So for me, I do a very solid, focused, and productive 40 hours and leave time in life for everything else which matters: family, friends, hobbies, sleep.
I definitely have experienced the judgment of my peers for being so strict about how I work. Even though I do great work, they frequently give me a hard time for, apparently, not being dedicated enough. But isn't that a little ridiculous? When you're an employee, even of a great employer, it's still just a job. If, in that job, you cease to be an asset (no matter the quality of your work, or the number of hours you put in), you will be reassigned or terminated. To me it's idiotic to treat any job as being anything other than that: a job. There's good, interesting jobs with lots of challenges and great pay; there's really horrible jobs which are menial, micromanaged, abusive bosses, with low pay. It's a continuum of jobs, but that's all they are: jobs. It's almost like people are turning work into a religion. Or that there's a belief that if you sacrifice your life, health, etc. for work that you are to be honored and respected. But that's just masochistic.
Work to live, not the other way around.
The 'extra' time allowed me to write a lot of books (a fun activity) and spend more time with friends and family.
Others like lawyers, are on a similar situation treadmill tied to hours worked. It is often up or out at big firms, and going up always entails working lots of billable hours. Work fewer hours, make less money and no great future.
Ultimately, the path to success increasingly seems to be freeing yourself from a single entity that controls your pay (i.e. Employer, single client or customer, etc.). From there it is down to finding ways to scale your output beyond your hourly constraint (you only have so many hours in a day you can work, even for high pay) and ways to diversify income to reduce risk.
I'm not sure how useful the Japanese comparison is, to be honest. Japan is so ridiculously out of step with how the rest of the world does things (it's not just the ridiculously long work hours, but the semi-compulsory socializing with colleagues after work) that it probably doesn't tell you very much. Not least because, having worked in a Japanese office, the working environment becomes markedly more relaxed after 6pm anyway (there were beers at my place).
Japanese workers who work longer hours DO make more.
This is because no one cares (primarily) about worker productivity - they care about being a "team player" & similar intangibles.
Most Japanese salaries are quite low at the beginning and for the early years, but increase over time until at the last part of your career with the company you are living nicely and prepared for retirement.
Team players are promoted. Non-team players are not.
So, for places outside the Japanese corporate world the idea of less hours == more pay may hold true, but in the situation they chose to highlight in the story that is completely wrong. There, you make more over your career by "butt in seat" time, and little else in most cases.
Regardless whether the American experience in the US study applies to the Japanese office, there's a point that remains: while those Japanese might not get promoted or get fired for working less, it would still be better for them to quit their career than work themselves to death.
This was something I always wondered about at Google. Because you could eat three meals a day there, shower, do your laundry, and nominally sleep[1] does that make their employees that much more expensive than people with out the extra perks?
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truc...
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-three-day...
So if "more vacation" is not correlated with earning less, one might as well take it.
