働く
はたらく
hataraku
= to work; to labor; to be employed
Hataraku (働く) means to work — and in Japan, a country where the relationship between people and their work is culturally loaded, philosophically examined, and sometimes painfully fraught, this verb carries more than just a job description.
Hataraku (働く) is a godan verb meaning ‘to work,’ ‘to labor,’ or ‘to be employed.’ It covers physical and mental labor, professional employment, and part-time jobs alike. Conjugations: polite present hatarakimasu, negative hatarakanai, past hataraita, te-form hataraite. The related noun is shigoto (仕事, work/job) rather than a direct nominalization of hataraku. The verb often appears with de to indicate where someone works: kaisha de hataraku (to work at a company), byōin de hataraku (to work at a hospital). It is also used figuratively: nō ga hataraku (脳が働く, the brain is working/functioning well), chie ga hataraku (知恵が働く, one’s wisdom is at work). The causative form hatarakaseru means to put someone to work or to make something function.
Learners sometimes confuse hataraku (to work, to labor) with tsutomeru (勤める, to be employed at / to serve at an organization). Hataraku describes the act of working or laboring; tsutomeru specifies being employed at a particular place: ginkō ni tsutomete iru (I am employed at a bank). Both are natural, but tsutomeru emphasizes the institutional relationship. Also note the important cultural phrase hataraki-man (働き者, a hard worker — literally a ‘working person’) and its darker counterpart karōshi (過労死, death from overwork), which has entered global consciousness and reflects the serious side of Japan’s work ethic.
働く is written with 働 (hataraku) plus the verb ending く. The kanji 働 is a Japanese-invented character (kokuji) — created in Japan rather than borrowed from China. It combines 人 (person radical, on the left as 亻) with 動 (dō, to move). The logic is visually direct: a person in motion is working. Because 働 was created in Japan, it has no on-reading used in everyday vocabulary — its reading is exclusively the kun-reading hataraku. This makes it a memorable outlier in the kanji system.
Everyday use
彼女はIT企業で働いている。
Kanojo wa IT kigyō de hataraite iru.
She works at an IT company.
Casual / Social Media
週に何日くらい働いてるの？最近忙しそうだね。
Shū ni nan-nichi kurai hataraite ru no? Saikin isogashisō da ne.
How many days a week are you working? You seem busy lately. (casual message exchange between friends)
Formal / Cultural context
弊社では、多様な背景を持つ人材が活躍できる環境を整えています。
Heisha de wa, tayō na haikei o motsu jinzai ga katsuyaku dekiru kankyō o totonoete imasu.
Our company is building an environment where people from diverse backgrounds can work and thrive. (company mission statement or job listing)
The verb hataraku is central to one of Japan’s most contested social topics: work culture and its extremes. The concept of karōshi (過労死, death from overwork) — recognized as a legal cause of death in Japan since the 1980s — reflects a society where dedication to work has historically been seen as a virtue to the point of self-destruction. Hataraki-sugiru (働き過ぎ, overworking) has become a recognized social problem, and the Japanese government has pushed ‘work style reform’ (hatarakikata kaikaku) since 2018, mandating overtime caps and promoting paid leave use.
Historically, the concept of shokunin (職人, craftsperson/artisan) represents the most revered form of hataraku in Japanese culture. A shokunin dedicates their life to mastering a single skill — sword-making, pottery, sushi preparation, carpentry — and the pursuit of that mastery is itself seen as a spiritual practice. The phrase shokunin kishitsu (職人気質, craftsman’s spirit) describes a devotion to quality and craft that transcends monetary reward, and it remains a deeply respected ideal in contemporary Japan even as the economy has moved toward knowledge work.