Quick Reference

Meaning & Definition

休む (yasumu) covers the full spectrum of stepping back from activity — resting a tired body, sleeping for the night, taking a day off work, and being absent from school or an appointment. What unifies all these uses is the removal of oneself from an ongoing demand, whether physical, social, or institutional.

休む (yasumu) is used across several related but distinct situations.

The most basic sense is to rest or recover: 休んでください (yasunde kudasai) means ‘please rest’ and is what a doctor, parent, or concerned colleague might say to someone who is unwell or overworked. Here yasumu implies temporarily withdrawing from activity to recover energy.

A second important use is taking a day off: 休みを取る (yasumi wo toru) means to take a day off or use paid leave. The noun form 休み (yasumi) itself means a rest, a holiday, a day off, or a recess — it appears in compounds like 夏休み (natsuyasumi, summer vacation) and 昼休み (hiruyasumi, lunch break).

The third common use is being absent from an institutional setting: 学校を休む (gakkou wo yasumu) means to be absent from school; 会社を休む (kaisha wo yasumu) means to be absent from work or call in sick. In this sense yasumu is transitive-ish — the institution or obligation appears with the particle を.

Finally, yasumu can mean to go to sleep for the night, especially in the set phrase お休みなさい (oyasumi nasai), the standard goodnight greeting.

How to Use It

The most useful distinction to learn is 休む (yasumu) vs 眠る (nemuru). Both can describe sleep, but they are not interchangeable. 眠る specifically means to fall asleep or to be in a state of sleep — it is narrowly about the physical act of sleeping. 休む is broader: it includes napping, resting without sleeping, taking a day off, and being absent. So 少し休んで (sukoshi yasunde) could mean ‘take a short rest’ — which might not involve sleep at all — while 眠れなかった (nemurenakatta) specifically means ‘I couldn’t sleep.’ When in doubt about which to use, 休む is the safer, more versatile choice for situations involving rest or recuperation.

Kanji Breakdown

The character 休 is one of the most visually intuitive in the Japanese writing system. It combines 人 (hito), the person radical, on the left with 木 (ki), meaning tree, on the right. The image is a person leaning against a tree trunk — taking a moment of shade and stillness after exertion. This pictographic origin makes 休 easy to remember and reflects exactly what the word means: pausing activity to restore oneself.

Example Sentences

Cultural Context

Japan has a complicated cultural relationship with 休む. The country has one of the world’s most generous statutory paid-leave systems on paper — workers are entitled to up to 20 days of nenkyu (annual paid leave) — yet Japan also consistently ranks among OECD nations with the lowest leave-utilization rates. Taking all one’s allotted days off has traditionally carried social risk: being seen as uncommitted to the team or leaving colleagues to carry extra work. This tension means that for many Japanese workers, the decision to 会社を休む is not taken lightly.

The concept of karoshi (過労死, death from overwork) is a stark reminder of what happens when rest is chronically deferred. Recognized as a legal cause of death by Japanese courts since the 1980s, karoshi has driven repeated government campaigns encouraging employees to actually use their nenkyu. Since 2019, employers are legally required to ensure workers take at least five of their entitled paid-leave days per year — a law that would be unnecessary if resting were culturally uncomplicated.

Not all rest carries stigma. Seasonal rest is deeply embedded in Japanese life: 夏休み (natsuyasumi, summer vacation) and the New Year break are widely observed, and the multi-day Golden Week holiday in late April and early May effectively brings the country to a standstill. These collective rest periods are socially sanctioned in a way that individual nenkyu days often are not, revealing that in Japan, when and with whom you rest matters as much as whether you rest at all.

📚 Learn More