japan, people get respect for giving their best (for pushing themselves to exhaustion). Therefore, showing how tired you are is a statement — it says you’re a hard worker.
When people say goodbye to their coworkers in the evening they don’t say “have a nice night” or “have a nice weekend”. They say “otsukaresama deshita“. This can be literally translated as “you are tired sir”. It’s the nicest thing you can say to someone — that they are tired.
In this context it’s easy to understand why people get away with sleeping at work. Coworkers assume the sleeping person must be working too hard.
There are rules of sleeping at work (inemuri):
I worked (several years) at a Japanese company and can confirm that inemuri is a everyday occurrence.