A group of "angels in white" are aiming to exorcise the demons they face in their hospital workplaces by forming a band made up entirely of nurses, according to Sunday Mainichi (5/25).

Countershock, the all-nurse band whose members perform in their medical outfits and with stethoscopes around their necks, are putting on a live show this week to mark Nursing Week in Japan.

The band -- which takes its name from the word for an electric shock used to restore the heart's rhythm -- has been putting on a few shows every year since the early '90s, building up popularity among medical practitioners for its irreverent take on the tough times nurses face in the workplace.

"We date back to 1992, when I was a member of a nurses' union at a hospital in Akiruno in Tokyo. We were thinking of ways that we could let people know about our horrible working conditions," Countershock's founder Henri Miki tells Sunday Mainichi. "We thought that simply complaining wouldn't gain us much sympathy in the wider community, so looked for a way we could get our message out and the band was the idea we came up with."

Countershock's songs are filled with lyrics that touch on the daily lives of those involved in hospital activities, including doctors, nurses and patients. Miki says the lyrics have become more cynical as conditions in the medical profession worsen yearly.

When the band was first formed, unpopular manual labor jobs were derided as being what the Japanese referred to as "3K" -- kitsui (tough), kiken (dangerous) and kitanai (dirty). Miki says nurses now have to confront a situation where it's 8K or 9K, including such additional problems as kyuryo ga yasui (low wages), kyuka ga torenai (can't take time off work), kekkon dekinai (can't get married) and kesho no nori ga warui (make-up never stays in place).

"Even though we wrote these songs 15 years ago, the gripes we had then remain totally valid today," Miki tells Sunday Mainichi. "Most active duty nurses who hear our songs can only sit there nodding in agreement at what we're singing. Unfortunately, what that means is that problems we've had for a decade or more still haven't been addressed." (By Ryann Connell)