Japanese firms which help workers resign have experienced a surge in requests following the end of the Golden Week.

These firms help their clients tender their resignations and negotiate with their employers on their behalf, appealing to those who struggle to quit on their own for various reasons, reported The Japan Times. 

This year’s Golden Week stretched from April 29 to May 6, covering national holidays that include Showa Day and Children’s Day.

As offices reopened after the string of national holidays, one such firm on May 7 received 174 requests for help to hand in their resignation letters.

The trend is not new, said Ms Shiori Kawamata, a spokeswoman for the company aptly named Momuri, the Japanese phrase for “I can’t take it any more”.

But the spike is a new record for the firm since its inception in March 2021, breaking its previous single-day record of 134 clients that was set midway into 2024’s Golden Week.

There has always been a trend for the number of requests to go up following each year’s Golden Week since it is the first long consecutive holiday of the fiscal year, Ms Kawamata told the Japanese newspaper. 

The trend can also be attributed to gogatsubyo (“May disease”), which refers to the lack of motivation and blues workers and students experience when they have to return to their routine following the long break.

“As there is the term ‘gogatsubyo’, there is a tendency for an increasing number of people to request resignations for psychological reasons (following the Golden Week), given that people had time to take a break and think about various things,” said Ms Kawamata.

Momuri’s clients come from different age groups - about 40 per cent are above 40 years of age, and out of the customers the firm aided on May 7, 29 were new hires who started work in April.

Thanks to gogatsubyo and growing media coverage, firms like Momuri have been gaining traction among the locals.

A survey by human resource company En Japan last year showed that more than 70 per cent of respondents knew of such companies.

Clients often approach such agencies for their services when their toxic working environments make it difficult to resign. 

“That said, we don’t want people to develop the habit of quitting – resignation services like ours don’t exist so that people can quit right away whenever they want to,” said Ms Kawamata. 

“We’d like people to use our resignation service as a last resort that they can rely on as protection so that they can move forward (with their lives).”

The spike in such requests should also be a wake-up call for companies to improve working conditions, she added.

“This high number of resignation requests may cause controversy,” Ms Kawamata told The Japan Times.

“But by drawing attention to it, if more companies reconsider their working environments and improve relationships with their employees, there would be meaning in the existence of resignation services like ours – that’s what our company believes.”