With the recovery tenuous, deflation afflicting all levels of commerce and the country at risk of sovereign debt crisis, it seemed an odd time for Japan’s biggest and most austere banking group to be telling its staff to knock off early.

Particularly when they realised how they were supposed to be using the extra one hour and 50 minutes of free time. The national birthrate is low, ran the round-robin e-mail that landed in people’s in-boxes on Monday, so let’s all enjoy “family time”.