Japan’s health ministry designates November as month for campaign against burden shifting

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has designated November as the “Month for the Campaign to Prevent Burden Shifting.”¹ Through the campaign, the ministry aims to prevent the impact from being passed on to small and midsize businesses’ trading partners and to promote work-style reforms.¹ The ministry will work with the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency and the Japan Fair Trade Commission to carry out the campaign.¹ The main focus is raising awareness and urging relevant companies and others to prevent burdens from being shifted.¹ The campaign is not being run by the health ministry alone: the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency and the Japan Fair Trade Commission are also involved, broadening the range of organizations supporting awareness efforts and requests for action.¹ The November campaign links efforts to prevent the shifting of business burdens with the promotion of work-style reforms at small and midsize businesses.¹

The health ministry says a problem arises when large companies pursue measures such as reducing long working hours and the resulting burden is passed on to small and midsize businesses that are their trading partners.¹ Burden shifting is described here as the impact that changes made by companies pursuing reform can have on the operations and terms of their trading partners.¹ One example cited by the ministry is placing orders with little advance notice without appropriately reflecting costs.¹ Suddenly changing specifications after an order has been placed is also cited as an example of burden shifting.¹ In other words, the issue is not the reduction of long working hours itself, but avoiding situations in which the impact of such efforts is passed on to trading partners.¹ Orders placed with little advance notice and sudden specification changes are both cited as situations in which trading partners are required to respond, raising issues of costs and operational burdens.¹

In construction, short deadlines set by private-sector clients are cited as a factor that shifts burdens onto business partners.¹ In transport, the health ministry identifies as another factor the routine imposition by cargo owners of long waits for loading and unloading freight.¹ These examples show that the campaign’s concerns include not only sudden orders and specification changes, but also construction schedules and waiting times for cargo.¹ The health ministry describes these as burdens shifted onto small and midsize businesses that are trading partners.¹ The examples of burden shifting cited by the health ministry include sudden orders and specification changes, as well as short construction schedules and long waits during loading and unloading.¹ Private-sector clients in construction and cargo owners in transport are identified as specific sources of burdens, making this an issue for not only those who bear the burdens but also those who place orders or cause waiting times.¹

The campaign will use posters and leaflets to raise awareness.¹ The health ministry plans to update a dedicated website and run online advertisements.¹ It will also seek cooperation from ministries responsible for industry, prefectures and labor-management organizations.¹ The campaign will therefore use both printed and online materials and seek cooperation from government agencies and labor and management organizations.¹ In addition to posters and leaflets, the campaign will use a website and online advertisements, raising awareness through both print and the internet.¹ The organizations asked to cooperate include not only government agencies but also labor-management groups, creating a broad network of channels and stakeholders to disseminate information about the campaign.¹

In addition to its awareness efforts, prefectural labor bureaus will visit companies and make a focused appeal to prevent burden shifting.¹ The companies to be visited and urged to act include large companies and others where burden shifting is a concern.¹ The health ministry says these measures will be carried out as part of the campaign.¹ The materials do not specify the number of companies targeted or the number of visits and requests, so the scale of implementation cannot be compared numerically based on this information.¹ Alongside awareness efforts through posters and websites, prefectural labor bureaus will visit companies and urge them to prevent burden shifting.¹ Because large companies and others where burden shifting is a concern are among those being urged to act, the campaign is designed to prompt action by companies that could affect their trading partners.¹

The health ministry says it aims to create an environment in which small and midsize businesses can advance work-style reforms without shifting burdens onto their trading partners.¹ To that end, it intends to continue efforts to prevent burden shifting beyond this month’s campaign.¹ This policy is described as addressing companies’ efforts to advance reform and the burdens that arise for their trading partners as connected issues.¹ However, the information provided contains no figures measuring how much burden shifting has declined since the campaign.¹ The health ministry’s stated goal is to create an environment in which small and midsize businesses can advance work-style reforms without imposing burdens on their trading partners.¹ Although the ministry says it will continue its efforts, it provides no specific figures for evaluating results, so the materials describe the direction and methods of the campaign rather than its outcomes.¹

According to separate media reports, the health ministry’s Pharmaceutical Affairs and Food Sanitation Council met on October 21, 2026.² Those reports say the panel approved expanding the indications for an already-approved cancer drug.² This was a separate matter reported by Nikkei Medical and was not presented as part of the November campaign to prevent burden shifting.¹² Accordingly, the information presented here provides no basis for treating the report on the pharmaceutical review as an outcome or component of the campaign.¹² The separate report concerns a review of medicines, a different subject from the business burdens on small and midsize companies that the campaign addresses.¹²

A separate report by Nikkei xTECH on the construction industry says a revised law promoting labor policies will require companies to take measures against customer harassment.³ According to the report, the industries covered include construction, food service and services for general consumers.³ The explanation of this legal revision concerns a separate issue involving relationships with clients and customers; the health ministry did not present it as part of the November campaign’s framework.¹³ What the health ministry explicitly says about the campaign is that it will raise awareness and urge companies to act to prevent burdens from being shifted onto small and midsize businesses’ trading partners and to advance work-style reforms.¹ The customer-harassment measures described in the separate report concern not only construction but also food service and services for general consumers, but they should be distinguished from the campaign to prevent burden shifting.¹³