Do people faint frequently in Japan?

This might seem like a strange question, but I have been seriously pondering it for quite a while. As of right now, I have a bad cold and find myself exerting much more energy than usual to do day to day tasks. It reminded me that in Japanese media (T.V. shows and movies), characters often faint from over exertion, especially during illness. Is it truly common and a reflection of the work-culture in Japan? Or is it just used as an effect to add drama to a narrative?
Thank you and I look forward to your responses!

It's over dramatisation like any movie/show

While I agree with @H there is one situation in which Japanese �gfaint�h more often publicly than in any other country I know: when they are drunk.
Probably in other countries drunken people also faint, but they do so in private / pubs. In Japan specially at night in the areas with a lot of bars you can see salarymen (and women) lying around on the pavement. Fainted. Often there is a friend who tends to them and manages to get the person into a train or taxi.
These same people then also might faint on the train miss their last stop and will be ultimately kicked out by train personnel when train services stop and might spend the night in a bench.

But yes, fainting from disease isn�ft specially common. Otherwise driving in Japan would be Russian roulette

1) I've never witnessed a person faint in front of my eyes, be it in Japan or anywhere else in the world. Even when people get drunk, I've only seen them "doze off" instead of "collapsing" as a sick person would in TV shows and movies.

2) I've seen many people faint in Japanese fiction, but then I've seen as many doing the same in foreign fiction.

3) I have, however, heard celebrities on TV saying things like, "I fainted the second the director called out 'Cut!' and I don't remember a thing," and the TV host would go, "You fainted?!"

So, maybe people are secretly fainting because of their work ethic. But I wouldn't be able to know, because they're so professional that they don't faint when we're watching. I think that the characters who faint in fiction faint because they had been alert to that specific point, but found a spot to relax a bit, and then they faint before they can find a chair to sit. People in fiction don't faint while being hyper, and probably neither do people in nonfiction. Indeed, a lot of real-life figures, both Japanese and foreign, are found unconscious hours after they faint.

Speaking of fainting, I heard that way back in the days when foreign women wore those extreme corsets, they would faint because the corsets were too tight. The fainting would then attract the men. Come to think of it, I've seen probably at least a couple of women in Japan fainting (so I take back 1) because of the physical pressure and thin air in rush-hour commuter trains. But then, I've never commuted on crowded trains in foreign countries, so I wouldn't know if Japan is unique. And I do know that trains can get uncomfortably crowded in cities like London or New York as well.

I wonder if it helps.

Otherwise driving in Japan would be Russian roulette

Actually, drivers hit a bullet every once in a while regardless of the country. When they say, "I don't remember," I don't think they're necessarily lying or were sleeping.

But to prevent that as much as possible, people in Japan are advised to refrain from driving if they're ill, tired, mentally disturbed because of things like bad news, or have taken medicine.

Like the OP mentioned, people tend to faint when they go over the top. To prevent that, you can prevent yourself from going over the top, and if you do go over the top you shouldn't drive.

I agree with Uco regarding drunk people in Japan. I wouldn't call it "fainting" because to me that word implies a sudden collapse, whereas when you see drunk people sitting/lying on the ground in bar districts, that's the result of an accumulated buildup of drowsiness from alcohol. As for why you're more likely to see people asleep on the streets in bar districts in Japan, in Japan the trains stop running between midnight and 1 a.m., and don't start until around 5. Sometimes people miss the last train home and so try to just keep partying until the morning, but run out of stamina before that. There's also the fact that taxis become expensive at night in Japan, so anyone who is trying to make it home before morning is usually going to have to walk to the train station, and again, some drunk people run out of stamina along the way.

So no, "fainting" isn't particularly common in Japan, and what you see in Japanese media is just an exaggeration for dramatic purposes, often as a way to justify two characters having to spend the night together or go back to one's house.

It might be true that fainting is more common in Japanese media than other countries' however, especially for stories set in the real world. Off the top of my head, thinking of scenes in American movies/TV shows where two characters ended up alone together, I can think of times where they were driving together in a car that broke down, where one was just hanging out at the other's house socially, or when they were being chased by muggers or gangs. In Japan, though, most people don't drive in the big cities or have people over to their homes, and there's not much street crime. So it might be that with fewer stock scenarios to get characters alone together, Japanese scriptwriters are more likely to fall back on "The girl fainted, so the guy had to take her back to his place/get them a hotel room/stay with her on the side of the road until she woke up." A similar phenomenon occurs with people catching completely debilitating colds - it's much more common in Japanese media than in real-life Japan. Fainting may as a result even become more common in Japanese fantasy-setting stories, since it's something Japanese viewers are used to seeing in media in general and so an easy fallback for writers.