A Japanese railway company that cut the wages of one of its train drivers because of a single minute's delay has to pay back the money: the equivalent of 40 cents - but the train driver did not live to see the victory in court.

The competent district court in Okayama Prefecture on Tuesday ordered the indicted West Japan Railway Company (JR West) to pay the train driver who died earlier this year 56 yen, including lost overtime pay.

The man's claim for 2.2 million yen ($18,000) in damages for the mental illness caused by the employer was dismissed.

Japan's railways are world class.

The Asian high-tech nation is rightly proud of the reliability of its clean trains.

But the bizarre legal dispute not only threw a spotlight on the legendary punctuality of Japanese railways, but also on Japan's often exploitative working world.

The train driver was supposed to drive an empty train into a depot at Okayama station in 2020, but initially made a mistake on the platform.

This delayed the departure by one minute.

As punishment, his wages were reduced by 43 yen.

JR West justified the wage cut with its strict working principle: "no work, no pay".

The engine driver was not working during the mix-up.

Out-of-court settlement failed

On the other hand, the plaintiff argued that the man had only made one mistake, that the one-minute delay complained of was part of his working hours.

In addition, the train driver's mistake did not result in any interruption to the timetable.

The man therefore sued his employer in March last year and, in addition to damages for the mental anguish he had suffered, demanded back the 43 yen he had been deducted plus 13 yen overtime pay.

According to the Japanese news agency Kyodo, the employer had tried to reach an out-of-court agreement with the train driver, but had failed.

Earlier this year, the man died in his 50s from an undisclosed illness, it said.

With his curious lawsuit, however, the Japanese had at least managed to get the public to know how far his employer went to achieve the much-vaunted punctuality.

Japan's Shinkansen bullet train, the pride of the nation, is also famous for its punctuality.

Except in the case of natural disasters, there are hardly any delays here either.

However, if there are delays of less than a minute, this leads to repeated apologies.

In 2017, a train company was forced to apologize because a Tokyo suburban train had not left too late, but too early: by 20 seconds.

Nobody had complained at all.