Commuted sentence: Covid-19 spares the Japanese salaryman from ritual exhaustion

Pandemic forces even the most conservative companies to rethink their practices and let employees work from home

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Until a few weeks ago Tsutomu Okada never imagined he would be working within earshot of his wife and daughter or talking to colleagues via his laptop.

But in Japan, as in other parts of the world, the coronavirus pandemic has forced even the most conservative companies to rethink the way they do business in a country that has been reluctant to embrace the idea of working from home.